New Haven Independent

At the board’s Thursday meeting, officials also announced new principals at Hill Central, Barnard and Wexler Grant schools.

Imma Canelli (pictured), assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, delivered a PowerPoint presentation detailing student gains in the 2008 Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT). The results were both released last week. The CMT is administered to students in grades three through eight; the CAPT is administered to all tenth graders.

You can view complete CMT data broken down by individual schools here, and CAPT data here.

Canelli outlined citywide results, broken down by grade level and subject, with improvements over 2007 scores highlighted in an energetic green.

Canelli then highlighted “star performers,” schools that made exceptional gains in the past year. She said it is hard to limit the schools to be featured, since every school in the district had double-digit gains in at least one grade level subject.

King/Robinson had the greatest improvement rate, with the eighth grade standing out for math scores that jumped from 42 to 77 percent proficiency and reading scores that rose from 42 to 68 percent. Edgewood School exceeded 90 percent proficiency rates in third through sixth grade math, and saw double-digit gains in fifth and eight-grade reading scores.

Other featured K-8 schools were Fair Haven, Brennan, Wexler-Grant, and Davis. The city’s three largest high schools — Wilbur Cross, Hillhouse, and Career — collectively posted gains in 11 out of 12 areas on the CAPT.

For CMT scores, the black-white achievement gap narrowed by one to seven points in four of six grade levels for math, reading, and writing. The Hispanic-white gap closed in four of six grade levels for math and reading — closing from 27 points to 12 in sixth grade math — but widened in four grade levels for writing.

At the high school level, the black-white gap narrowed in all subjects. The Hispanic-white gap widened by nine points in science and three points in math, leaving a 45-point achievement gap in each subject.

Because of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) demands under No Child Left Behind, the focus for the CMT has been on reading and math, Canelli said. She said this year’s positive results are evidence of movement in the right direction in those areas.

The district is committed to improving writing skills as well, an area where this year’s results were not as impressive. Citywide reading and math scores on the CMT were up in four of the six grade levels, by as much as ten percent, but writing scores only rose in the third and fourth grades.

Canelli said a new fourth and fifth-grade curriculum will emphasize editing and revising, and that the writer’s workshop program will be extended throughout grades K-8.

Another area for improvement is in the third grade, where reading proficiency fell from 39 to 37 percent and math proficiency stayed constant at 64 percent. Canelli said the district will do more to prepare third graders for their first rigorous testing experience, and will step up early reading intervention with a tutor in the first grade.

“I really do feel that if we get students in the first grade on reading level we won’t have to worry about low scores in the third grade,” she said. “I’ve said my legacy before I leave is to get every first grade student on reading level, and I’m going to stick to that.”

And the district will intensify its data-driven approach, expanding on existing grade-level data teams in the elementary schools and content-level data teams in the high schools to set up new school-wide data teams that meet monthly to crunch numbers and assess progress.

Results to Build Upon

Superintendent Reginald Mayo praised the district’s gains, but pointed out as scores go up, criteria for AYP go up as well. “We have to look at it and say we’re improving, but that bar goes higher and higher and higher,” he said. “By no means are we there. The promised land is a ways away.”

Mayor John DeStefano joined in the congratulations and echoed Mayo’s sentiments. “It’s true we have a long way to go, but at the end of the day, good job,” he said.

The requirements of NCLB, board member Ann Levett said, can be challenging “for those of us who know what school is supposed to be about,” but continued growth is something everyone can get behind. She acknowledged the hard work of teachers and administrators for their willingness to “go beyond the normal” to keep kids’ best interests at heart while also pursuing better test scores.

During the public comments portion of the meeting, David Cicarella, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, said he was “as pleased as everyone else” about the district’s CMT and CAPT results. He specifically emphasized gains in eighth grade math, given that the transition from seventh to eighth grade can be the “toughest nut to crack.”

Marc Porter Magee, spokesman for statewide education watchdog ConnCan, was reached for comment by telephone after the meeting. He said that after years of a growing achievement gap between cities and the state average, “this was a positive year in which New Haven along with Bridgeport and Hartford saw that gap shrink a bit because their scores went up faster than the state average.”

These three cities respectively saw 2.1, 2.3, and 1.7 percent overall proficiency gains on the CMT, compared to a 0.7 percent gain statewide. Given city/state differentials of around 30 percent in most grade levels, the gains are fairly modest, Magee said. “It’s a step in the right direction, something we can build on.”

“We’re hopeful,” he said. “There’s been a lot of focus in Connecticut on higher expectations in urban schools, on greater levels of accountability, and on reorganizing schools around achievement. Hopefully this is a sign that this is starting to take hold.”

Pressure’s On

Before the board voted on personnel appointments and transfers, Mayo highlighted three “young, energetic people” taking on new principal assignments.

Effective July 28, Keisha Redd, assistant principal at King/Robinson, will take over at Celentano Museum Acadamy. Assistant Principal Michael Crocco of Hill Central Music Academy will be the new principal at Barnard Magnet School. Kevin Muhammad, an assistant principal in Bridgeport, will take the helm at Wexler Grant effective Aug.18. (Muhammad, Mayo, Redd, and Crocco are pictured, left to right).

Muhammad said coming to the district on the heels of these testing reports sets a high bar for his first year on the job. This is especially true at a school like Wexler Grant, where, for example, seventh-grade math proficiency rose this year from 40 to 70 percent, alongside six other improvements of 18 points or higher. “With such great gains this year, the pressure’s on,” he said.