MCPS Hispanic, Economically Disadvantaged Students in Bottom Half of State While Disabled, Black / African American Learners Shine – Latest Testing Results

September 10, 2024

Background and Data

Data comes from the 2023-2024 state of Maryland MCAP data.

We have extracted the MCPS proficiency and ranking for each category and there are some interesting patterns (see “Overall Findings” below).

Ranking means where Montgomery County ranked in terms of counties. Number 1 is best it means MCPS ranked #1 out of all 24 Maryland Counties. Some charts include outliers that are noted in the charts.

MCPS Proficiency and Ranking

All Students for all categories and grades

Black / African American Students for all categories and grades

Hispanic / Latino Students for all categories and grades

Economically Disadvantaged Students for all categories and grades

Multilingual Learner Students for all categories and grades

Students with Disabilities for all categories and grades

Overall Findings

For all students and all categories, MCPS averaged 7.4 ranking with a 41.09% proficiency. This is clearly not what we would desire from what used to be a top county in the state to now be outside the top 5.

This chart shows all of the averages in one place.

Needs Improvement

Two areas stand out in the MCAP results as needing the most improvement compared to other Maryland counties.

The first is Hispanic/Latino Students where MCPS averaged a state ranking of 14.9 (in the bottom half of all counties for nearly every subject and grade level) and an average proficiency score of 20.46%

The second is Economically Disadvantaged Students who averaged a state ranking of 12.8 (in the bottom half of all counties for all but 3 subjects and grade levels) and an average proficiency score of 21.03

Bright Spots

There are some bright spots worth mentioning. Black / African American students in MCPS on average ranked 4.1 amongst county’s Black / African American populations with a 30.09% proficiency.

Students with Disabilities had MCPS’s best rankings with on average a 1.9 ranking and 15.44% proficiency.

While these last two don’t necessarily reflect great proficiencies, they do show some strengths of MCPS compared to other Maryland counties and are higher than MCPS overall rankings.

Conclusion

There are some people who don’t like these standardized tests for different reasons, but I believe that these results show the importance of them. This report is a clear indicator of what areas MCPS is doing good at and should continue to improve and what areas they are not doing good at and need to work to improve.

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