Schools Docked For Bilingual Shortcomings

On the state’s most comprehensive look at school quality, New Haven’s grade declined last year, primarily because of a harsh new assessment of its instruction for English learners.

The Connecticut State Department of Education released that report card for every district and school, known as the Next Generation Accountability System, this past Thursday evening.

New Haven collected only 64.67 percent of the total points available, a 0.36-point decline from the prior school year. That put it 9.53 points behind the state as a whole.

That total was calculated by seeing how New Haven stacked up on a range of benchmarks, including standardized-test scores, attendance records, college-level course enrollment, high-school graduation and college matriculation rates, physical fitness and arts class offerings.

State officials call the Next Generation system a “multi-factor, holistic” test.

About half of the total points come from standardized-test scores, as required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). But the state has given extra weight to how much students improve each year, rather than treating it as a “pass-fail” for proficiency, said Ajit Gopalakrishnan, the chief performance officer at the State Department of Education.

This year, the state also included two new categories that, together, hurt New Haven’s overall score.

It added a measure of how many students are nearing grade level in science, which boosted 0.19 points, as well as a measure of how much progress English learners, who grew up with a different language, made in written and spoken language, which docked ‑0.68 points.

The district took that big hit because, on average, the city’s English learners met only 48.3% of their individual goals in speaking and listening and 59.1% of their individual goals in reading and writing that they should be reaching to become proficient within five years.

Those scores nearly match the state as a whole, which also saw its grade slump this year as a result.

About one in six students in New Haven’s public schools — 3,534 kids — is considered an English learner, who’s either picking up the language for the first time or became proficient within the last four years.

ESSA required the state to start grading schools on how English learners are doing. The newest metric looks only at students who haven’t mastered English yet.

“What ESSA did was, in our perspective, to really elevate that by not having a separate accountability system,” Gopalakrishnan said. ​“By placing it within the primary accountability system, it really elevated the importance and presence of English language learners in this framework.”

The state’s primary funding formula, Education Cost Sharing, adds only 15 percent in extra support for each English learner — a number that one independent adequacy study found is about half of what’s needed.

For the first time last school year, an opportunity gap in New Haven’s reading scores also reached alarming levels.

Students in New Haven who face significant challenges to their education, like poverty, language or disabilities — whom the state calls ​“high-needs” — scored 16.1 points lower than their peers in English language arts.

That makes New Haven an outlier statewide, with an opportunity gap that’s more than one standard deviation from Connecticut’s average.

Superintendent Iline Tracey said in a brief phone conversation that administrators are currently reviewing the data. She said that the district’s English learner programs are ​“an area we are focusing on with a lot of training.”

The state says it is deploying support teams for low-performing Alliance Districts and Commissioner’s Network schools; providing training on how to use data and how to teach early literacy; developing tiered supports to address absences and misbehavior in a way that’s ​“restorative and trauma-informed”; and expanding the teaching force to include more racial diversity and fill shortage areas.

New Haven’s scores have mostly remained steady since the accountability system was introduced in 2014.

The city’s scores have dipped only once before, in the final school year of the tenure of Superintendent Garth Harries.

In Harries’ final year, the district’s overall score had been on the upswing, rising by 2.3 points in 2015 – 16, but the overall score dipped in the year he left, falling by 0.3 points.

Last school year, under Carol Birks, the district’s overall score declined by about the same amount, though that’s mostly because of the new assessment of English learners the state added. Other stats moved in both directions.

Aside from the new categories, New Haven picked up the most new points for increasing the number of students who can pass a physical-fitness test of their muscular strength and endurance, flexibility and heart health, now up to 48.5% of the entire student body.

It also gained points for lowering chronic absenteeism, defined as missing more than one-tenth of the school year, especially among those with ​“high needs.” That rate is now down to 19.3% for the entire student body. That’s still above the 16.3% goal in the district’s improvement plan.

Aside from the new categories, New Haven lost the most points for declines in how much progress students made in reading last year, including among those with ​“high needs.” On average, students hit only 55.2% of their goals. That’s also below the 60.2% goal in the district’s improvement plan.

It also lost points for the number of high-school students who aren’t passing high-level exams, even though more students are signing up for college-level Advanced Placement courses or career-ready technical trainings. Only 18.1% of students scored above 1010 (out of 1600) on the SAT or a 3 (out of 5) on an AP exam.

New Haven long been the top performer among the state’s poorest cities. Its flatlining overall score has given Connecticut’s other big cities a chance to catch up.

In 2015 – 16, during Harries’ final year, Waterbury lagged 6.5 points behind New Haven; last year, it came within 0.1 points.

Likewise, Bridgeport narrowed a 7.9‑point gap with New Haven to a 3.5‑point gap.

Hartford, however, has also stagnated, widening from a 4.4‑point gap with New Haven to a 4.8‑point gap.

(Hamden scored 71.1% of the total points available, a 0.69-point decline from the prior school year. That puts it 3.1 points behind the statewide total.)

Those district-level scores don’t reflect the wide disparities among New Haven’s 48 public schools, including its privately operated charters.

Seven local schools beat the state average.

Three of them are disproportionately white compared to the surrounding district: Worthington Hooker, the elementary school that’s a top choice for many Yale professors’ kids in its early grades; Engineering & Science University Magnet School, the inter-district middle and high school that takes half its kids from the suburbs; and Spring Glen, the Hamden elementary school that was untouched by recent consolidations.

Three of them are charters: Elm City Montessori, the district-approved local charter school, and Amistad Academy and Elm City College Preparatory, the Achievement First-managed state charter schools.

The last is Strong 21st Century Communications Magnet School, now known as Barack H. Obama Magnet University School in a new building on Southern Connecticut State University’s campus. The state again recognized it as a ​“school of distinction” for its top-performing growth scores in reading for all students and in reading and math for ​“high-needs” students.

The state also put West Rock STREAM Academy Interdistrict Magnet School on a watchlist of ​“focus schools” for its low growth scores in math among ​“high-needs” students, after last year only 6.1% of them met their learning targets in math to catch up to grade level within five years.

James Hillhouse High School and Hamden Middle School remain focus schools with a chance to exit the status next year.

Three other New Haven schools are considered ​“turnarounds” for their overall low performance, though two of them are making quick progress towards changing that.

Both Wexler-Grant Community School and High School in the Community are halfway to an early exit, if they can sustain their improvement for another year. Augusta Lewis Troup School has farther to go.