Full Report - Center for Collaborative Education

For LEP and EP students we can only compare
SY2008 data (SY2009 data are not reported in ELL
Sub-Committee, 2009). Unlike for SY2009, our
data show higher dropout rates than MDESE data
for SY2008.
In addition, the way in which some data were
calculated or analyzed may also be subject to some
limitations.
• Grade Retention. The construction of the
grade retention variable relied upon comparing
a student’s grade in one school year to his/her
grade in the previous school year, which means
that if the student was not enrolled in BPS for
two consecutive school years, we were unable to
determine if the student had been retained. This
may have led us to underestimate grade retention.
• MCAS for LEP Students in Their First Year in
U.S. Schools. When reporting MCAS ELA data,
we did not exclude any LEPs in their first year in
U.S. schools from our analysis. While this group
of students is not required to take the MCAS
ELA exam, there were some students coded as
LEPs in their first year in the U.S. who had MCAS
ELA scores. Because we could not verify if these
students were incorrectly coded as being in their
first year in U.S., we did not exclude them. In
addition, including these students allowed for
comparison of MCAS ELA pass rates across the
four years of our study period, as the LEP in first
year in U.S. schools variable was not present in
SIMS data collection in SY2006-SY2007.
We also compared MCAS data received for this
study to BPS MCAS data reported by MDESE.
MCAS pass rates calculated from data received
from this study are in general only a few percentage
points higher than MCAS pass rates reported by
MDESE. We include the comparisons in the tables
below.
Table 7: MCAS ELA, Math, and Science Pass Rates for LEP and EP Students. BPS, SY2009
EP LEP
MCAS ELA MCAS Math MCAS Science MCAS ELA MCAS Math MCAS Science
Pass Rate Pass Rate Pass Rate Pass Rate Pass Rate Pass Rate
Grade 4
Source: MDESE
Source: Data
78.1% 78.1% NA 60% 67% NA
received for this
study
79.9% 79.9% NA 61.6% 69.7% NA
Grade 8
Source: MDESE
Source: Data
90.0% 59.7% 52.5% 51% 28% 16%
received for this
study
92.2% 61.5% 54.0% 55.6%
Grade 10
31.6% 17.7%
Source: MDESE
Source: Data
93.5% 88.2% 82.7% 70% 72% 54%
received for this
study
95.2% 89.7% 82.4% 72.6% 76.3% 59.2%
Source for MDESE data is MDESE (n.d., c)
116 Improving Educational Outcomes of English Language Learners in Schools and Programs in Boston Public Schools