New Britain School Test Scores Remain Low and Behind State

At the October Board of Education meeting, the New Britain school district attempted to paint an upbeat picture of school test scores for New Britain in 2022-23 that appear to remain on a downward long-term trend and far below statewide averages.

According to analysis of data from the State Department of Education, between the 2015-16 and 2022-23 school years, the percentage of New Britain students testing at or above proficiency in English language arts (ELA) fell by 6.3%. The New Britain percentage in math over those same years fell by 2.4%.

Even with a 2.7% post-pandemic increase in math between 2021-22 and 2022-23, New Britain’s math scores were still 3.5% less than they were in the 2017-18 school year. ELA scores was worse off still, falling yet further by half a percent between 2021-22 and 2022-23, down to 6.1% below 2017-18 levels.

The school district’s report attempted to present a positive picture of the results, with its first presentation slide highlighting the city’s test score changing from 2021-22 to 2022-23 slightly better than the statewide changes between those years. The district said that the city’s ELA average fell 0.1% less than the statewide average did and increased 0.2% more than the statewide average did in math. The district also touted what it called, “islands of excellence” — five schools that had one or two grade levels with notable increases in either ELA or math.

But the data from the state Department of Education still showed that New Britain ELA and math proficiency scores remain far behind statewide averages.

The state data shows that, while 48.5% of students in 2022-23 statewide met or exceeded proficiency in ELA and 42.5% did in math, New Britain’s scores were less than a third of the statewide score in ELA, at 15.9%, and less than quarter of the statewide average in math, at 10.2%.

Averages in both ELA and math, statewide, have still not recovered to pre-pandemic levels. Statewide average school test scores have fallen farther than New Britain’s since the pandemic began, causing the difference in New Britain’s gap from the state averages to slightly decrease. But that effect appears more attributable to New Britain’s school test scores starting from a far lower pre-pandemic level than the state as a whole, as New Britain’s test scores also fell from pre-pandemic levels.

Prior to the pandemic, New Britain appeared to be falling farther behind the statewide average test scores, with the state averages trending up and New Britain’s down.

The percentage of students statewide testing at or above proficiency increased between 2015-16 and 2018-19, right before the pandemic, up by 0.1% in ELA and 4.1% in math. But New Britain was already on a downward trend over those same years, with ELA proficiency dropping by 2.0% and math by 1.3%.

Mayor Erin Stewart has been widely criticized for low funding for the city’s schools over the years, often not increasing city funding for the schools’ operating budget at all. Over the ten years of Stewart’s city budgeting, the average amount of the city operating funding increase for schools, even after a recent $1.8 million increase, has been about $760,000 per year — just 0.62% per year.

Stewart’s critics have pointed to her near-flat-funding of schools as an important reason for low academic scores in New Britain.

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