CMT Scores And Improvements

Reported To Board Of Education

By Eliza Hallabeck

The Board of Education learned during its meeting on Tuesday, September 4, that Newtown’s students showed improvement overall on the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) administered last school year.

To start the presentation, Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson shared the statistics of Newtown’s third grade students, who she said were near the top three reported districts in Western Connecticut across the subjects.

“Redding, Ridgefield, and Newtown tend to be the three all the way across in terms of this local area,” said Dr Robinson, “so I think you should be very proud of how our staff and our students are doing on this. This is just one measure of what we are dealing with.”

The emphasis in schools, Dr Robinson continued, used to be on teacher behavior, but that has changed to emphasizing learning.

“So the question is always, if I am a student in this class, what did I just learn from this lesson?” she said.

Multiple sources of data are used to measure learning, according to Dr Robinson, who listed the classroom, school district, state, and national levels as sources.

The CMT, she said, is a source from the state that measures math, reading, writing, for third through eighth grade, and science in grades five and eight.

While going through the grade levels in a presentation to the school board, Dr Robinson pointed out areas of increased achievement and consistency between testing years and tested grade levels.

Overall, Dr Robinson said, the results showed, “Really, a nice profile. All of the areas are strong.”

Assistant Superintendent of Schools Linda Gejda said teachers in the district have already used the data to assess what subjects will be focused on and how they will be taught this school year.

Since 2006, Dr Gejda said, pointing out that the state does not recommend looking at the data for more than two years at a time for the least amount of speculation, the district has shown general improvement.

While the district, Dr Gejda said, has had some trouble with reading scores in the past, there has been growth in that subject.

“We’ve really got some exciting things for reading in the future,” said Dr Robinson, after both the superintendent and assistant superintendent linked reading improvement to the work teachers have been doing on the subject of writing during professional learning communities.

Dr Gejda said she expects levels in reading to continue to improve in the district. Science, she said, will be the next big area to focus on.

When comparing Newtown to its District Reference Group (DRG), state determined “like communities,” Dr Robinson said Newtown is strong.

“In 14 of these subtests we are in the top five in our DRG,” said Dr Robinson. “We have never been here.”

Independent test results were released for students and parents on September 7, and grade level results and more are available online at ctreports.com.

As Dr Robinson and Dr Gejda pointed out during the meeting, this was the final year of this administration of the CMT, and a new version will be used to test students this school year.

The focus of the test will change, according to the presentation, and new targets will be used to gauge student achievement.

“We are moving now,” said Dr Robinson. “This is transition time into a new wave.”