HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) -- The Connecticut Department of Education is out with the latest results from its Next Generation Accountability System.
The process looks at how well schools are preparing their students for higher education and life after school.
"What you see here is the scorecard for the state as a whole," said the State Department of Education's Chief Performance Officer Ajit Gopalakrishnan as graphics filled a conference room screen on Wednesday.
The Next Generation Accountability System uses a dozen different indicators to rate schools.
"Which really goes beyond test scores and attendance and graduation rates. It looks at a slew of different indicators," Gopalakrishnan said.
Some good news from those indicators: math and science achievement is up, chronic absenteeism is down, and more students are on track for graduation since the low point of the COVID-19 crisis.
"You can see the effect of the pandemic: 2021-22, especially for students with high needs, how that kind of took a dip, from being over 80% to down to 73%," Gopalakrishnan said.
All these numbers help the state identify and turn around schools that need help. Some reasons are easy to figure out, like why physical fitness is down.
"Not only as a result of the pandemic," John Frassinelli, the education division director for the Connecticut State Department of Education, said. "Kids are just more sedentary and doing more on their phones and fewer active things."
All the information is available for the public to see.
"That's why I'm so pleased that we spend the time to make that information transparent, so we can have the conversations that we need to have about how to make change, and how do we move forward," State Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker said.