McKay School in East Boston named Title I Distinguished School

EAST BOSTON - The Donald McKay K - 8 School has been named a Title I Distinguished School for their accelerated rate of improvement on the MCAS exams. The United States Department of Education and the National Association of State Title I Directors, who coordinate the program, made the announcement last week. The school will receive the award on February 1 at a conference in Atlanta, GA.

The school has shown great improvement on the MCAS exams over the past few years, especially in the area of increasing students performing at the Proficient and Advanced categories (Level 3 and 4).

The school cites many reasons for its success, including a balanced literacy and math program that provides the foundation for the curriculum in the school. Teachers participate in rigorous professional development to support their work with the curriculum and in-depth and structured support is provided to both teachers and students with help of full-time literacy and math coaches. Additionally, communication is provided to parents through a monthly newsletter from every teacher and from the school's administration. There are also two parent information nights school-wide and two other parent-teacher conference nights.

Boston Superintendent Thomas W. Payzant congratulated the school for the distinction.

"I am very pleased to see one of our schools selected as a Title I Distinguished School," he said. "The selection is an indication of all of the hard work that the staff and students and their families are putting forth on a daily basis at the McKay School. Our goal in the Boston Public Schools is to improve the performance of all students in all schools, and the McKay is a great example of one of our successes to date."

Among their results:

On the Grade 8 MCAS Math exam, the percent of students performing in the top two categories was 32% in 2004, up from 11% in 2001. At the same time, the percent of students scoring in the Warning category declined from 37% in 2001 to 20% in 2004.

On the Grade 7 MCAS English Language Arts exam, the percent of students scoring at Proficient or above increased from 61% in 2001 to 81% in 2004 while the percent at Warning decreased from 39% to 19% during the same time.

On the Grade 4 MCAS English Language Arts exam the percent of students scoring in the Advanced and Proficient category leaped from 26% in 2001 to 47% in 2004 while the percent at Warning halved from 36% to 18% from 2001 to 2004. On the Grade 4 MCAS Math exam, the percent of students performing in Advanced and Proficient also leapt from 11% in 2001 to 36% in 2004. The percent at Warning also decreased from 43% to 24% for the same time period.

On the Grade 3 MCAS Reading test, there was a large increase from 11% Proficient in 2001 to 38% in 2004, while decreasing the percent of students performing at the Warning level from 29% to 18% from 2001 to 2004.

The McKay School has also been designated as a Compass school by the MA Department of Education for its improved MCAS results over the past few years and is an Effective Practice school as chosen by the Superintendent and the Boston Plan for Excellence.

For more information on the McKay School or any of the 139 schools in the Boston Public Schools, please visit www.bostonpublicschools.org.