Darien Students Lag Peers in CAPT, Grade 8 CMT Tests

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include more tables. New tables are identified with "UPDATE:" in the subheadline. To explore results yourself, see this official website.

Darien lagged behind school districts considered its peers this year in both Connecticut Academic Performance Test scores and scores for the Connecticut Mastery Test for Grade 8 students.

Both CMT and CAPT scores were released Thursday by the Connecticut Department of Education. The department said the results overall were generally encouraging, although not much different from 2011.

"The results of the 2012 Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) were mixed," the department said in a news release. "While student performance increased in all content areas when compared to the CAPT baseline year of 2007, it decreased in some areas when compared to last year. As compared to 2011, performance increased slightly in writing, remained relatively constant in science and reading, and decreased in mathematics."

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State Education Commissioner Stephen Prior said in the news release:

"We’re pleased to see that there are signs of progress in our schools. That said, while schools are moving more students into Proficient- and Goal-level performance, significant gaps in achievement continue between economically disadvantaged students and their peers. So there is reason for optimism regarding our system’s ability to advance, as well as cause for continuing concern. We need to work together to implement the reforms and initiatives we’ve recently launched in order to build on areas of progress and remedy the persistent problems in our schools."

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UPDATE: Connecticut Academic Performance Test Results Over Time

Darien's CAPT test results are down in nearly every category from the year before, with the exception of writing, in which they're up by a mere 10th of a percentage point.

For Mathematics, the annual results for the percentage at or above goal appear to have bounced around from year to year. Last year was the highest score ever in that area. This year, they're down to the third-worst level over the past six years. at 82.5 percent, the figure is 5.1 percent below the year before.

An even bigger drop came in reading scores, with the percentage at or above goal dropping 7.6 percent from the year before, to only 7.5 percent.

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UPDATE: Grade 8 Connecticut Mastery Test Results Over Time

In mathematics, Grade 8 scores in both percentage at or above goal and at or above proficiency were the second-highest in the past seven years, although the proficiency score dropped somewhat from last year.

Reading scores dropped somewhat but are still the second-highest scores in the seven years of the test.

In the writing test, for both percentage at or above goal and at or above proficiency, this year's Grade 8 results were the best in the seven years of the test.

Science scores for Grade 8 students have shown a steady increase over the years in both percenage at or above goal and at or above proficiency, although there was a slight drop in the proficiency percentage this year (0.3 percent). That's still Darien's second-best year out of five.

Comparing Connecticut Academic Performance Test Results

Here are this year's CAPT results for Darien in four different areas, with comparisons to scores for several similar school districts. (The districts chosen are each in the , a state classification of districts with similar resources and students of similar social and economic backgrounds):

For mathematics, Darien lagged the other towns:

Darien was well below these other districts in percentage of students who had achieved or exceeded a certain testing goal. It was much less far behind when student proficiency was tested:

Reading scores were also bringing up the bottom of this group:

Again, Darien brings up the tail end:

Connecticut Mastery Test results: Grade 8

Here are Connecticut Mastery Test results for eighth grade students in Darien and similar towns. Darien was near the top of the scores:

Darien's scores were middling in reading test results:

Darien scored near the top when compared with these other school districts:

In terms of percentage at or above proficiency, Darien was near the bottom of the group of eighth graders tested, but it was near the top in terms of percentage of students who were at or above the goal: