|
|
|
Improving by Increments
Overall CMT scores rise though yardstick changes
|
Business New Haven
3/18/2002
By: E.A. Linden
|
Scores for the most recent Connecticut Mastery Test, an evaluation of the academic performance of fourth-, sixth- and eighth-grade public-school students, were released earlier this month by Theodore S. Sergei, the state's commissioner of education. General performance improved slightly over last year's tests, with an average 60 percent of students achieving state goals, though a new increase in the number and range of students tested has shifted the scores significantly.
Due to new state and federal regulations reflecting the benefits of performance testing for all groups of students, this year's CMT scores include the participation of students enrolled in special education, bilingual and English as a Second Language programs, as well as the performance of students tested in the past.
A comparison of this year's CMT scores that do not include special education, bilingual and ESL students show an increase in performance across all nine categories (mathematics, reading and writing for fourth-, sixth- and eighth-graders) with the most significant jumps in average score shown in sixth-grade math (up 7.4 points) and fourth-grade reading (9.0 points).
Additionally, these adjusted scores reflect a consistent decrease in incidence of lowest-level performance requiring state intervention. In the CMT standards, students are graded on a scale of one to four, with a score of one for the lowest performance leading to state involvement to four for those students who meet or surpass state goals.
Granby, an affluent northern Connecticut suburb, is one district that regularly exceeds state goals. Granby Superintendent Gwen Van Dorp says that although she is still in the process of assessing the latest CMT results she is “very pleased with the scores.” Granby's schools performed well on the tests, averaging in the mid-80s for percentage of students meeting state goal, but Van Dorp is careful to stress the need for continuous evaluation, saying that for her, “CMT is just one piece of the picture.”
This year's scores also illustrate a significant achievement gap between white students and black and Hispanic students. In fourth grade reading, minority students in he aggregate underperformed white students by 44.7 and 46.2 percent, respectively. And while that particular achievement gap is closing, albeit slowly, Asian students continue to consistently outperform all other groups. (In the eighth grade, Asian students' scores on reading were five points higher than their white classmates.)
Girls also continue to outperform boys across all categories except fourth-grade math. The most striking discrepancy appears in the sixth grade, with 14.4 percent more girls than boys writing at the highest skill level.
Economically disadvantaged students also fell into the achievement gap, although the percentage of poor students who met or exceeded the state goals increased across all subjects and levels. As in the case of many minority students, poor students are seeing the achievement gap slowly close, although they are still only about half as successful statistically at achieving the state goal as their peers.
New Haven schools are a case in point, with decreases in achievement in three out of nine categories and only 22.3 percent of students achieving state goals in either fourth-grade reading or eighth-grade math. New London's numbers are similarly far below the state average in all levels and subjects although the achievement levels rose between 14 and 51 percent, and are the greatest as compared to other school systems similar to New London's in terms if income and demographic characteristics.
Gail Nordmoe, assistant superintendent of New London schools attributes this to the “hard work of the classroom teachers who have been employing new strategies.” To continue to improve and take advantage of the positive momentum, New London schools are integrating new training sessions for teachers and administrators, as well as taking a hard look at the new data in order to continue to improve.
|
Go FirstGo PreviousGo
NextGo LastGo
to Index
|
|
