While the STEM Early College High School program continues to be praised by officials and students alike, any quantitative measure of success has yet to be seen.

Officials are saying that while grades will be evaluated for the program that focuses on a team-based, integrated approach to education, a more holistic approach will be given to evaluating the programs success.

"We don't want to look at just grades," said Maureen Greulich, the district's instructional leadership director.

Different measures of success will be evaluated alongside grades, she said. Some statistics have already come into focus.

Last year, freshman that were in the STEM program had a 5 percent higher attendance rate, — at 92 percent — than freshmen not in the program — at 87 percent.

Let Patch save you time. Get great local stories like this delivered right to your inbox or smartphone everyday with our free newsletter. Simple, fast sign-up here.

Another anecdotal piece of data is that 49 percent of high school freshman who were enrolled in STEM participated in last year's engineering fair. Only 7 percent of their cohort not enrolled in STEM participated, said Bill Rigney, and instructional specialist for STEM.

The school will still be evaluating the test scores as well, said Greulich. The initial results show that students in the STEM physics class are scoring well in science testing.

STEM is in its second year in the Marlborough School District. There are currently 389 students at the middle and high school enrolled in the program.