It’s been two years since voters agreed to lift the requirement that students must pass the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) test to graduate, and while the percentage of sophomores meeting or exceeding expectations has declined statewide in all subjects, Franklin County schools saw slightly more mixed results in the spring 2026 test.
Franklin County Technical School
Since 2024, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations in English language arts at Franklin County Technical School has been declining, going from just above half of students at that caliber, down to 21% in 2026. The majority of students partially meet expectations.
In math, exam scores experienced a plateau. Both this year and last year, 24% of students met or exceeded expectations in math, falling since a post-pandemic high of 42% in 2024.
Exam results looked rosier in science, with 27% of students meeting or exceeding expectations compared to 21% in 2025.
Despite the decline in students meeting or exceeding expectations in English, and results remaining steady in math, both Superintendent Ryan Rege and Principal Brian Spadafino expressed pride in the gains that the students have made, based on student growth figures that highlight progress. According to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, both English language arts and math growth data show students in the 50th percentile, which Rege says is a good indicator.
“That means our students — compared to other students that had similar score to them in eighth grade — our students are doing better than 50% of those students across the state, so that’s really positive,” Rege explained.
With the exam no longer a graduation requirement, Rege noted that students across the state are underperforming. With this in mind, Rege said it’s necessary to impart the importance of MCAS as a state benchmark to see growth.
Frontier Regional School
Exam scores for Frontier sophomores increased across the board in 2026, surpassing the state average in every category.
English results saw the biggest leap from 2025, with the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations rising from 43% in 2025 to 54% in 2026 — above the state average. Until 2026, the exam scores had decreased since 2021, when 79% of 10th graders met or exceeded expectations.
The science exam results also rose from last year after dropping since 2022. The rise in students meeting or exceeding expectations, up from 42% in 2025 to 48% in 2026, marked the first jump closer to 2022 numbers, when 69% of students met or exceeded expectations.
“Especially in a small community, you’re going to have ups and downs in numbers,” Superintendent Darius Modestow said. “Overall, we have a population of students that do work hard on their academics.”
He noted that Massachusetts schools are in a “transition period” as the state weighs new graduation requirements, stressing that the assessment is no longer “a high-stakes test.”
“I don’t love that the state, even after all this, is still using it as a measure of schools,” he continued. “Our school districts are being assessed by a low-stakes test that students are opting out of and aren’t giving 110% on anymore, yet those scores and the movement of those scores are part of our accountability.”
Despite the test no longer being required to graduate, Modestow said the Frontier Regional and Union 38 schools receive “accountability reports” from the state, with a point value based on their students’ MCAS results.
In math, 63% of sophomores met or exceeded expectations in 2026, up from 2025 and above the state average.
While Modestow said it is great that Frontier’s scores came out above the state average, he described it as “one piece of data we look at over time.” Instead of taking year-to-year dips and peaks at face value, Modestow said the school zooms out to plot trends over time and focus on areas of the test that relate to curriculum that could benefit from more attention.
Turners Falls High School
After declines in the 10th grade MCAS exams in 2025, scores rallied in 2026, with increases in each category. The highest increase from last year came in the English exams, which saw 25% of students meeting or exceeding expectations in 2026 compared to 18% in 2025.
In math, there was a slight increase in students meeting or exceeding expectations, going from 32% in 2025 to 33% in 2026. In science, 24% of students were meeting or exceeding expectations, up from 15% in 2025.
“The middle and high school students worked hard, and they did a lot to meet those targets and show that progress,” Director of Teaching and Learning Karin Patenaude told the Gill-Montague School Committee on Oct. 13. “We were happy with those results, and we will keep working and plugging along.”
Patenaude said Turners Falls High School students were able to meet the achievement targets set by the state in math and English language arts, and were one point below the state’s target in science.
She added that one of the accountability targets the district is missing is participation, and that a goal moving forward would be explaining to students the importance of taking the test and trying their best on it.
“As much as we like to say that MCAS is not a requirement, it is the standard by which we are accountable, which requires us to participate in it,” Patenaude said. “So it’s kind of a catch-22 situation.”
