As a result of
Commissioner D’Angelo’s letter in the Sunday Republican of July 25, I decided to do a little research and find out just how Waterbury’s scores stacked up to the rest of the state. What I found provides an interesting insight to the discussions that are sure to arise as we head into the 2010-11 school year.
Some of the numbers were disappointing, while others actually gave the city of Waterbury something to be proud of. There are two big questions that arise from my basic analysis.
1) Will the school board look at the disappointing side of the numbers to make some serious changes?
2) Will the public look at the positive aspect of these numbers and stop trying to concoct excuses for bashing everything and anything that is Waterbury?
So what are the results from the 2010 school year? To start with, let’s look at the results from Waterbury compared to the results from across the state of Connecticut. The table below lists these results for all grades of CMT and CAPT.
2010 RESULTS | WATERBURY | STATE |
|---|
GRADE 3 MATH | 74.4 | 83.6 |
GRADE 3 READING | 53.8 | 72.3 |
GRADE 3 WRITING | 65.7 | 80.3 |
GRADE 4 MATH | 77.5 | 85.2 |
GRADE 4 READING | 52.2 | 72.9 |
GRADE 4 WRITING | 77.4 | 86.5 |
GRADE 5 MATH | 82.6 | 87.8 |
GRADE 5 READING | 58.2 | 75.4 |
GRADE 5 WRITING | 75.7 | 87.3 |
5 SCIENCE | 64.4 | 82.5 |
GRADE 6 MATH | 67.2 | 88.2 |
GRADE 6 READING | 64.6 | 85.5 |
GRADE 6 WRITING | 63.9 | 85.5 |
GRADE 7 MATH | 65.3 | 87.4 |
GRADE 7 READING | 66.4 | 85.3 |
GRADE 7 WRITING | 60.7 | 79.7 |
GRADE 8 MATH | 59.6 | 86.6 |
GRADE 8 READING | 58.8 | 82.6 |
GRADE 8 WRITING | 60.4 | 80.6 |
GRADE 8 SCIENCE | 40.9 | 76.0 |
GRADE 10 MATH | 41.1 | 78.8 |
GRADE 10 READING | 61.1 | 81.5 |
GRADE 10 WRITING | 75.5 | 82.9 |
GRADE 10 SCIENCE | 46.1 | 86.2 |
As you can see, this is the disappointing side of the numbers. The Waterbury School System was below the state averages in every test from Grades 3-10. Clearly the Department of Education has a lot of work to do, and I don’t think there’s anyone that denies that. From what I’ve seen, the big questions are what action to take, and how quickly to take that action. Some members of the Board want to impose sweeping changes yesterday, while others seem to drag their feet on new initiatives.
However, the story does not end with these few statistics. There are always going to be people who look at this one bit of information and try to declare that the Waterbury School System is “The Worst In The State” and “Nothing Ever Goes Right In Waterbury” and “Everyone Needs to Move Out” and on and on.
What is truly sad about that situation is that the people who act like that don’t realize that they’re contributing to the problem. Perception and perspective is the key to understanding any situation, whether real or fictional. So let’s add some perspective to these numbers.
The most important aspect to this discussion of perspective is who we compare ourselves too when we look at our test results. It is easy for the public (and the newspaper) to compare us to districts such as Wolcott, Region 15 (Middlebury/Southbury), Region 16 (Prospect/Beacon Falls), Cheshire, and Watertown. These are all towns that we are familiar with, and can relate too. However, these towns have very little to do with education in Waterbury. As a state, Connecticut has a reputation of being very self segregating, and the greater Waterbury area is no different.
During the 2007-2008 school year, the students in Waterbury were 28.1% Black, 43.1% Hispanic, and 26.7% White. The students in Wolcott, on the other hand, were 1.9% Black, 3.7% Hispanic, and 92.6% White.
Wolcott had 13.8% of its students qualify for free and reduced price lunch; Waterbury had 71.9% of its students qualify for the same program.
Wolcott had 4.2% of its students come from households where English is not the primary language, in Waterbury that number was 14.2%.
(Data collected from the Waterbury and Wolcott 2007-2008 Strategic School Profiles) Obviously, comparing Wolcott and Waterbury is an exercise in futility, and shows what those of us who have been in the classroom mean when we say that there are certain factors beyond our control.
So what numbers should we look at? In an effort to answer that question the state divided the different school districts into 9 groups known as
District Reference Groups (DRGs) lettered A through I. The schools in a particular DRG have similar demographics, and (it is assumed) similar challenges. DRG A has places such as Darien, Westport, and Wilton. Waterbury is currently placed in DRG I. Therefore, if we are to compare ourselves to similar schools, we should look at those in our DRG.
The schools currently in DRG I are, Bridgeport, Hartford, New Britain, New Haven, New London, Waterbury, and Windham
When you compare Waterbury to these six other districts, you come to realize that, though things are difficult, they are far from hopeless. To illustrate my point, the table below shows the results of the 3rd grade CMT for the seven schools in DRG I. (The number in parenthesis is our ranking within the DRG.)
CMT GRADE 3 RESULTS | MATH | READING | WRITING |
|---|
BRIDGEPORT | 57.2 | 41.2 | 59.5 |
HARTFORD | 61.4 | 45.7 | 66.4 |
NEW BRITAIN | 43.6 | 35.2 | 50.8 |
NEW HAVEN | 62.7 | 41.3 | 56.7 |
NEW LONDON | 60.9 | 44.2 | 62.6 |
WATERBURY | 74.4 (1) | 53.8 (1) | 65.7 (3) |
WINDHAM | 68.3 | 48.8 | 66.2 |
As you can see, the only section of the test where Waterbury students were outperformed was the Writing sample. In that test we were third out of seven districts, but the top district (Hartford) was only 0.7% better. The trend continues in the 4th and 5th Grade CMT results, where Waterbury was the top performing district in six out of seven areas. The only test where we were out performed was the 5th Grade writing, where we came in second to New London.
