Politics & Government

Governor Recognizes Farmington Schools

Names Farmington schools to each category of 'Schools of Distinction' list.

The governor recently released this year’s list of “Schools of Distinction,” recognizing schools that fall into one of three categories. Farmington  (along with Greenwich, Guilford and Ridgefield) was one of four districts to have schools named in all of the categories.

The first category ranks schools that have enabled students in traditionally underperforming subgroups to achieve at high levels. The subgroups include: students with disabilities, English language learners, Black students, Hispanic students and students eligible for free or reduced lunch. Achievement was measured by students’ scores on the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT).

Farmington’s Irving A Robbins Middle School is named on the list for Hispanic students with some of the highest performance scores in Connecticut. In the school’s 2012-11 strategic school profile (the most recent listed on the district website), IAR is reported to have 36 Hispanic students, or 5.2 percent of the schools population.

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The second category ranks improvement among schools – both those with a school performance index greater than 88 and those with a lower index.

While all of Farmington’s schools rank above the state’s target 88 point mark, two of its elementary schools - West District and Union School – were found to have made significant improvement. The category honors schools that are among the top 10 percent of schools making gains in their groups and have achievement gaps of less than 10 SPI points for the majority subgroups.

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The last category ranks highest overall performance by the state’s schools – those that have performance indices greater than 88 points and perform in the top 10 percent of Connecticut schools. In this category, Irving A Robbins and Union School are again recognized.

In announcing the awards, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy had this to say about the schools that earned the distinction.

"I applaud the schools that are here today — their commitment to education is tremendous and they are part of the larger conversation about replicating what works in education.”

For a complete listing of this year’s “Schools of Distinction,” please visit: http://www.sde.ct.gov/sde/lib/sde/pdf/nclb/waiver/distinction_schools.pdf


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