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Mastery Test Woes:
Change the Rules?
Board of Ed says perceptions, not scores, are the problem
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Business New Haven
3/23/1998
By: Michael C. Bingham
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It isn't woeful Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) performance on the part of students that troubles the proprietors of New Haven's $130 million public-schools empire. It is the public perception of the test scores as bad that's the real problem.
That was the unmistakable message of the March 9 meeting of the New Haven Board of Education, at which Board of Ed officials pulled out all the stops to demonstrate that the state was misguided in reporting the Elm City system's horrid test performance - 171st of 172 reporting municipalities and schools districts statewide, ahead only of the now-state-run Hartford public schools - and that the media was misguided in sheepishly reporting the state's facts as, well, facts.
The CMTs measure reading, writing and mathematical knowledge of fourth-, sixth- and eighth-graders. On average (over all tests and grades), only 21.2 percent of New Haven pupils tested attained the state goal.
However, according to Shai Lewensohn, head of the education department's assessment office, said the state goal measures only “excellent performance,” and ignores a middle group of students performing at grade-level “proficiency.” “We feel this is very unjustified,” Lewensohn said.
Dividing New Haven CMT-takers into three tiers - “excellent” (meeting the state-set goals), “proficient” and in need of “remedial intervention,” Lewensohn said that although less than a quarter of students achieved the top ranking, 72 percent scored “above intervention.” Reporting scores as it does, he said, “is a misrepresentation of what's really going on in the classrooms.”
Schools Superintendent Reginald Mayo went even further. “It is an injustice to report [the scores] in this way,” he said.
Noting that New Haven students' scores were lowest in reading, Mayo said, “That's a national problem - not a New Haven problem.”
The education department invited Yale psychiatrist James Comer to address the March 9 meeting. “I want to congratulate you on student-performance improvement,” Comer said. “What we see is a school system that's making progress.”
Noting the “economic and social stress” that disproportionately afflicts urban students, Comer said of the CMT scores, “What [they] are really measuring is privilege.”
Nevertheless, by the standards of either raw performance or “progress,” the New Haven system has far to go. At 20.8 percent average attainment, only the state-run Hartford schools performed worse in 1997 testing. And, among school systems with similar economic characteristics, only Waterbury showed less improvement over five years (see chart).
Still, to judge them by their words, many in the New Haven education establishment remain untroubled by mere facts. Teachers union President Frank Carrano expressed that outlook best by asserting, “You don't fatten the calf by weighing it.”
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