Improving Groton Schools: Cutler Middle School

Cutler Middle School students made adequate yearly progress in math and reading this year, as they often do.

But the school also mirrors a national trend where achievement gaps exist among various groups, and as such, has challenges like any other school. Data show a gap between majority students and some minority populations, special education students and those receiving free and reduced lunch.

Diversity

Cutler enrolls 356 students, including 17 black students, 18 Hispanic students and 26 Asian students. The students also include 44 children receiving special education services and 47 receiving free or reduced lunch.

Performance varies among these groups: for example, 66.7 percent of seventh grade special education students scored at proficiency or better in math in 2011, compared to 82.4 percent of those receiving free and reduced lunch, and 93.9 percent of students in the grade as a whole. In the same grade and year, 71.4 percent of black students scored at or above proficiency.

Test results are not reported statewide for groups of fewer than 40 students, but the school keeps this data and reviews it when setting improvement goals.

“I don’t think people are really aware of how varied our student population is,” said Pat Berggren, special education teacher.

“We want our students who have done well to obviously do better,” she said. “We’re trying to look at the overall picture. But we’re also trying to look at specific groups.”

Principal Stephen Carboni said the school may gain tools that help many students by figuring out what helps one group.

Special Education

Culter also houses a special education program that enrolls children from across the district.

Katharine Loomis works in the “Applied Behavior Analysis” program, a special education program for children with behavioral or cognitive problems. Typically it enrolls children with autism.

“We have increasing numbers of students and the behaviors have become more severe, but we’ve also seen a lot of progress with the students we’ve had,” she said.

For example, she described a student who was pulled from class at least once a day at the start of the year, and who stayed in class all day by years end.

Berggren said the challenge for the school is reaching many children with different needs.

The Improvement Plan

Cutler's improvement plan seeks to boost reading performance among three groups of students and reduce office referrals for discipline for all students. 

The goals for the next three years are listed below:

•  Increase by 15 points the percentage of students scoring at goal or higher in reading among these groups: black students, those receiving free or reduced lunch, and those receiving special education services.

•  Reduce the percentage of students referred to administration for discipline by 15 percent.

The Targets

Below are the percentage of sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Cutler Middle School who demonstrated proficiency or better in reading and math on the Connecticut Mastery Tests. The federal goal for 2011 was 89 percent in reading and 91 percent in math.

Test results for specific groups of students, such as black students, Hispanic students or those receiving free or reduced lunch, were not listed if there were fewer than 40 students in those categories.