SAT Scores Slump

Standardized test scores in New Haven’s high schools sank last school year, leaving all but one school with lower scores than three years ago.

The Connecticut State Department of Education released the results of the College Board’s SAT on its website on Monday afternoon, including for roughly 1,330 juniors in New Haven’s public schools who took the test this spring.

Out of 1600 possible points, students on average scored 867 in the nine district-run schools, 958 in the Achievement First charter network’s Amistad High School, and 855 in the stand-alone charter’s Common Ground High School.

To put those numbers in comparison, most University of Connecticut freshmen scored above 1210 on the SAT; Quinnipiac University, 1090; Albertus Magnus College, 960; and Southern Connecticut University, 830. The statewide average was 1016.

For the last four years, the state has used a revamped SAT, a two-part assessment of math and reading and writing skills, as its primary assessment for high-school students. Officials said switching to the College Board’s test came with the added benefit of letting impoverished kids get a free shot at an SAT score they can send off with their college applications.

But some educators have cast doubt the SAT is accurately measuring student learning. They argue it instead reflects existing racial and economic disparities or even overstates the achievement gap with biased questions.

In the 2018 – 19 school year, most local students missed the state’s ​“college and career readiness” benchmark on the SAT. Officials said that corresponds with three-quarters of college students getting a C or better in the first semester of college.

In reading and writing, the state says students need 480 out of 800 points to meet its benchmark.

Last school year, 34.4% of New Haven’s public-school students met or exceeded that. The average score, district-wide, in that subject was 444 points, marking a 14-point drop from the prior year.

In math, the state says students need 530 out of 800 points to meet its benchmark.

Last school year, 12.2% of New Haven’s public-school students met or exceeded that. The average score, district-wide, in that subject was 423, marking a 16-point drop from the prior year.

State officials cautioned that, unlike the Smarter Balanced Assessment that is re-administered in elementary schools every year, the SAT results are a one-time test given to a completely new class of students every year. That has to be measured against changing demographics statewide, as Connecticut’s schoolchildren are increasingly less white, less financially secure and less likely to speak English at home.

Within New Haven’s schools — on a test that administrators have long struggled to figure out — students on average scored 1026 at Engineering & Science University Magnet School, 950 at Sound School, 903 at New Haven Academy, 883 at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, 876 at Hill Regional Career High School, 858 at Metropolitan Business Academy, 834 at Wilbur Cross High School, 826 at High School in the Community, and 791 at James Hillhouse High School.

Paul Whyte, the assistant superintendent who oversees the high schools, said that he plans to review the data, alongside the curriculum supervisors, to ​“narrow in” on the specific areas where students are struggling.

“We try to use resources like Khan Academy for SAT training, and the College Board’s official practice test does a lot to focus on the specific things that the student had trouble with,” he said. ​“The best intervention is always teacher support.”

Superintendent Carol Birks, who’d just come back from a week-long vacation, said on Monday evening that she had not looked at the results yet.

Charter Scores Fall Too

New Haven’s two charter high schools saw their scores dip this year, especially at Common Ground, but both said they’ve already put plans in place to reverse the decline.

At Amistad High School, which the state tracks as a conglomerate of three Achievement First charter schools, students from Amistad Middle saw their average scores drop by 48 points in reading and writing and 7 points in math; from Elm City College Prep Middle, by 28 in reading and writing and 18 in math; and from Bridgeport Middle, by 22 in reading and writing and 3 in math.

Amanda Pinto, a spokesperson for Achievement First, said the network feels ​“concerned” about the drop in SAT scores.

“We’ve made several changes to our program to help ensure they improve,” Pinto said in an email on Tuesday afternoon, including a reorganization of its course of study to put more focus on ​“rhetorical analysis” and ​“algebraic skills” even earlier. ​“Overall,” she added, ​“we’re renewing our focus on data-driven instruction so that all students have the foundational skills to show what they know on the SAT.”

