The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
City-area educators see data as ‘baseline’
NEW HAVEN — State testing data from last year reveals a trend: Students who learned in classrooms with teachers demonstrated mastery of grade-level language arts and math concepts on tests better than those who learned mostly online from
home.
Providing that in-person experience for students was a challenge in the 2020-21 academic year, as public health guidance suggests COVID-19 spreads more easily in densely populated, enclosed spaces. School leaders around Greater New Haven said they are looking at the testing results as a chance for improvement during a historically difficult time in education.
“I think that superintendents are looking at in the aggregate as an overall indication of what worked, and certainly they know in-person learning was far and above the more effective way of instructing,” said Fran Rabinowitz, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents.
In New Haven, a majority of Board of Education members broke with every other district in the state by voting against reopening schools to students — with some small exceptions — for a marking period while case rates were on the rise and there was no publicly available vaccine for the virus. The schools remained closed until January 2021 and teachers began receiving vaccines shortly after.
The majority of New Haven students in grades three through eight were in classrooms for less than 25 percent of the school year. About half of the 7,323 New Haven students in those grades who learned mostly remotely last year took the Smarted Balanced Assessment Consortium exam in classrooms. Only 22.7 percent scored at or above the benchmark for literature arts proficiency and 10.1 percent met the benchmark in math.
Justin Harmon, a spokesman for the district, said that data cannot be compared to other districts or to prior years because nowhere else in the state or in history had so many students learned predominantly remotely for a year.
“We do believe strongly that in-person instruction is essential to student learning, as long as we can maintain student safety. We are doing everything we can to support the return to school, and we have been encouraged by the engagement of students, teachers and parents,” he said.
In neighboring West Haven, where officials opened schools and teachers accommodated students both in classrooms and online, the trend was clear: students from grades three to eight who were in the classroom for 75 percent or more of the time met the grade-level language arts and math benchmarks on SBAC at a higher rate than those who were in the classroom between 25 and 75 percent of the school year. The rate of students meeting those benchmarks who were in the classroom for less than 25 percent of the year was even lower.
This year, remote learning no longer is an option in Connecticut, which West Haven officials see as an opportunity for teachers and students.
“There was good quality teaching last year, both in person and for students distant learning,” said Assistant Superintendent Judy Drenzik. “The way we’re looking at it this year is we’re staying the course, still following a rigorous curriculum design.”
For all West Haven students who took the SBAC, 38.3 percent of students who were mostly in-person met their grade-level benchmarks in language arts, whereas 35.4 percent of those who split their time did the same. For students learning mostly from home, 32.6 percent met their grade-level benchmarks in language arts. The gaps were wider, though, in math: 30.3 percent of students who learned mostly in the classroom met their grade-level benchmarks, whereas 14.8 percent of students who learned mostly remotely did the same.
Drenzik said math is a subject that generally is more hands-on for teachers, so she was not surprised. She said the district is viewing the testing data as “a baseline.”
“We’re looking at that test and we’re looking at where we need extra support,” she said. The district has used federal relief funding to put more tutors, coaches and emotional support staff in buildings to meet student needs and give them more individualized attention.
Drenzik said the theme of teachers’ professional development before the start of school was “back to basics.”
“We have a really good baseline of what our children can do,” she said.
Additionally, Drenzik said there are some bright spots in the data. Although the pandemic put a damper on the type of across-theboard improvements school districts want to see across grade levels, she said there were some areas where students outperformed past years — such as grade-level scores on a supplemental science test and some gains among the district’s English learner population in some grades.
Jeff Solan, superintendent of Cheshire Public Schools, said comparing district data may not be meaningful because of the impacts of the pandemic. Nevertheless, he said, Cheshire’s scores were among the best in the state.
“We had committed to a strategy called acceleration last year. Rather than trying to reteach everything that students missed, which would keep them perpetually behind, we focused on moving forward and filling in gaps when needed. We are continuing that this year as we think that it was incredibly beneficial,” he said.
At the high school level, though, Solan said Cheshire saw students were less engaged than they had been in past years — likely because of the pandemic.
“We have data indicating that our students didn't spend as much time on testing as they historically had, which we believe hindered results. While we continued to be competitive in the state we are looking to make greater gains this year by focusing on the acceleration model at the high school level,” he said.
Of the students taking the SBAC in Cheshire, 77.23 percent met their gradelevel benchmark in language arts and 67.98 percent did in math.
Jody Goeler, superintendent of Hamden Public Schools, noted that student performance on the language arts portion of the SBAC mostly was consistent across grade levels in the 2020-21 academic year, although the high schoolbound eighth-grade students saw a low rate of students meeting or exceeding the math benchmark. Hamden eighth-grade students who learned mostly in classrooms last year, which was about one-quarter of Hamden eighth-graders, met the math benchmark at a rate of 32.9 percent. The other threefourths of students met the math benchmark at a rate of 18.4 percent.
Bob Rader, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, said he believes seeing that students who learned mostly in-person received higher scores than those who didn’t is useful information and should help to set educational priorities during the ongoing pandemic.
“We’re just hopeful the mitigation factors such as masking will help keep students in school and that we will perhaps by the winter have a vaccination for all of our students,” he said.
However, Rader said he would be dismayed for the only takeaway from the testing data to be that students score higher on exams when they learn in person, as gaps between students of different racial and socioeconomic statuses remain.
“We are still concerned about achievement gaps and will keep our focus on making sure every student will succeed,” he said.