New Canaan schools chief: Pandemic had little impact on student performance
NEW CANAAN — Hybrid and remote learning didn’t make much of an impact on standardized testing for New Canaan students, according to newly released data from the district.
“You don’t see that there’s a crisis here,” Superintendent Bryan Luizzi told the school board on Monday, pointing to slight dips or similar scores in 2021’s standardized test results, compared to pre-pandemic.
He compared SAT scores and the state’s Smarter Balanced test results with previous years and with other high-performing schools. Luizzi noted that other districts with comparatively lower scores in some areas had their students spend more time in hybrid learning, while New Canaan primarily kept children in school.
In past years, “you’re seeing an upward trend and you see a little dip in 2021, both in English and math — a little bit. But what you don’t see is a cliff,” Luizzi said. “What you see is that our students continue to perform very well.”
The Connecticut Smarter Balanced assessments are used to access achievement and growth in students in grades three to eight. In English Language Arts, the percentage of New Canaan’s public school students who met or exceeded achievement level was 85.5 in 2021, compared to 89.6 in 2019, 88.3 in 2018, 87.9 in 2017 and 83.3 in 2016. In math, the percentage of those students who met or exceeded expectations was 82.2 in 2021, compared to 88.3 in 2019, 87.8 in 2018, 85.1 in 2017 and 79.1 in 2016.
New Canaan surpassed seven other Fairfield County towns in percentage of students who met or exceeded achievement levels in English Language Arts in every grade, according to the data, with an exception of the fifth grade. In that case, Westport beat out New Canaan with an average score of 85.9%.
“Those are schools that were in hybrid, primarily most of the time. And again, you see the impact that that had on some of the scores. You see that they are lower than maybe you would have expected in some spots. Again, that’s shows us that our efforts to keep kids in school yielded great results,” Luizzi said.
New Canaan’s SAT scores came in second in the district reference group in English with 608, and first in math with 610. The total average 2021 SAT score was 1244, compared to 1244 in 2020, 1265 in 2019, 1245 in 2018 and 1231 in 2017.
“Again, we similarly see that our students performed well,” Luizzi said. “We’re in DRG A,” those are the state’s “wealthiest school districts. And generally they’re the highest performing school districts. So it’s not uncommon, if you’re number one in the DRG, you would generally be number one the state.”