Old Rochester Regional Junior High and High School principals talked test scores and the fact that a “new era” of standardized exams is on the way in two years.

Students took a combination of the MCAS and PARCC exams last year and results show that the schools are above average in most areas. But next year, the students will take a new, as yet undefined MCAS 2.0.

“We’re all going to start back at square one next year in terms of accountability,” said Junior High Principal Kevin Brogioli. “This is the end of one era and we begin another era next year.”

As far as last year’s scores, the CPI or Composite Point Index, was a big focal point. The CPI tests students’ performance on a 100-point scale.

The eighth grade science CPI has hovered in the 70s for the past several years, this year at 79.2, and Brogioli believes that will continue to increase as new science standards will eventually be mirrored in the exam.

“We’re going to be better aligned in the future than we have in the past,” Brogioli said.

He highlighted that students in the advanced category increased from 1.2 percent to 2.8 percent and that students with disabilities also scored well.

Going forward, the school is working to upgrade the technology offerings with a coding and robotics unit for seventh grade students and continuing to rewrite the science curriculum.

In the English Language Arts category, seventh grade students scored 92.1 on the CPI, lower than the 96.6 target. The eighth grade ELA score was just one tenth of a point shy of its 96.7 goal at 96.6.

A factor in the CPI number is the student growth percentile, which calculates how students have improved. Those numbers are lower than Brogioli would like to see.

“That’s my area I’ve got to dig into to figure out why is our growth not higher,” he said.

For ELA, both grades were still in the upper half of a cohort of similar schools in the state.

In the area of math, Brogioli said there has been visible growth.

“Two years ago our discussion about grade seven math was a lot different,” he said.

Last year, the seventh grade scored only one point lower than the target CPI and was second in its cohort.

The eighth grade math scores were a bit harder to decipher as some students took the general exam and the others took algebra, which likely affected the CPI: 74.3 versus the 87.8 target.

Both sets of students did well. In particular, 89 percent of algebra students scored in the advanced and proficient categories.

At the high school, Principal Mike Devoll said the school dropped from a Level 1 school, the highest level, to a Level 2. But, he said, it seemed to be a trend across the state, with only one school holding on to its Level 1 status.

Devoll said it was nearly impossible to keep up the margin of improvement in the previous year with at least 10 percent of students reaching the advanced category and the same percentage advancing out of the “not proficient” category.

“We can’t lower our numbers below ten percent because we’ve got ninety percent or greater proficiency,” said Devoll.

Still, students scored an “all time high” in several subjects. In ninth grade biology, the number of advanced and proficient students increased from 55 to 58 percent with only one failure. The 10^th grade ELA score reached its own high, increasing from 53 to 55 percent.

So Devoll is hopeful for the future.

“I believe we’ll be back at a Level 1 [school] next year,” he said.

To continue growth, Devoll said the school will increase access to Chromebooks, work to improve the social and emotional well-being of students and continue to develop leadership among staff, among other improvements.

School Committee member Heather Burke praised the junior high and high school for their math scores.

“It’s really amazing to have students performing so well on high-level math concepts,” she said.