New Haven's ELA scores, from all test-taking grades, compared to similar cities and the state as a whole.
Laura Glesby Photo
Asst. Supt. Keisha Redd-Hannans: "A test score does not define their true abilities."
New state data shows that 87 percent of third graders in New Haven are reading below grade level, compared to 84 percent last year, while math and science scores among city public school students have slightly improved.
School leaders have framed these results as an outgrowth of pandemic learning disruptions, while emphasizing that students are far more than their test results and touting a dramatic end-of-year improvement in attendance.
That new state data comes from the mandatory Smarter Balanced Achievement (SBA) exams. It shows that 87 percent of third graders in New Haven are reading below grade level, compared to 51.5 percent at the state level.
The percentage of third-grade New Haveners not yet reading at grade level, according to the exam scores, is even higher than last year’s statistic — 84 percent, a number that led officials to declare a “reading crisis” in the city.
During Monday’s latest bimonthly Board of Education meeting, which took place in person at Barack Obama Magnet University School at 69 Farnham Ave. and online via Zoom, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Assistant Superintendent of Schools Keisha Redd-Hannans offered a high-level summary of the new test scores, mere hours after those scores were released.
She conveyed that across grades, 22.1 percent of New Haven students reached or surpassed grade-level reading goals, compared to 23.6 percent last year. (Students in third through eighth grades as well as high school juniors took the exams.)
The state as a whole saw a similar dip in English Language Arts (ELA) test scores this year, from 49.1 percent of students reading at grade level among all grades last school year to 48.5 percent having reached grade level this past spring.
In a statement on Wednesday, NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon attributed the particularly low reading scores among third graders to the learning disruptions that kids in that year have faced since their very first year in school.
The “third grade cohort experienced the outbreak of Covid in March of their kindergarten year. Most of them had only virtual instruction for their first-grade year,” Harmon wrote. “In second grade, when classroom instruction was the norm, they experienced a 56.3 percent rate of chronic absenteeism. That percentage dropped to 33.2 percent for their third-grade year, but we would expect performance and growth scores to drop as students with greater learning disruption returned to the classroom.”
Harmon highlighted the district’s efforts to improve literacy instruction, including a renewed focus on phonics education on the elementary school level, with a new curriculum and more professional development. He noted that the school district now has two ELA supervisors instead of just one.
“The district also will perform additional ‘walkthroughs’ during which teaching is observed by academic staff — including assistant superintendents, supervisors, principals, and teachers — and feedback provided for coaching purposes,” Harmon wrote. “None of these steps guarantees the outcome we want, which is to see growth in literacy and improved performance on measures such as the SBA, but they are a necessary precondition to doing better.”
Math scores by town.
At the same time, New Haven students as a whole increased math and science test scores, although results remain low across the district. New Haven’s Smarter Balanced Achievement test results showed a 2 percent increase in students reaching grade level in math this year, from 11.5 percent in Spring 2022 to 13.5 percent in Spring 2023.
NHPS Superintendent Madeline Negrón attributed this growth, in part, to a new math curriculum implemented last year.
Eleventh graders improved in science scores.
Meanwhile, scores from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) exam — taken each year by 5th, 8th, and 11th graders — show a significant increase in science skills among 11th graders. Of the district’s 11th graders, 23 percent met grade-level goals in science this past spring, compared to 16.3 percent in the 2021 – 2022 school year. The elementary and middle school scores saw little variation from last year.
“We are proud, we are happy that there is an increase,” Redd-Hannans told the Board, referring to the science and math upticks.
Monday's Board of Ed meeting.
After the meeting, she elaborated. “Test scores indicate how a student is performing on an assessment in a moment in time. A test score does not define their true abilities,” Redd-Hannans said.
Though she emphasized that she wasn’t trying to dismiss the implications of low scores, she said it’s important to look at other measures of success, too: “I’m more interested in how students are prepared for post-secondary life.”
Attendance Climbs
Superintendent Madeline Negrón: There's more work to do.
Chronic absenteeism rates as calculated by the end of the 2022 – 2023 school year were released along with the test score data.
Students are considered chronically absent if they’ve missed at least 10 percent of school days in a given period of time.
For the 2022 – 2023 school year, 36.6 percent of NHPS students were considered chronically absent — a significant drop from last year, when 58.8 percent of students were chronically absent.
The Board of Education gave Chief of Youth, Family and Community Engagement Gemma Joseph-Lumpkin, who spearheaded outreach efforts targeting absent students, a round of applause upon hearing that statistic.
“There’s clearly a lot of work ahead of us,” noted Negrón. She said the district’s goal for the upcoming school year is to reduce chronic absenteeism rates to, at most, 25 percent of students. “We’re gonna do right by our kids and by our families.”
Racial Gaps Grow In SAT Scores
Smarter Balanced Achievement scores by race.
A breakdown of students’ Smarter Balanced Achievement test results by racial demographic shows that pre-existing racial gaps in test scores have largely stayed the same compared to last year.
Nearly 50 percent of white students were reading at grade level in spring 2023, compared to just over 18 percent of both Black and Latino students and 30 percent of Asian students. In math, 37 percent of white students performed at grade level, compared to 8.8 percent of Black students, 10 percent of Latino students, and 29.8 percent of Asian students.
Students’ SAT scores, however, suggest that racial inequities among New Haven eleventh graders’ testing outcomes have worsened.
