DARIEN, Conn. The scores for Darien High School sophomores on Connecticut standardized tests dropped in nearly every category this year. Scores for all Darien students were still well above the state average and more than 90 percent of students tested at a "proficient" level in all test categories.
The Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) are administered annually in March to students across Connecticut. The CMT tests math, reading and writing for grades three through eight, and science for grades five and eight. The CAPT covers math, reading, writing and science for 10th-grade students. Both have five levels of performance for each subject: below basic, basic, proficient, goal and advanced.
The biggest drop in CAPT scores was in the percentage of students reading at goal level, which fell 7.6 percent, from 82.6 percent to 75 percent. The percentage of students testing at goal level in math fell 5.1 percent, from 87.6 percent to 82.5 percent. Students testing at goal level in science fell 3.3 percent, from 76.4 to 73.1 percent.
Students testing at the proficient level fell in all four categories of the CAPT test. The biggest drop at that level was in reading scores, which fell from 99.4 percent to 97 percent. The only increase in the CAPT test was in the percentage of students testing at goal in writing, which rose 0.1 percent, to 90.9 percent.
Reading scores dropped on the CMTs for nearly every grade level. The percentage of students reading at goal level increased only in grade five, where it rose 0.4 percent, to 86.7 percent. All other grade levels saw decreases in the percentage of students reading at goal level.
The percentage of third-graders reading at proficient level dropped 2.1 percent. Grades six and eight also saw decreases in the students reading at proficient level, but in each case it was less than 1 percent.
Writing scores saw a large improvement on the CMT tests. The percentage of students writing at goal level increased in every grade except for sixth-graders, where scores dropped 3.7 percent, from 90.3 percent to 86.7 percent. The percentage of students writing at proficient level also increased in every grade except grade six, where it dropped 3.1 percent, from 98.7 percent to 95.6 percent.
The biggest improvement in the CMT scores was in the percentage of seventh-grade students who tested at goal level in writing, which rose 6.7 percent, from 84.2 to 90.9 percent.
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