Test Scores for Foxboro High School Students Exceeding Expectations

If one thing for sure at Foxboro High School it's that students are improving at higher than expected rates on the SAT, AP, and MCAS exams. Discussing the results at this week’s school committee meeting, the department heads of the high school noted the increase across the board.

“I would stack us up against any school in Southeastern Massachusetts. What we got going here is as good as it gets.” English department head Walter Mitchell said.

Mitchell had plenty of reasons to be excited about the students of FHS. Average SAT scores based on a three-year rolling average improved from 527 to 555 in verbal and writing went up from 539 to 557.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Mitchell said.

In AP English, a dip in scores was expected with an increase in enrollment but the average actually went up to 3.67 out of a possible score of five.

In addition, 55 percent of students scored either a four or a five with few students scoring a two and no student scoring a one.

In MCAS math, there was an 11 percent jump in students scoring in the advanced category with students average for the AP Stats exam ranging in the high 3s and low 4s.

There was also a slight increase in the SAT Math average from 552 to 569.

Science department chair Paul Charpentier said he hoped the improvemtns can be maintained over time.

“We noticed quite an increase in the performance of our students. I’m hoping that this is not a blip but that we will see this continue,” Charpentier said.

Performing at high levels, Foxboro students continue to pass the MCAS Biology exam on their first attempt at a rate of 95 percent. Students performing at an advanced level went up from 27 percent to 46 percent.

The students performing at the needs improvement  has decreased from 15.3 percent to nine percent.

Overall, the students that are taking AP courses are doing quite well on the exams. Of the 140 students that took 299 AP exams this year, 86 percent of them scored at least a three out of five on the exams.

Individually, some students stood out due to their stellar performance on the exams. Saad Akhtar achieved a perfect score of 800 on the Chemistry SAT test and Billy Antoine earned a perfect score of 800 on the French SAT subject test.

On the MCAS test, Sam Berns achieved a perfect score of 280 on the English/Language Arts test, Megan Ennis scored a perfect 280 on the Math and Biology tests, and Taha Bing and Thomas Peter achieved a 280 on the Biology test.