In February 2012, the Connecticut State Department of Education participated in a federal application process for flexibility from certain requirements of No Child Left Behind. In May, the U.S. Department of Education approved Connecticut’s flexibility request (or waiver), allowing the State to establish a new accountability system to assess school performance. The new performance measurement system improves the State’s ability to provide more accurate and appropriate interventions, support and recognition to local schools.

Connecticut’s new accountability system improves upon the old one in several ways. The new system:

• Recognizes and values improvement in student achievement at all performance levels unlike the old system, which only recognized movement of students from ‘not proficient’ to ‘proficient’;
• raises expectations by setting the target that all students perform at the ‘goal’ level on the majority of tests they take rather than just perform at the ‘proficient’ level, as in the old system;
• integrates all tested subjects, encouraging schools to improve instruction not only in Mathematics and Reading (as under No Child Left Behind), but also in Science and Writing;
• includes graduation rates as important indicators of high school success;
• identifies schools with struggling student subgroups, which in the past, may have been less visible to parents and educators; and
• enables schools to be classified into new categories, including Turnaround, Review and Focus, Transitioning, Progressing and Excelling Schools, that will enable districts and the State to provide tailored support to individual schools.

New Accountability System