When asked by committee members whether she thinks the issue lies with students just not taking the test, or whether students are sitting for the test but not putting effort into answering the questions to the best of their ability, Patenaude said it is a mix of both.
Another gain for the district comes from the eighth grade civics exam, which saw 30% of students meeting or exceeding expectations for the newest exam required of eighth graders, compared to 18% in 2025.
In grades three through eight, the district saw increases in the percent of students meeting or exceeding expectations in math and English, and a decrease in science. Patenaude said that moving forward, early literacy will continue to be a focus.
Greenfield High School
Students across Greenfield’s public schools saw both gains and losses, which Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Stephen Sullivan said is to be expected.
“It’s definitely a mixed bag,” Sullivan said.
Greenfield High School sophomores saw a slight increase in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations in math: 21% in 2026 compared to 18% in 2025. The number of students not meeting expectations in math dropped substantially.
In English language arts, the school saw a decrease in 10th graders meeting or exceeding expectations. In 2026, 16% met or exceeded expectations, 64% partially met expectations and 20% did not meet expectations.
Tenth grade saw greater challenges in science, where only 2% of students met or exceeded expectations. Fifty percent of students did not meet expectations, up from 30% in 2025.
Sullivan said there are a lot of factors that impact the results of the tests, adding that he doesn’t typically place much weight on the individual subject results for 10th grade. He said he prefers to compare “apples to apples” and track each cohort’s growth over time, such as tracking one class and how they do in third grade, then fourth, fifth and so on.
He said most of the district’s efforts have been focused on improving foundational literacy in the younger grades, and the changes made to elementary school curriculum likely won’t show an impact on test results for a few years until students age up. The district is still working to find ways to fill in gaps and take creative approaches to support students in higher grades who will not benefit from the changes in literacy instruction.
However, Sullivan did note that Greenfield High School was taken off the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s list of schools requiring assistance.
“There’s some indicators that it’s trending in an upward direction,” Sullivan said. “We’ve seen some consistent growth.”
Sullivan said he saw gains at Greenfield Middle School and Federal Street School, but what he was proudest of was the growth among Hispanic/Latino and multilingual students. District-wide, Hispanic and Latino students met 54% of the accountability points in 2026, significant growth from the 26% in 2025, he said.
According to DESE data, grades three through eight saw decreases in the percentage of Hispanic/Latino students not meeting expectations in English, math and science, and increases in the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations in all subjects.
Mohawk Trail Regional School
The district saw declines across the board in sophomores meeting or exceeding expectations in MCAS, while increases were seen in students meeting or exceeding expectations in English and math in third through eighth grade. The number of 10th graders meeting or exceeding expectations in English dropped from 55% in 2025 to 41% in 2026; for math, that number went down from 50% in 2025 to 32% in 2026; and in science, the figure dropped from 61% in 2025 to 48% in 2026.
“Looking at things year-to-year for just one cohort, we can see a lot of fluctuation, so I like to try and see if there are broader trends or patterns,” said Sarah Jetzon, the district’s director of curriculum and instruction. “In terms of how the 10th grade did this year, again there’s some differences from the cohort in previous years … but what I am excited about, and I think that we can compare cohort to cohort, is their growth.”
Jetzon said the district aims to see a student growth percentile of anywhere from 40% to 60%, which would indicate moderate growth compared to peers across the state. This level of growth was met for English (46%) and math (56%), with no results available for science.
“I’m excited in particular about their growth in math,” Jetzon said. “That connects to a bigger trend that I’m seeing in our district: we have really strong growth in our math in grades three through 10, and that’s where we’ve been putting in a lot of systems work, and I do feel like that’s a reflection of that.”
Jetzon shared that three schools (Hawlemont Regional School, Colrain Central School and Buckland-Shelburne Elementary School) have had substantial growth, while Mohawk Trail Regional School and Sanderson Academy have experienced moderate growth.
“We really feel like the work of our instructional coaches is very effective,” Jetzon said. “We’ve done a lot of work in our district to implement high-quality curriculum in ELA and mathematics. … In the last year, we really leaned into those systems for math, especially in grades three to six and the high school, and that’s where we saw the strongest improvement.”
