Schools

Wilton Students Show Mastery of State Tests

Despite dips in a few areas, scores were strong for Wilton students on the CMT and CAPT tests.

Ordinarily the Wilton school system has a few weeks to drill into the results of state-issued tests to spot trends before the results are released to the public. This year, they had two days.

Despite that short time frame, Assistant Superintendent Arlene Gottesman said the system was pleased with both CMT and CAPT scores, with students continuing to perform "well above state averages."

"We are very pleased with our tests results," Gottesman said. "We're well above the 85 percent mark, many times into the 90s."

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Gottesman was referencing the fact that 85 percent or more of Wilton students scored at or above the goal level across all grades in all subjects on the CMTs. Wilton's cohort scores, which monitor year-to-year progress for individual groups of students, also showed a "marked improvement for all student cohorts in all subjects." That fact is reflective of the school system doing a good job helping students grow their knowledge and skill sets from grade to grade.

There were some declines, with grade 5 dropping 3.2 percentage points and grade 7 writing declining five percentage points. Gottesman said that the system was still pleased with the language-related scores "because [the school system] has spent the last four or five years targeting literacy, reading and writing," and she said the scores generally reflect that focus.

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Gottesman and District Testing Coordinator Lynn Driver both cautioned not to read too far into any declines as they can be attributable to a few low scores, rather than a general decline across an entire grade.

"It can only be one or two students that make a difference between moving up a place [in the District Reference Group rankings] or not," Gottesman said. "We don't know how many students we're talking about...I do know that the administrators went immediately into looking at students that may not have made DRP and are looking to put them in a supportive reading class in September...we have and do immediately target intensive instruction for those students in need."

"A bigger discrepancy (in scores year to year) would be more curriculum-related," Driver said. "But if you're looking at smaller percentage points, it's more based on a few different students."

The school system will spend much of the rest of the summer analyzing the scores and determining where curriculum adjustments and additional student preparation may be necessary. Parents will receive detailed CMT score reports in September that will provide individual student performance results for their children.

Despite such adjustments, however, Gottesman stressed that Wilton does not teach to either the CMT or CAPT test but, rather, that the comprehensive education that Wilton students receive naturally prepares them well for standardized testing. She added that Wilton also benefits from a student body that is generally motivated and eager to learn and also receives encouragement and support at home.

"I think our students are pretty well-prepared," Gottesman said. "We have very supportive parents, we have an expectation from the parents and the community about how the children should be doing. Our community wants the students to come into the schools well-prepared...and we don't teach to the test, we want authentic learning. We want our students to have the skills necessary to be critical thinkers, to be able to analyze problems and solve problems."

"[Our teachers] really embed the skills into the curriculum day so that it's sort of a seamless process, rather than teaching for this one-day test," Driver added.

On the CAPT, grade 10 student scores increased in science and writing compared to 2009 and the number of students achieving the state goal in math decreased slightly. Reading scores remained the same.


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