Charter school revels in great MCAS scores
The Boston Herald
September 27, 2006by Marie Szaniszlo
Lut Celestin wants to make one thing clear: Going to MATCH Charter Public High School was not her idea. It was her mother's. But, after more than two years at the Brighton school, she can't complain.
Out of a possible 280 points on her 10th-grade MCAS exams, she scored 260 in English and 264 in mathematics - 74 points above what she scored in math in middle school - placing her in the "advanced," or top, level in both subjects.
"At first I didn't like the fact that we had more work here. They challenge you constantly," said Celestin, now a 16-year-old junior from Hyde Park. "I always wanted to go to college. I think this place has just made me work harder to get there."
Today, the Massachusetts Department of Education will release Grade 10 MCAS results for MATCH and all of the state's other schools and districts. And for most of them, there will be reason to be pleased. Last week, when the DOE released statewide results for all grades that are tested, 10th-graders led the pack, scoring higher on the 2006 MCAS exams than in previous years.
Eighty-four percent of students in the class of 2008 passed both the English language arts and math exams on their first try this year, up from 81 percent in 2005 and 68 percent in 2001, the first year that high stakes were attached to the high school assessment tests.
In English language arts the percentage of students performing at the proficient and advanced levels rose from 64 percent to 70 percent, and in math the percentage scoring in those categories increased from 61 percent to 67 percent. In math, the percentage of students scoring in the advanced category rose 6 points to 40 percent.
"We ask a lot of our kids because three-quarters of our kids come from low-income families," said Alan Safran, MATCH's executive director. "And the ticket out of poverty is college."
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