(see below)CMT GRADE 4 RESULTS | MATH | READING | WRITING |
|---|
BRIDGEPORT | 59.0 | 41.6 | 67.3 |
HARTFORD | 58.9 | 34.1 | 65.8 |
NEW BRITAIN | 49.7 | 35.4 | 57.1 |
NEW HAVEN | 67.4 | 44.7 | 71.5 |
NEW LONDON | 61.6 | 41.4 | 75.1 |
WATERBURY | 77.5 (1) | 52.2 (1) | 77.4 (1) |
WINDHAM | 66.8 | 48.8 | 72.4 |
CMT GRADE 5 RESULTS | MATH | SCIENCE | READING | WRITING |
|---|
BRIDGEPORT | 66.5 | 50.0 | 39.5 | 71.0 |
HARTFORD | 62.7 | 43.6 | 32.2 | 66.1 |
NEW BRITAIN | 58.8 | 47.5 | 40.1 | 61.0 |
NEW HAVEN | 68.4 | 55.9 | 47.7 | 70.2 |
NEW LONDON | 78.5 | 63.4 | 56.8 | 81.3 |
WATERBURY | 82.6 (1) | 64.4 (1) | 58.2 (1) | 75.7 (2) |
WINDHAM | 47.2 | 41.8 | 33.0 | 56.1 |
After 5th Grade our standing in the DRG seems to drop, but at no point are we the lowest performing school out of the 7 in our group. This suggests that programs that have been implemented in the Elementary Schools seem to be working, it also could support the belief that there needs to be a change away from the current Middle Schools to more K-8 schools.
(Wait, wasn’t that one of the reasons for building or rebuilding Gilmartin, Duggan, Carrington, and the To-Be-Named School in the North End?) Further, it seems that across the grades, our students are scoring well in the Writing section of the CMT and CAPT. This year’s 6th grade class is the only one that was not either first or second in their DRG. Even though they were fifth, they did considerably better then the two districts behind them, New Britain and Windham. The Reading section of these tests also show some promise, as Waterbury had the best scores in the DRG in 7th grade, and came in second among the DRG I schools on the CAPT.
There is an area of the results that does make me pause in concern, however. Waterbury’s scores in Math and Science after the students leave Elementary School are simply unacceptable. If the Board of Education wishes to prioritize on a specific section of the CMT and CAPT, I would strongly encourage them to focus on Math and Science. Technology is constantly changing and improving, devices that I would not have dreamed of when I was in High School are now commonplace, and our students are going to need to be able to keep up if they wish to thrive in the 21st century.
CMT GRADE 6 RESULTS | MATH | READING | WRITING |
|---|
BRIDGEPORT | 73.0 | 64.4 | 70.3 |
HARTFORD | 71.8 | 64.8 | 69.1 |
NEW BRITAIN | 53.3 | 47.5 | 50.4 |
NEW HAVEN | 74.2 | 74.4 | 71.2 |
NEW LONDON | 60.1 | 67.3 | 72.4 |
WATERBURY | 67.2 (4) | 64.6 (4) | 63.9 (5) |
WINDHAM | 52.4 | 50.5 | 53.2 |
CMT GRADE 7 RESULTS | MATH | READING | WRITING |
|---|
BRIDGEPORT | 65.4 | 63.9 | 55.6 |
HARTFORD | 65.8 | 59.2 | 51.9 |
NEW BRITAIN | 53.5 | 52.1 | 39.3 |
NEW HAVEN | 70.8 | 66.3 | 51.8 |
NEW LONDON | 60.6 | 65.4 | 64.4 |
WATERBURY | 65.3 (4) | 66.4 (1) | 60.7 (2) |
WINDHAM | 49.8 | 48.4 | 36.2 |
CMT GRADE 8 RESULTS | MATH | SCIENCE | READING | WRITING |
|---|
BRIDGEPORT | 61.6 | 43.4 | 52.3 | 53.6 |
HARTFORD | 63.1 | 44.4 | 59.5 | 57.9 |
NEW BRITAIN | 56.2 | 35.2 | 49.7 | 46.8 |
NEW HAVEN | 71.6 | 48.5 | 66.5 | 55.3 |
NEW LONDON | 54.5 | 44.3 | 58.9 | 54.7 |
WATERBURY | 59.6 (4) | 40.9 (5) | 58.8 (4) | 60.4 (1) |
WINDHAM | 52.5 | 34.7 | 42.2 | 39.4 |
CAPT RESULTS | MATH | SCIENCE | READING | WRITING |
|---|
BRIDGEPORT | 33.7 | 37.7 | 38.9 | 50.9 |
HARTFORD | 52.2 | 49.9 | 64.3 | 68.1 |
NEW BRITAIN | 49 | 46.1 | 59.1 | 58.7 |
NEW HAVEN | 49.4 | 53.1 | 59.0 | 70.7 |
NEW LONDON | 50.5 | 56.3 | 55.0 | 67.0 |
WATERBURY | 41.1 (6) | 46.1 (5) | 61.1 (2) | 75.5 (1) |
WINDHAM | 45.1 | 55.8 | 56.0 | 58.8 |
In conclusion, the CMT and CAPT results of 2010 are a mixed bag of positives and negatives. There are areas of improvement, to be certain, however, simply pointing at sections of the data and complaining without offering any solutions is not going to help anybody, least of all our students.
