7/19/2012 3:39:29 PM
For Immediate Release: Thursday, July 19, 2012
Contact: Jim Polites 860.713.6525
2012
CMT,
CAPT
RESULTS
SHOW
SOME
INCREASES,
WHILE
GAPS
IN
ACHIEVEMENT
PERSIST
The Connecticut State Department of Education announced today that student performance on theConnecticut Mastery Test (CMT) increased in several grades and content areas from last year, continuing atrend of incremental improvement since the CMT baseline year of 2006. The most consistent and significantincreases in student performance occurred in reading and writing; student performance in math and scienceincreased in the early grades but declined in later grades.The results of the 2012 Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) were mixed. While studentperformance increased in all content areas when compared to the CAPT baseline year of 2007, it decreasedin some areas when compared to last year. As compared to 2011, performance increased slightly in writing,remained relatively constant in science and reading, and decreased in mathematics.
Different metrics for measuring Connecticut’s income
-based achievement gap (using eligibility for free orreduced price meals as a proxy for poverty) paint a mixed picture of whether the gaps are narrowing.Examining changes in the percentage of students who perform at or above the Proficient and Goal levelsshows that in nearly every grade level and content area, the gaps between low- and higher-income studentshave narrowed since 2006, further closing in the most recent year. Vertical scale score data, which measurescohort growth over time, shows the gap narrowing modestly in some content areas, but also reveals cases inwhich the gap is widening. Both metrics clearly reveal that the gap in achievement between low- andhigher-income students persists, with more than twice the percentage of higher-income students performingat or above the Goal level than lower-income students in many grade levels and content areas.Stefan Pryor, Connecticut Commissioner of
Education said: ―We’re pleased to see
that there are signs of progress in our schools. That said
—
while schools are moving more students into Proficient- and Goal-levelperformance, significant gaps in achievement continue between economically disadvantaged students andtheir peers.
So there is reason for optimism regarding our system’s ability to advance, as well as cause for
continuing concern.
We need to work together to implement the reforms and initiatives we’ve recently
launched in order to build
on areas of progress and remedy the persistent problems in our schools.‖
Public Act 12-
116 identifies Connecticut’s thirty lowest performing districts as Alliance Districts and will
provide them with additional funding conditional upon clear plans for reform. While 2012 data shows thatAlliance Districts continue to perform far below other districts in all content areas and grade levels, many of these districts have made significant progress when compared to data from the previous year.Complete state-, district- and school-level CMT and CAPT results are now available on the Online Reportswebsite(www.ctreports.com). Parents will receive notification of individual student performance results for
their children in September.
2
Both the CMT and the CAPT have five student performance levels for each content area tested: BelowBasic, Basic, Proficient, Goal, and Advanced. The CMT assesses approximately 250,000 students on theirapplication of skills and knowledge in the academic content areas of mathematics, reading, and writing inGrades 3 through 8, and science in Grades 5 and 8. This year marks the seventh administration of the CMT.The March 2006 administration of the CMT serves as a baseline year for examining changes in studentperformance because it was the first year that the Fourth Generation CMT was administered. The CMT alsohas vertical scales in mathematics and reading that enable valid measures of cohort
growth in tested students’
performance from 2006 to 2012.The CAPT assesses over 40,000 students on their integration and application of skills in the academiccontent areas of mathematics, reading across the disciplines, writing across the disciplines, and science. Theresults from the March 2007 CAPT provide a baseline for examining student performance statewide over sixyears of CAPT administrations.In May, the United States
Department of Education approved Connecticut’s waiver from certain provisions
of No Child Left Behind (NCLB).
Connecticut’s
waiver introduces new metrics for measuring school andsubgroup performance that improve upon NCLB in a number of ways. First, the new accountability systemcaptures progress across all bands of performance. Under NCLB, the percentage of students who reachedProficiency was used to determine whether schools and districts were making Adequate Yearly Progress(AYP). This metric only captured progress across the Proficient threshold on the CMT and CAPT. Themetric did not capture progress made by students who are the furthest behind (performing at the Below Basiclevel and advancing to a level shy of Proficiency, within the Basic range) or students who had alreadyreached Proficiency and increased their performance to the Goal and Advanced levels.The new accountability system introduces metrics that capture the progress of students across allperformance levels. This change will better enable schools to advance the growth of all of their students.Schools are encouraged to lift students who are furthest behind up to the Proficient level, students who areProficient to the higher Goal standard of college and career readiness, and the highest performing students tothe Advanced level. Besides
counting performance across all bands, Connecticut’s new
accountabilitymetrics will also incorporate achievement in science and writing to build a more complete learning profile.Under NCLB, schools were held accountable only for student performance in math and reading.
This year’s CMT and CAPT reports, therefore,
incorporate scale score growth analysis and focus onperformance across all bands. Future reports will more thoroughly draw upon this new methodology.
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E
XPLANATORY
I
NFORMATION AND
A
NALYSIS
S
TUDENT
P
ERFORMANCE
A
CROSS
A
LL
P
ERFORMANCE
B
ANDS
CMT
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