Jetzon added that the district added new math curriculum for grades six through eight, which she said was reflected by the student growth percentile of math MCAS scores for sixth graders. Seventy-two percent of sixth graders met or exceeded expectations in math.
“I think that was the result of a really good curriculum,” Jetzon said, “but a lot of focus work amongst the team of teachers to really streamline the curriculum, work with the instructional coaches … and to use data to really make adjustments for students.”
The Mohawk Trail Regional School District is currently listed as needing assistance or intervention from the state, with it being 47% of the way to meeting improvement targets.
Pioneer Valley Regional School
From 2025 to 2026, the percentage of sophomores at Pioneer Valley Regional School meeting or exceeding expectations in English rose from 48% to 52%, but dropped in math from 43% to 36% and dropped in science from 42% to 36%.
It was similar in grades three through eight, where the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations dropped in English (35% in 2025 to 32% in 2026), rose in math (31% to 36%) and fell in science (47% to 41%).
“We heard loud and clear from the state that the state itself, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, was not pleased with statewide results,” Superintendent Patricia Kinsella said. “At many grade levels in multiple exams, there was a decline across the state for the percentage of kids who met or exceeded expectations, with just a few bright spots, and we found a similar set of outcomes at Pioneer.”
One of these bright spots for Pioneer is the elementary school performance in math, particularly in third, fourth and fifth grades. When comparing the performance of third graders in 2025 and 2026, more students met or exceeded expectations (20% in 2025 to 43% in 2026). More students in fourth grade also met or exceeded expectations (41% in 2025 to 44% in 2026) and in fifth grade (41% in 2025 to 48% in 2026).
Kinsella attributes this to a new math curriculum that the district introduced at the elementary level. One of the questions, she said, is how to translate that growth to sixth grade, which uses a different curriculum. From 2025 to 2026, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations in math in sixth grade dropped from 45% to 38%.
“That’s fantastic, and what that shows us was when we choose excellent, high-quality curriculum, and when we provide our teachers with really strong professional development, over time, student learning improves,” Kinsella said regarding elementary math results. “That’s our takeaway from that.”
One thing that the district will implement in the fall of 2027 is a block-based schedule at Pioneer Valley Regional School, meaning students will be in fewer classes per day for longer periods of time. Kinsella said the district believes that with this new schedule, students will receive a better educational experience.
“That’s going to really change what the school day looks like for students and teachers, because kids will only have four classes a day, and all of those classes will be 80-something minutes,” Kinsella said.
Ralph C. Mahar Regional School
Superintendent Elizabeth Zielinski said Mahar’s 2026 MCAS and accountability results show encouraging progress, with annual progress toward improvement targets increasing from 41% to 50%.
She explained that middle school science and mathematics were relative strengths, as was high school mathematics achievement.
In 2025, 18% of eighth graders were meeting or exceeding expectations in math, and 21% were meeting or exceeding expectations in science. These numbers increased to 31% and 35%, respectively, in 2026. In 10th grade, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations in math rose from 16% in 2025 to 19% in 2026.
While the 10th graders saw improvements in math, Mahar saw a decline in the English language arts and science categories. In 2025, 28% of students were meeting or exceeding expectations in English, dropping to 23% in 2026. In science, 8% of sophomores met or exceeded expectations in science in 2026, down from 25% in 2025.
“The results also make clear that we have more work to do, particularly in high school English language arts and science achievement and in student growth,” she said. “Administrators and teachers have reviewed and unpacked the data to identify where instruction and targeted support need to improve. That work is guiding our next steps, alongside efforts to strengthen attendance and assessment participation, so that progress reaches more students.”
Zielinski said Fisher Hill Elementary School’s MCAS and accountability results offer encouraging signs, particularly in mathematics, where achievement improved across all student groups. Annual progress toward improvement targets increased from 25% to 57%. At the same time, she said, literacy results showed limited improvement.
“Our ongoing work to strengthen literacy and mathematics instruction, refine targeted supports and improve attendance reflects a shared commitment to helping every student make meaningful progress,” Zielinski said.
