Was Rise In Scores Overstated?

Pop quiz: If test scores at Wilbur Cross High School go up, but the number of test-takers drops by 200 — or by more than 50 percent, with many low performers gone — should the district tout ​“extraordinary” gains?

New Haven school officials in effect answered the question ​“yes”.”

That question arose Tuesday as the state released scores for the Connecticut Academic Performance Test, an annual state assessment for sophomores.

In a year of good news at many of the city’s public high schools on the CAPT, the city school district highlighted Cross as the biggest success story. (Another singled-out school was Sound, which came within a few points of state averages.)

“I’ve just got to mention Wilbur Cross, which did an extraordinary job as far as I’m concerned on the CAPT test,” said schools Superintendent Reginald Mayo (pictured). “[Cross Principal] Peggy Moore, who has actually been criticized on so many things, did well on this, and we’re very, very proud and pleased with the work that she has done.”

Mayor John DeStefano, in brief remarks, applauded Cross for ​“kicking ass.”

Mayo came to Moore’s defense for a second time this month, in the wake of poor results on a school climate survey at Cross under the principal’s first term and the closing of a student politics club and the nullifcation of student election results after a student spoke up publicly about the school system’s budget.

The new CAPT scores arrived at the close of the city’s first year of implementation of a school reform effort, which aims in part to close the city’s yawning achievement gap with the state on standardized tests. The city chipped away at that gap by making overall gains on the CAPT. Overall, students at the public school district’s nine high schools showed gains in every subject, except the number of kids scoring ​“at goal” on reading, which fell by a couple of percentage points. The city still lags between 22 and 33 points behind the state average of kids scoring ​“at goal” on each of four subjects, math, reading, writing and science.

Click here to see New Haven’s school-by-school scores, as prepared by the district. Click here for the state website to search through the data yourself.

The Case Of The Missing Test-Takers

On the surface, Cross, the city’s largest high school, showed gains in every subject.

The number of Cross kids scoring ​“proficient” on the test rose an average of 8.7 percentage points per subject: It went up from 45.7 to 58.1 percent in math; from 52.1 to 58.1 in reading; from 60.5 to 69.6 in writing; and from 44.5 to 51.6 in science.

The percentage of students scoring ​“at goal” on the test, a higher standard, shot up from 14.6 to 29.3 in math; from 17.6 to 21.5 in reading; from 29.8 to 35.1 in writing, and from 13.6 to 23.7 in science. That’s an average gain of 8.5 points per subject.

A closer look at the numbers reveals a number of asterisks attached to those gains.

The increase in scores came as 200 fewer kids took the test, and as some of Cross’s low performers left the school. Cross downsized its sophomore class.

The tests are administered every year in March, with different subjects tested on different days. In 2010, 357 Cross students took the test in math and reading; 391 took the science test; and 372 took the writing test.

This year, the number of test-takers plummeted: 167 took the math exam; 172 were tested in reading; 190 in science, and 191 in writing.

So only 46.7 percent of the number of Cross students who took last year’s math test took this year’s, for instance.

Asked to explain the discrepancy, school reform czar Garth Harries gave three reasons.

“If there are fewer students taking the tests, that’s because there’s a long-term strategy to downsize,” as well as 15 more absences within the Cross building over last year, he said.

He noted that Cross’s population shrank as the CT Scholars Program was eliminated.

CT Scholars served 160 9th-and-10th graders who needed extra academic help to get on track for high school. Harries said those students were not the lowest performers in the school; the program was designed for mid-performing Cross students to get them on track for AP and honors classes; last year, CT Scholars students scores were on par with the rest of Cross, according to Harries.

When the program was disbanded at the end of last school year, many kids followed their school leader, Judy Puglisi, over to Metropolitan Business Academy.

That 160 figure — over two grades — only begins to explain how the number of test-takers plummeted by 200 in just one grade.

Harries said the decline is a result of ​“a long-term strategy to downsize Cross” as well as Hillhouse, to create smaller learning environments.

The number of sophomores enrolled inside the Cross building fell from 352 in March of 2010 to 241 in March of 2011, Harries said. He said those students showed up with a similar rate of participation, except for that an additional 15 ​“truant” kids skipped the test this year compared to last.

Students at alternative programs such as New Horizons also have their test scores included in Cross’s totals, because they are not official high schools. This year, the number of test-takers attributed to the school fell from 448 to 251, according to Harries. The drop in that number reflects the closing of CT Scholars.

Where did the students go as Cross downsized? A lot of them went to Metro and Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, Harries said.

Even as CT Scholars students joined Metro, the scores at Metro rose. Metro showed improvement on three of four subjects.

The number of Metro students scoring ​“proficient” rose from 41.4 to 58.3 percent in math; from 51.7 to 60.8 in reading; and from 57.1 to 59.6 in science. In writing, the percentage of kids scoring ​“proficient” fell from 78.6 to 70.0.

Scores at Metro have fluctuated over the years, due in part to the small student body. Last year, only 28 to 29 sophomores took each subject test. This year, as the school expanded, between 96 and 100 sophomores sat down to take each subject.

Co-op showed gains of 5 to 15 points in each subject in the ​“proficiency” category, most notably rising from 51.0 to 66.3 percent in math.

The results are a sign that the district’s long-term strategy to downsize Cross — as well as its new ​“portfolio approach” to managing each school differently — is working, Harries argued.

