Granby Students Perform Well on Standardized Tests

It’s late September, which means that school boards across the state are sifting through the mountains of data generated from test-score alphabet soup.

At the board of education meeting on Wednesday evening, several presentations revealed that Granby middle school and high school students, by and large, performed well on the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT), the Connecticut Academic Performance Tests (CAPT), the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the American College Testing (ACT) and Advanced Placement (AP) tests when measured against: their own year-over-year test results; students from comparable school districts; and statewide averages.

“There’s a great deal to be proud of,” Diane Dugas, director of curriculum, teaching and learning, said at the end of the meeting.

Granby Memorial Middle School students scored particularly well on the reading (95 percent of 7th graders and 87 percent of 8th graders at or above proficiency), math (94 percent of 7th graders and 93 percent of 8th graders at or above proficiency) and science (88 percent of 8th graders at or above proficiency) portions of the CMTs, which is administered to students in grades 3 through 8.

GMMS students struggled, however, on the writing section of the test, as only 73 percent of seventh graders and 79 percent of 8th graders tested at or above proficiency.

In terms of cohort analysis - tracking the same group of students as they progress from on year to the next - the 7th grade writing results represented a 12 percent dip from the prior year’s performance on the CMTs.

GMMS Principal Paul Osypuk said during his district improvement report that his staff had identified the reader/text connection strand on the writing portion of the CMT as in need of improvement and focus.

Osypuk said that several initiatives were also being implemented at the school, including the creation a reader/writer workshop and Read 180 program.

Student school board representative Sean Goodridge said that one of the issues from was the topic on which he and his colleagues had to write for the CMT.

“One year it was ‘What’s your favorite kitchen appliance,’” Goodridge said, noting that many students had difficulty connecting with that topic.

At the high school level, Granby Memorial High Principal Dr. Patricia Law reported that Granby 10th-grade students made significant gains on the CAPT over the 2010 results.

Indeed, the Granby sophomores were the top performers in their district reference group (DRG) in math (83.9 percent at or above goal, representing a 4.9 percent increase) and science (83.9 percent at or above goal, a 10.4 percent increase), and they rose from 16th to 8th in reading (70.7 percent at or above goal, a 4.2 percent increase) on the CAPT.

Those significant gains were slightly offset by a dip on the writing portion of the test, where 81.3 percent (13th in the DRG and 28th in the state) of 10th graders tested at or above proficiency, down from 84 percent last year.

All in all, school administrators were pleased with the results.

“When we take a look scores at the CAPT test, those are tremendous increases,” Superintendent of Schools Alan Addley said.

Granby students also continued to improve on the SAT, which was taken by 92 percent of the 2011 GMHS graduates.

Students averaged 546 in math, 546 in critical reading and 537 in writing, compared with 513/509/513 state and 514/497/489 national averages.

Just 22 Granby students took the ACT, an alternative to the SAT that is used to determine whether a student is prepared to take college level courses in English, reading, science and writing.

Ninety-five percent of Granby students met the benchmark in English, 82 percent in math, 82 percent in reading and 36 percent in science (biology).

“Somebody didn’t like biology,” school board chairman Cal Heminway quipped.

As for the AP program, 183 Granby students took 322 tests in 16 different areas, with 79.2 percent passing with a score of three or better.