NEW CANAAN, Conn. High grades for the New Canaan Public Schools by an education advocacy group are not surprising to Superintendent David Abbey.
This information is not new to us, Abbey said Thursday in reacting to the districts report card from the Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now, a nonprofit organization that advocates for better educations for students across the state. Weve looked at the information very carefully in much more discerning ways (and) in much greater detail."
Overall, New Canaan received an A-minus grade from ConnCAN. The organization also ranked it 10th out of 163 districts in the state. The report card measures student performance in math, reading, science and writing.
Abbey said its important to view how New Canaan schools have performed over several years rather than in a single year. In 2009 and 2010, ConnCAN ranked New Canaan first and gave it an A grade. If you look at the three years there, you see very strong performances, so were very pleased, Abbey said Thursday.
New Canaan High School earned a B-plus, placing seventh among 190 high schools. Saxe Middle School earned an A, placing it fourth among 298 middle schools. West School received an A, marking it first among state elementary schools. East and South Schools received A grades, with East ranking 32nd among 571 elementary schools, while South was ranked 44th.
Abbey also noted that the district delves into student performance more deeply than the school rankings the ConnCAN report card shows, including how many students are performing at advanced levels. We do a deeper and broader analysis than the information presented, he said.
Patrick Riccards, CEO of ConnCAN, said New Canaan is an example of a district thats doing well, particularly in middle school education.
The big takeaway is New Canaan Public Schools are doing a great job and the educators should be proud of what theyre doing, he said. But across the state and in New Canaan, theres more that we can do.
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