Monday night’s School Committee meeting revisited Dartmouth’s MCAS scores, released in late September.

On Oct. 26, Assistant Superintendent and Committee Vice Chairperson Michelle Roy provided an overview of what the scores mean for the upcoming school year in the district.

Overall, there weren’t many significant changes from last year’s scores. Across the board, Dartmouth tenth graders, the only grade that receives MCAS testing in all three categories, performed better than the state average. However, math scores are down from 2014.

MCAS results are categorized by achievement levels, which include advanced, proficient, needs improvement and warning/failing.

Compared to last year’s scores in all three subjects, there was a slight increase in the needs improvement and warning/failing levels.

In English, the advanced level increased from 44 percent to 54 percent, but the proficient level decreased from 52 to 41 percent. The needs improvement and failing levels held steady at 3 percent and 1 percent respectively.

In mathematics, those scoring in the advanced level dropped from 2014’s 65 percent to 53 percent this year. However, the proficient level increased from 25 percent to 32 percent. The needs improvement level increased from 8 percent to 10 percent and the failing level rose from 2 percent to 5 percent.

The committee remarked that drops from high-achieving levels can be misleading. Often, because students become so packed in as more and more reach the advanced achievement level, just one wrong question can be the difference between advanced or dropping to proficient.

Lastly, in science and technology/engineering, students remained fairly consistent from last year’s scores. In the advanced level, students dropped from 27 percent to 26 percent. In the proficient level, students ranked at 57 percent, up from last year’s 56 percent. The needs improvement level dropped from 15 percent to 14 percent, and the failing level increased from 2 percent to 3 percent. Throughout the past three years, Dartmouth High’s students have ranked very consistently in the proficient level, coming in at the 50th percentile range.

The school district has an early warning system employed to help monitor students that may struggle or decline in their academic performance. They are working toward making this system more readily accessible to classroom teachers so that they can track individual students’ attendance, discipline and testing results to be able to make big-picture assessments of students, Roy said.

It was important to “make the data talk to us” instead of just having a big, unreadable mound of spreadsheets, Roy continued.

Ultimately, the committee was satisfied with the findings. They felt that the students’ scores were adequate and that there were no immediate concerns with the data.