“All of this is evidence of that deliberate strategy working. This is where the portfolio schools starts to work. Not only [are] schools doing better, you’re also doing better across the district,” Harries said.

Harries acknowledged CAPT is an imperfect measuring tool: Because only sophomores take CAPT, there’s no way to use them to track individual improvement year-by-year. ​“There are many more measures that matter,” such as graduation and dropout rates, he said.

However you look at the scores at Cross, Harries argued, ​“It’s not a bad thing.”

“We think this is a good sign out of Wilbur Cross.” he said, though ​“it’s far from the end of the story.”

Hillhouse: Boys Improve; Reading Lags

At James Hillhouse High School more students took the test compared to Cross, even though Cross is a larger school. Students showed overall gains; they fell behind in reading.

The number of kids scoring ​“proficient” in reading fell from 46.0 to 40.7 percent; those scoring ​“at goal” in reading fell from 8.9 to 6.2 percent.

“We’re not happy with this,” Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina said Tuesday.

“We saw some moderate gains, but it’s obvious that we have a lot of work to do in reading.” 

Hillhouse showed modest improvement in the other three subjects: The number of ​“proficient” test-takers rose from 34.0 to 36.5 percent in math; from 57.6 to 61.3 in writing; and from 33.5 to 39.1 in science.

The number of kids scoring ​“at goal” on the tests remained very low. In math, 5.7 percent of sophomores scored ​“at goal,” up from 2.9 percent.

At Hillhouse, an average of 197 students took each subject. That number stayed pretty much even from last year, when an average of 207 students took each subject test.

Carolina said his staff ​“anticipated that the area of reading would have been a concern” and will work over the summer to develop a new ​“literacy campaign.” He said Hillhouse now has a reading consultant in the building from Area Cooperative Educational Services and is hiring ​“a highly qualified reading teacher” to help address the problem.

Carolina, who just completed his first year as principal, said Hillhouse has ​“begun to lay the foundation for success” by improving the school culture , with a focus on freshmen in a new Freshman Academy. Next year Hillhouse will roll out a Sophomore Academy, which Carolina hopes will keep 10th-graders on track.

Carolina shared some early signs of progress in another area he has focused on: Urging male students to get on track.

Carolina said there remains a significant, 20-point gap between males and females in reading.

However, the number of Hillhouse males scoring ​“proficient” in science rose from 24.8 to 38.0 percent and from 41.2 to 55.4 percent in writing.

“They’re slowly beginning to heed the call,” he said. ​“I’m proud of them for what they’ve done this far, but I have to stress that we have a lot of work to do.”

Sound School: A Top Performer

Sound School Regional Vocational Aquaculture Center, the city’s marine-themed magnet, remained the top performer in the district. Most notably, 90.5 percent of students scored ​“proficient” in writing, which is higher than the state average. In the ​“proficient” benchmark, the school scored within a few points of the state average in every subject: 78.2 percent of students scored ​“proficient” in math; 82.5 percent in reading; and 84.5 percent in science.

Sound School is the only city high school marked as a top-performing ​“Tier I” in the city’s new grading system. As part of a citywide reform effort, schools will be managed differently according to where they fall in one of three tiers. Sound School Principal Steven Pynn will be rolling out some new changes, such as getting rid of letter grades, as the school gets more autonomy in the fall.

Sound School stayed pretty much even on the tests using both the ​“proficient” and ​“at goal” standards.

Gap Remains

Judging by the ​“at goal” benchmark, even the city’s top-performing high school still lags behind the state average by 8 to 20 points in each subject: 32.1 percent of Sound School kids scored ​“at goal” in math; 21.3 in reading; 53.6 in writing; and 39.3 percent in science.

Statewide, 49.6 percent of sophomores scored ​“at goal” in math; 44.8 percent in reading; 61.3 percent in writing; and 47.2 percent in science.

Using that measure, the achievement gap between city kids and their statewide peers sits at 32.9 points in math; 22.8 in reading; 27.1 in writing and 29.2 in science.

The city has rolled out a nine-year plan to eliminate that gap by systematically grading its schools and allowing principals to ​“transform” their schools according to how the school’s needs. To reach that objective, the district laid out year-by-year goals on how much progress sophomores need to make each year on the CAPT, which is used by the federal and state governments to measure schools as part of No Child Left Behind.

This year, in Year 1 of the school reform effort, the city aimed to improve an average of 3.4 percent points in the ​“proficient” and ​“at goal” categories on the CAPT. The district ended up improving 3.8 and 1.8 points respectively.

School reform czar Garth Harries said that’s a good start to closing the achievement gap. In future years, the district aims to improve as much as 5 or 6 points in one year to reach the state average by 2019.

Charter Schools

Though their results weren’t included in the district’s announcement, the city’s public charter high schools also take the tests.

Common Ground, the city’s environmentally themed charter school in West Rock, announced a fourth straight year of CAPT gains in every subject.

The number of students scoring ​“proficient” grew at least 5 percentage points in each category, up to 94.6 percent in reading, 81.1 in math, 73.7 in science, and to 92.1 percent in writing. Between 37 and 38 students took each subject test. That’s the whole sophomore class, according to Common Ground’s Joel Tolman.

Amistad Academy posted high scores as well: 92.3 percent of students scored ​“proficient” in math; 85.2 percent in science; 92.9 in reading and 100.0 percent in writing. Between 26 and 28 students took each subject test.