Some MCAS scores elude federal scrutiny law benefits suburban schools

When poor, minority, and immigrant students in urban school districts sharpen their pencils for the MCAS exams this spring, the stakes will be high, not only for them but also for their schools. If the students score poorly, their schools could face sanctions.

   In the suburbs, however, because of a little-known provision in federal education law, many schools are less likely to be singled out for those students' scores.

       The No Child Left Behind law requires that school systems ensure progress on tests for the student body as a whole and for groups within it, including low-income, African-American, and Hispanic students, and those who speak limited English. The idea is to motivate schools to help students of all kinds achieve.

   But the law also says that if the number of students in a group is small enough, that group's test results do not have to meet standards. And in many affluent suburbs, the groups of poor, minority, and immigrant students are too small for their scores to count.

   "There's no question it lessens the pressure on schools," said Ross Wiener, policy director for The Education Trust, a Washington-based group devoted to closing the so-called achievement gap between white and minority students. "You want as many scores to count as possible."

   In Massachusetts, a group can escape scrutiny if it contains fewer than 40 students or less than 5 percent of the students in the school that took the MCAS exams, the statewide tests that measure student achievement.

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   For example, 45 Hispanic and 49 limited English-speaking students took the MCAS tests in Shrewsbury, but that was less than 5 percent of the total number taking the test. So the scores were not reported separately.

   The numbers of low-income and African-American students in Needham, low-income students in Franklin, African-American students in Wellesley, and special education students in Dover were too low to count for the law.

   Critics say the public is left in the dark as to how well schools are teaching these students. They also complain that less diverse schools are under less pressure than diverse schools.

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   Most suburban districts receive high marks overall on the report cards. And they say they are providing a high-quality education for all students.

   Needham Superintendent of Schools Stephen Theall said educators still analyze test results by groups, even though it is not necessary to report them to the government, and said the minimum guards against a small number of students with unusually poor scores giving a school a bad name.

   "Schools shouldn't be unfairly stigmatized because of the performance of a relatively small group of kids," he said.

    Paul Reville, executive director of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy at the Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth, said diverse urban schools are more likely to fall short of federal standards because they have more hurdles to clear.

   "It makes it considerably more difficult" to achieve what the law defines as "adequate yearly progress," Reville said.

   Last year, more than one-third of school systems in Massachusetts fell short of federal standards because of MCAS scores. Usually, they did well overall but failed to make acceptable gains for a single group of students, such as poor or minority students.

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