Common Ground saw even bigger declines. Its average math scores fell by 55 points; average reading and writing scores fell by 56 points.

“We definitely aren’t satisfied with these scores, and know we can do better,” Liz Cox, the school director, said in an email on Tuesday morning. ​“Common Ground has a strong track record of getting our students ready for college and life after high school: our students are graduating, earning college admissions, and matriculating in college at rates above the state average. And our SAT results have been improving over the last several years. We know our students can beat this test, and we know it’s our job to help them.”

Cox said that, before this batch of test scores arrived, the school had already been making changes because they recognized ​“many of our incoming students had big gaps to overcome.”

Cox said the school restructured its freshman and sophomore curriculum to make it ​“more relevant, challenging, and responsive to our students.” Each unit in each grade now pays special attention to ​“reading, writing and problem-solving skills” to help students prepare for ​“college-level work,” she said. All freshman now take two math classes, one based on their skill level and one based on applying math to real-world problems, and more juniors and seniors are now taking college classes, she said. And math and reading ​“labs” for students who are behind have been ​“strengthened,” she said.

Most recently, during its annual ​“summer planning institute,” the school ensured that all courses included ​“daily writing” and more ​“complex text and data interpretation,” Cox added.

“All of that was already in motion, but this year’s rising seniors didn’t get the full benefit of these improvements. And we also recognize that we can keep getting stronger,” Cox concluded. ​“We know that all of our students can succeed, and we know we can keep getting better at how we support them.”

Context Sought

What do all those numbers add up to? It depends on whom you ask.

State officials said that the SAT scores need to be looked at in context, alongside data on how many students show up for school, take advanced courses and graduate on time. But they still stand by the usefulness of the results.

“How students did on a standardized test on a particular day, that is a decent measure, because that is a culmination of students staying in school, coming to class, paying attention, doing whatever work their teachers assign, and the instruction being aligned to standards, not shortcutting them or skipping subjects,” said Ajit Gopalakrishnan, the State Department of Education’s chief performance officer.

“It’s so many things that go into whether a kid has mastered the targets when they got into that testing situation on that one date and actually demonstrate their knowledge on that assessment,” he added.

But as top schools, like the University of Chicago and George Washington University, make the test optional; as the test-owner tries to contextualize results with an ​“adversity score”; and as data show a persistent racial rift, this year of 202 points, on average, between Connecticut’s white and black students, some educators are questioning the usefulness of judging high schools by their students’ SAT scores.

Leslie Blatteau, a teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy, which uses a mastery-based curriculum, said that, if the state wants to see who’s ready for college and careers, the SAT isn’t a good measure.

“If I want students to prepare for work, then our assessments should look like what’s outside of school. Where in life, are we just sitting in a chair, completely alone, having to be completely silent and choosing one right answer?” Blatteau asked. ​“That’s not that accurate to the challenges that life throws at us. When we’re problem solving in life, we are asking clarifying questions, recognizing that there are multiple possible answers or working collaboratively.

Blatteau said that teacher-created assessments would be a better way to measure student success, with portfolios that show ​“where students stretched themselves and where they’ve grown, not one day at a certain point.”

“The statisticians want it to be a one-dip measure in time, where as a teacher, I would say that assessment should involve figuring out where your students are first, having different modalities in the assessment like allowing discussion and front-loading vocabulary, making sure that student choice is relevant — all those things that are replicated in the real world,” she said.

Blatteau added, though, that she acknowledges there’s a very good argument from the other viewpoint, that parents need standardized tests like the SAT to hold their leaders accountable, ​“to measure are kids getting what they need instructionally,” she said.

Asked about whether the SAT accurately measured racial gaps in academic performance, the state’s Gopalakrishnan called it ​“a good assessment for all students.”

He said that similar gaps in performance for black and brown students, compared to their white peers, as well as poor students, compared to well-off peers, also show up on the Smarter Balanced Assessment, the elementary school standardized test.