Making the News a Wee Bit Clearer
February 1st, 2009It’s been a busy week, both at school and for me, personally. Plus, there’s really no need to write when others do the job so very well.
I’m referring to the letter in the Sentinel highlighting how solid the NECAP results were. It echoes my comments here, but with a nice breakdown of exactly what the improvements were.
Good things are happening at Monadnock.
We are writing in response to the article in The Sentinel on Thursday, Jan. 22, regarding NECAP scores at Monadnock Regional High School.
While the article reported on a few of the figures, many positives were not mentioned in the small space allotted to the Monadnock district, and in particular, the high school.
Therefore, we would like to break down some of the numbers that come with reports of this size (all figures are from the Fall 2008 Beginning of Grade 11 NECAP Tests: Testing Year) so that the members of the Monadnock community know about our students’ efforts and achievements:
1. The Monadnock reading score average was two points higher than the state.
2. Monadnock is at 76 percent proficient or above in reading, an increase of 31 percent from last year (the state is at 72 percent).
3. We decreased the students in the lowest category for reading (substantially below proficient) from 22 percent to 9 percent.
4. The Monadnock mathematics mean score was 1,135 this year, an increase of five points from last year, and the same as the state average.
5. We increased our number of students in the proficient category in math by 10 percent.
6. In writing, the mean score was the same as the state average, and an increase of two points from last year.
7. We decreased the number of students in the lowest level in writing by 31 percent, and increased the number of students in the proficient category by 29 percent.
We are now at 40 percent proficient in writing, which is higher than the state average of 39 percent.
We are proud of the hard work our students and staff put toward these gains. Monadnock High continues to live up to its motto: “Monadnock on the Rise!”
EMILY J. WEBER
Mathematics Department Chair
and HEATHER GIGLIELLO
English Department Chair
580 Old Homestead Highway
Swanzey
Of course, there were other letters in the paper. I’ll get to those tomorrow, assuming a wee bit more time. Right now, my colleagues have said it far better than I could.
