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Common Ground, Sophomores Make Gains
by Melissa Bailey | Jul 20, 2010 11:15 am
(4) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author
Posted to: Schools, School Reform
Sophomores at the city’s environmental-themed charter school caught up to and exceeded district scores, as sophomores across the city improved on standardized tests.
That analysis emerged Monday, as schools crunched numbers from the Connecticut Academic Performance Test, which the state released Friday. The test is required for all 10th graders in public schools in the state, including charter schools.
A total of 1,165 students in the New Haven Public School district took the test. Overall, they—like their counterparts statewide—showed incremental improvement. Overall, district students improved between 1 and 8 points—in the percentage of kids performing “at goal” on science, reading and writing. Districtwide, scores fell slightly, from 13.6 to 13.3 percent, on math.
Click here for a spreadsheet with the data from 10 district high schools.
The scores left them lagging behind the state average by a gap of between 27 and 35 points along that measure. The district has pledged to close that achievement gap over the next five years. It’s putting improvement plans in place at the city’s two biggest high schools, Wilbur Cross and Hillhouse.
Those two schools scored below the district average on all categories except at Cross in math. They showed incremental gains of a few points in math, science and reading. Writing scores leapt up by about 10 percent at both schools.
Students at Common Ground posted more dramatic gains.
A total of 32 students took the test at Common Ground High School, the city’s environmental-themed charter high school. Using the “at goal” measure, students either doubled or tripled their scores in each subject: from 13.3 to 27.3 in math, 13.6 to 31.6 in reading, from 8.7 to 26.5 in science, and 15.6 to 36.4 in writing.
“These sustained gains mean that Common Ground’s students are for the first time scoring above the state average in reading, and above the New Haven city average in every subject area,” announced teacher Joel Tolman in a press statement released Monday.
Kids at Amistad Academy posted double-digit gains in science and writing, stayed the same in math, and fell by 12 points in reading.
Click here to see how the city’s charter high schools performed.
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Comments
posted by: jayj on July 20, 2010 11:56am
congrat’s to Joel and the kids at Common Ground. You all should be very proud of your accomplishments !!
posted by: Somewhere in CT (maybe New Haven, maybe not) on July 20, 2010 9:17pm
> Using the “at goal” measure, students either doubled or tripled their scores in each subject: from 13.3 to 27.3 in math, 13.6 to 31.6 in reading, from 8.7 to 26.5 in science, and 15.6 to 36.4 in writing.
Be careful what you are saying. The STUDENTS did not increase their scores. The SCHOOL’s scores for this year’s sophomore class were HIGHER than LAST year’s sophomore class.
Students take the CAPT once (and again if they did not pass it).
This is the problem with NCLB and Race to the Top in high school. For the CMTs a student can be tracked for 6 years or so. The CAPT, on the other hand, does not track kids, unless they failed.
One group of sophomores takes the test. They score X.
The next group of sophomores takes the test and they score X + 5.
The students did not add to their scores. It is a NEW group of kids.
The SCHOOL performed much better. And congrats on that!
But please do not add to the confusion and misunderstanding.
posted by: Bill on July 21, 2010 10:00am
Great job, Common Ground. Liz Cox-thank you for all of your hard work.
posted by: Allison Matura on July 24, 2010 12:10pm
Echoing Somewhere in CT, the semantics of “student improvement” is crucial. The CAPT is not a longitudinal series of assessments that in any way measures a cohort of students in such a way as to demonstrate “improvement”. It simply creates a data point.
As a teacher at Cross in a department primarily responsible for the Writing Across the Disciplines part of CAPT, my data analysis demonstrates a huge correlation between reading levels and higher scores on the Reading/Writing sections of the CAPT. Would it not then make sense to take students reading below grade level and give them a reading class? An excellent idea, but for the lack of secondary teachers with the experience and credentials to do so.
It is my experience that most parents believe that reading is taught in English. Not at all accurate, English and Reading are two completely different credentials at the secondary level.
As Mathematics and Science were once considered huge shortage areas, now too should secondary reading.
Allison
