Common Ground,
Sophomores Make Gains

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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