“For me, the results suggest we are on the right path, but this is the first year of data, and I’m not ready to declare victory yet,’’ Mitchell Chester, the state’s commissioner of elementary and secondary education, said in an interview yesterday.
“We need to see multiple years of improvement. These are schools we had grave concerns about.’’
In Boston, Superintendent Carol R. Johnson said replacing teachers, extending the school day, and closely monitoring student achievement data appeared to have helped schools yield strong improvement.
The feat achieved by these schools after years of chronically low and often declining performance was a bright spot on a day when the state also announced the latest round of schools and districts statewide that failed to reach performance targets under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
The act mandates that all students - regardless of a learning disability or lack of English fluency - be proficient on state exams by 2014.
Across Massachusetts, 1,404 schools, or 82 percent, missed testing targets this year, up from 67 percent the previous year. Under the federal law, no action is taken against schools that miss their targets for just one year, but in Massachusetts, like many other states nationwide, a growing number of schools are falling short year after year.
Consequently, state officials said yesterday that 64 percent of Massachusetts schools are now classified as in need of improvement, corrective action, or restructuring because the schools repeatedly failed to meet benchmarks, which typically call for a greater percentage of students showing proficiency on state exams each year. A year ago, 56 percent carried designations.
The number of districts in need of improvement, corrective action, or restructuring also grew this year to 39 percent, up from 32 percent last year.
