Brookfield Elementary Schools Score Well on CMTs

Brookfield school administrators told the Board of Education (BOE) that the district is one of a small number in the metro Danbury area that is making adequate yearly progress in all grades and that it has strategies to further improve performance on the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT), where it already is scoring well above the state average.

Superintendent Anthony Bivona told the BOE that The News-Times recently reported that Brookfield was one of a handful of districts in the area with no failing schools.

Assistant Superintendent Genie Slone said during a PowerPoint presentation at the BOE’s regular meeting on September 21 that Whisconier Middle School (WMS) “has achieved safe harbor [status] for the last five years in reading for students with disabilities.”

The CMT is a state standardized test that measures higher-order thinking skills and is used to analyze student progress and make comparisons to other members of the District Reference Group (DRG). Brookfield is a member of DRG B, which includes 21 districts, including New Fairfield and Newtown.

Students at Huckleberry Hill Elementary School (HHES) and WMS are among those in the state that take the CMT exams each March.

Slone praised Bivona for paying more “attention” to Brookfield’s ranking in its DRG since he arrived in July 2007.

She said on the CMT, which is administered to students in third through eighth grades, 89 percent of the students are meeting the proficiency goal in reading, 91 percent in math and 70 percent in writing.

Slone said the district is taking steps to make further improvements be developing common pre and post assessments for all classes from kindergarten through 12th grade.

She said the school district has increased its data team support over the recent years, including the establishment of a district-wide data team.

As a result of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation that was signed by former President George W. Bush in 2002 and improvements in technology, schools are able to do more extensive analysis of individual student progress now.

Slone said the district also plans to use a variety of reading programs and will “implement scientifically based research interventions for struggling students.”

She added that “all teachers will establish measurable student goals based on data results” and there will be a “strong focus on non-fiction reading and writing in classes in addition to small group interventions.”

Slone said the CMT will continue through 2014 and in 2015 a new evaluation, Smarter Balance, will be used in third through eighth grade.

The state also has a standardized exam, the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) that is given each March to 10th grade students.