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Younger Fairfield Students Gain in Reading

by Greg Canuel

FAIRFIELD, Conn.— The 2011 Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMTs) reveal a mixture of successes and struggles for Fairfield’s students. Superintendent Dr. David Title and his staff are still hard at work sifting through the results. 

Students in grades 3-8 take the CMTs each March across the state. The exams cover math, reading and writing for all students, as well as science for fifth- and eighth-graders. Students are grouped into five achievement levels:  Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, Goal and Advanced. This test is used by the federal government to measure yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind law. 

The town’s third- and fifth-graders showed improvement across the board from their counterparts last school year. But the rest of Fairifeld’s grade levels showed declines in at least two subjects, math and writing.

The brightest spot in Fairfield’s district-wide results was in reading. Every grade but one had more students hit the "At" or "Above Goal" level than in 2010. The sole outlier, sixth grade, only dropped three tenths of a percentage point.

Here’s the percentage of students across all of Fairfield who scored at or above goal on the CMTs since 2009:

2009 2010 2011

Grade 3

Math 80.8 80.8 82.3

Reading 73.0 76.2 76.4

Writing 78.2 72.1 78.1

Grade 4

Math 80.7 83.7 82.3

Reading 78.5 78.7 80.6

Writing 80.4 82.5 81.9

Grade 5

Math 84.8 86.0 87.5

Reading 82.4 77.6 79.4

Writing 83.6 79.9 80.7

Science 77.5 75.1 79.8

Grade 6

Math 84.7 85.4 85.3

Reading 83.5 89.0 88.7

Writing 83.1 88.0 83.2

Grade 7

Math 85.6 88.3 86.3

Reading 88.8 92.5 91.0

Writing 78.5 78.8 78.0

Grade 8

Math 84.0 87.6 86.8

Reading 84.8 89.0 90.6

Writing 80.5 81.3 79.3

Science 84.5 84.8 83.0

Full results are available at the state Department of Education’s website. Check back with TheDailyFairfield later for a more detailed analysis of the CMT results and comments from Fairfield Public Schools officials.

Have a question about the state’s standardized tests? Send them to gcanuel@thedailyfairifeld.com. 

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