Only half to sixty percent of students met English language proficiency standards in testing for the 2024-2025 school year, according to recent data from the Connecticut State Department of Education (CSDE), falling well below the target of 100 percent proficiency. Other recent data show grade schools falling below other targets, including the number of students who graduate with a high school diploma within four years.
Across all grades, 58.7 percent of students met the English language proficiency target in literacy and 55.7 percent met the oral target. The CSDE target is 100 percent proficiency. Both those numbers decreased from the previous year. While the percentage of proficient students increased between the 2022-2023 school year and the 2023-2024 school year, overall, the proficiency rate has decreased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data is not available for the 2020-2021 school year, when schools were closed and learning occurred virtually.
Other testing metrics show no more than a quarter of students testing proficient in English language subtests during the most recent school year. Testing scores for the most recent school year show 23.8 percent of tested students were proficient or above proficient in tests for speaking. That was the highest test score across the subcategories that were assessed. Students were least proficient in writing, with only 15.4 percent of students testing proficient or above proficient.
16.3 percent of students tested 16.3 percent proficient or above overall.
The percentage of students testing proficient on English language subtest subjects follows a similar trend: while scores have decreased since the COVID-19 pandemic, they have risen slightly from the previous year. There is no testing data available for the 2020-2021 school year.
Recently released CSDE data also shows the department falling below its four-year graduation rate target.
For the 2023-2024 school year, the most recent year for which data is available, the four-year graduation rate was 88.9 percent.
The state’s target is 94 percent. At no point in the past five years of data has the four-year graduation rate risen above 90 percent. Since the 2019-2020 school year, which was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the four-year graduation rate has fluctuated between 88.8 percent and 89.6 percent.
Data for five-year and six-year graduation rates has not been recently reported, but data CSDE has published also shows those rates falling below the target of 94 percent.
CSDE has seen other metrics improve post-COVID. Chronic absenteeism rates have fallen and math and science scores have improved
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