By AUBREY HAWKE
Waltham Times Contributing Writer
School administrators in the English language arts department updated the School Committee on their programs at the committee’s meeting last Wednesday.
Anne Curry, the district’s director of reading and English language arts for kindergarten through fifth grade, presented a report on her department’s recent successes and challenges.
She said one recent success was a marked decrease in the need for reading support for Waltham students in kindergarten through third grader. She also reported an increase in reading accuracy demonstrated by students in third through fifth grade.
Curry also highlighted areas of need.
“Despite our areas of growth, I’d be remiss if I didn’t address challenges that our department is facing,” she told committee members. “Currently we’re most focused on the student experience of our youngest learners during their illiteracy intervention time. Many of these students receive support from multiple providers in short windows of time. Their days can feel very disjointed. We want to make sure the students are getting what they need in all areas of their education and we are committed to working with the multilingual department and the special education department to make sure that we are aligned in the instruction we are providing.”
Daphne Fay, the district’s director of English language arts for sixth through 12th grade, also spoke about her program’s successes and challenges.
Fay shared a recent department achievement regarding MCAS improvements at Kennedy Middle School. She said that when the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education shared this year’s analysis, she was “very proud to see that Kennedy exceeded their targets in ELA for their lowest performing 25% of students, who had struggled on the MCAS the year before.”
As for an ongoing challenge the department faces, she said, “it won’t be surprising to hear this, but we do have a historically low performance on MCAS reading standards across all grade levels.”
However, Fay added that Waltham middle-schooler students often rank above state average for the writing section of the MCAS.
In other School Committee action, members
- accepted more than $9,000 worth of elementary-level math school books gifted by Cambridge Public Schools, and
- announced that the equity audit team has been selected and that the audit will officially launch this month.
The full School Committee meeting can be viewed here.
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