NHI
New Haven’s SAT ranking compared to four urban districts.
New Haven got this year’s SAT scores back Tuesday and learned that students are not necessarily ready for college — including when compared to high-needs groups across the state.
About 39.1 percent of New Haven students met or exceeded standards in reading on the SAT exam, and about 13.4 percent met or exceeded standards in math, in results released from the state Wednesday.
This is the first year Connecticut got federal approval to replace the Common Core Smarter Balanced exam (SBAC exam) with the SAT, in an effort to reduce the amount of testing for high schoolers.
Connecticut is one of a “handful” of states to allow for the substitution, according to Ellen Cohn, deputy commissioner of education.
Statewide, 65 percent met or exceeded reading standards and 39.3 percent met or exceeded math standards on the SAT. Those results are concerning to state officials, according to the CT Mirror.
Click here for a spreadsheet of all districts’ results.
Click here for a spreadsheet of all New Haven schools’ results.
“These performance indicators will help us restructure our instruction moving forward,” said Gil Traverso, the school district’s director of instruction for high schools, in a release issued Wednesday afternoon. “Our purpose is to provide an excellent education that extends beyond graduation and these scores will serve that the blueprint we use to get there.”
The release noted that” it’s clear that our district must continue to improve and accelerate our efforts to ensure every student is college and career ready. This year’s data from the district’s Math scores and high needs students show that we have much more work to do to ensure all our students are on track for success in college, career, and life.”
About 1,145 New Haven students took the exam in the spring.
State DoE
State breakdowns of SAT rankings.
The SAT exam was redesigned and administered for the first time this year, to be more closely aligned to Common Core standards, said Ajit Gopalakrishnan, state chief performance officer, on a conference call with media outlets Wednesday morning. The vocabulary words are less “funky” and more grounded in context.
“It tells us whether our students are learning the things we’re teaching them in high school,” he said. “The results are a baseline from which we will be looking forward for improvement.”
The participation rate on the SAT exam for 11th graders was 94 percent statewide, compared to 81 percent on the SBAC last year.
New Haven similarly scored below state average on the SBAC exam last year, with 29 percent of students on track literacy and 14 percent for math, compared to 55.4 percent and 39.1 percent statewide.
Even among high-needs districts, New Haven scored low on the SAT math section — at 13.4 percent compared to 14.5 percent among students who are English language learners, eligible for free or reduced price meals or have disabilities. And it scored just above the 37.1 percent of high-needs students proficient or above on reading.
New Haven’s 10 high school SAT scores.
Coop High School, Engineering and Science University Magnet School, and Sound School were the only three of 10 high schools to meet or exceed the average benchmark score of 480 of 800 for the reading section of the SAT. No schools got average scores meeting the benchmark of 530 of 800 for math.
The asterisks in the above chart represent numbers too low to include in the report, since they risk identifying specific students.
Superintendent Garth Harries was unavailable for comment Wednesday.