SAT scores by race.
As a whole, in New Haven, the rate of white SAT takers reaching English Language Arts (ELA) grade-level goals grew by more than 7 percentage points: 63.2 percent of white students earned above a 480 in English this year on the SAT, compared to 55.9 percent in the 2021 – 2022 school year.
Latino and Hispanic students’ scores improved slightly, from 20.6 percent earning above a 480 last year to 21.8 percent this year.
Meanwhile, Black SAT takers’ ELA grade-level rate dropped from 24.9 percent last year to 19.2 percent this year.
And both Asian and multi-racial students saw a dramatic decline in ELA scores on the SAT this year. Of Asian test-takers, 33.3 percent earned over a 480 this year — compared to 54.8 percent who reached grade level last year and 70 percent two years before. Likewise, 27.8 percent of students who identified as having “two or more races” reached ELA grade-level scores this year, compared to 46.2 percent last year and 55.6 percent two years before.
Asian students also saw a drop in SAT math scores this year; 27.3 percent of Asian students reached grade level (over a 530) in math this past school year, compared to 38.7 percent in 2021 – 2022 and 55 percent in 2018 – 2019. At the same time, multi-racial students saw a 14.5 percent increase in SAT math achievement rates, from 7.7 percent at grade level last year to 22.2 percent this spring.
Black and Latino students saw modest improvements in SAT math scores this year, with 6 and 5.8 percent grade level rates respectively. Meanwhile, 38.9 percent of white students performed at grade level in math this year, continuing a significant gap in SAT test achievement.
Critics of the SAT have argued that the test is an inherently biased metric of academic performance, especially given the vast network of test-prep resources that affluent students often take advantage of.
NGSS test results, the state’s mandated metric of science skills, reflect a similarly-worsening racial gap.
In the 2022 – 2023 school year, white students in New Haven saw the most science test score gains: 52.4 percent reached grade level in science by this past spring, compared to 44.4 percent in 2022. Meanwhile, 15.5 percent of Black students (around the same level as last year) and 18.9 percent of Hispanic and Latino students (a 2.1 percent increase from last year) performed at grade level this spring.
With more students of color learning in New Haven than in many of the other school districts in the state, the gap between New Haven’s test scores and the state’s also reflect racial inequality from town to town.
Redd-Hanans said that school leaders are planning to break down these demographic statistics further to better understand them. “Many of our Asian students were chronically absent,” she noted to the Board — perhaps a reason behind the drop in scores among Asian students.
The racial categories are determined based on how students and families self-identify, according to Redd-Hanans. The categories are imperfect; there’s no distinct category for middle eastern students, for instance, who make up a growing portion of the schools’ population.
Scores Tell A Limited Story
Abie Benitez: There's a need for "qualitative" data, positive narratives.
Reflecting on the data on Monday, Board of Education members offered varying takes on the significance of these test scores.
“I’m starting to wonder if there’s a problem with this testing … I don’t know if these numbers actually represent where our children are,” said Board member Darnell Goldson.
If the test scores really do reflect students’ ability to succeed at school, he added, “what does that mean for our society in the future?”
Board member Abie Benitez asked if the district could provide “qualitative data” on students’ academic abilities — for example, statistics on student “engagement” provided by teachers.
“Give us another picture,” she urged, stressing the importance of providing a positive narrative about New Haven students’ successes. “When people hear they do well in something, they feel that they can do it.”
Darnell Goldson: Is there a problem with the test?
“There are kids doing really well,” Board member Orlando Yarborough III insisted. “I know we have good students here. I don’t want people to think they are under the bar when they’re not.” He requested a more detailed breakdown of the scores, including information on how students are performing by school.
Board member and Mayor Justin Elicker offered a more sober assessment. “The numbers don’t represent who our kids are, but I don’t doubt the numbers,” he said. “I think we need to be direct with each other: our kids aren’t reading at levels they should be.”
Elicker added, “We shouldn’t be focused on tests — we should be focused on kids’ fundamental skills.”
“Our students aren’t test numbers,” said Board Vice President Matthew Wilcox, but “the test numbers are reflective of something.” He stressed a need to figure out “what that something is.”
As Wilcox noted, societal challenges like homelessness, violence, and other sources of trauma that only worsened during the pandemic are likely affecting students’ performance.
Can someone please tell me this is wrong? It's been a long day, and I want to make sure I have not completely lost it... Thanks in advance.
Core assumption: Let's assume that to be prepared for college, an 11th-grade student needs proficiency in both English Language Arts (ELA) and Math, a very safe assumption. Then based on the 2023 data, what percentage of total students are 100% ready for college work by reaching proficiency in both subjects?
We first need to find the overlap between the percentages of students proficient in ELA and Math. This can be calculated using a set intersection to determine the percentage of students who are proficient.
Given that 22% of students are proficient in ELA and 13% are proficient in Math, you can calculate the percentage of students who are proficient in both subjects by finding the intersection of these two percentages:
Step 1: Percentage proficient in both ELA and Math = Percentage proficient in ELA Percentage proficient in Math.
Step 2: Percentage proficient in both ELA and Math = 0.22 0.13
Step 3: Percentage proficient in both ELA and Math = 0.0286 or 2.86%
Bottomline, approximately 2.86% of total students in NHPS are proficient in both ELA and Math and, therefore, can be considered ready for higher education. Please tell me I did this wrong.