West Hartford's CMT Scores at Rock Bottom. Is it any wonder?

I took some time earlier this fall to visit the Connecticut Department of Education website to review and analyze the Connecticut Mastery Test ("CMT") scores for the towns in West Hartford's "DRG." DRG is an acronym for District Reference Group. According to the Dept of Education's detailed analysis, "the district reference group is a classification system in which districts that have public school students with similar socioeconomic status and need are grouped together. Grouping like districts together is useful in order to make legitimate comparisons across districts." (this is verbatim quote from a Research Bulletin issued by the State Dept of Education in June of 2006.)

For purposes of this exercise, I looked only at 2009 CMT scores for our "DRG" and looked solely at the percentage of students who performed at the proficient level -- which is the middle level of the 5 different levels of performance: (below basic, basic, proficient, goal, and advanced.)

There are 21 school districts within our DRG. I reviewed the following CMT scores / content areas: Reading, Writing, Math and Science for grades 5 and 8, and Reading, Writing, and Math for grades 3, 4, 6, and 7. What I saw when reviewing West Hartford's 2009 CMT scores (% of students who performed at the proficient level) vs. the other towns in our "DRG" was disheartening to say the least, and appalling at worst:

In 10 of the 20 (50%) content areas, our scores were the lowest in the DRG.
In 6 of the 20 (30%) content areas, our scores were second lowest in the DRG.
In 2 0f the 20 (10%) content areas, our scores were third lowest in the DRG.
In 2 of the 20 (10%) of content areas, our scores were fourth lowest in the DRG.

Test scores are not everything, but they are the single best assessment tool we have to determine whether our students are learning the things they need to know, whether the curriculum is appropriate or not, and whether the Board of Education is making measurable academic achievement THE top priority for the Superintendent and the district - or whether they are focused more on a social / social re-engineering agenda. With the current Democrat Board majority spending their time on block scheduling, sleep studies, whether or not Twinkies should be allowed in the vending machines, and spending an inordinate amount of their time (and the administration's) trying to comply with a racial imbalance statute that can never truly be satisfied by West Hartford without a major redistricting, is it any wonder that our CMT scores are the lowest among comparable towns?