Alphabet Soup

When the alphabet soup of school administration finds its way into meetings, presentations, speeches, and publications many sets of eyes glaze over. Imagine if I were to stand in front of any group and say, “As we prepare for our upcoming NEASC decennial visit, we are focusing on our students’ MCAS scores, their performance on the PSAT, SAT and ACT, while combining our efforts to improve our CPI so that we make AYP.” I hope I didn’t lose any readers with that sentence.

For those of us who work in education – that was nothing. Special Education offices are even more prone to the utilization of acronyms that further confuse people. You see, a student can be on an IEP for many reasons which include, but are not limited to ADD, ADHD, PTSD, ODD, PDD, ED, SED, CP, MR, or LD. Often, students who are educated under IDEA and place on IEPs might receive the service of an SLP, OT, PT, or LISCW. And, let us not forget that the school district works closely with DYS, DCF, DMH, and DMR to meet the needs of all of our students.

Today’s blog will serve as a tutorial for one of the acronyms above that is very important to our district as well as those around the state. The Federal Government requires an accountability system in education and in Massachusetts our students’ progress is measured by their performance on the MCAS.
MCAS – Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System – these are the tests that the students at Mahar take in grades 7, 8, and 10 in English and Language Arts, Mathematics, Science, and Social Studies.

Our performance is measured by a number called our CPI.

CPI – Composite Performance Index – the name of it isn’t really important. What is important is how it is calculated.

Students can score anywhere from 200 – 260 on an MCAS examination. To calculate the CPI, the scores are broken up by the state in the following fashion:
A student who scores between 240 – 280 gets 100 CPI points
A student who scores between 230 – 238 gets 75 CPI points
A student who scores between 220 – 228 gets 50 CPI points
A student who scores between 210 – 218 gets 25 CPI points
A student who scores under 210 gets 0 CPI Points

Let’s say that 99 students take the MCAS in grade 10 English and Language Arts and they scores ar3:

65 students score between 240 and 280 which equates to 6,500 CPI points
15 students score between 230 and 238 which equates to 1,125 CPI points
15 students score between 220 and 228 which equates to 750 CPI points
4 students score between 210 and 218 which equates to 100 CPI points
1 student scores lower than 210 equating to zero CPI points

Our CPI total for this distribution is 8,475. This number is divided by the number of students who took the test (which is 100 in this case). And there you have it – our CPI is 84.75.

This number (84.75) is used by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to determine our “Accountability Status.” You should also know that by 2014 the goal has been set that ALL schools have a CPI of 100 – meaning that the number of students who score below 240 must be zero.

We are working on it!