State data released Monday shows that the percentage of Stamford students who met or exceeded the standard in English language arts in the Smarter Balanced Assessment increased slightly from 36.4% in the 2024-25 school year to 36.7% in the 2025-26 school year. This is the second year in a row that the Stamford school district has posted small gains, reverting a trend of decreasing scores dating to at least the 2017-18 school year, when 48.4% of students reached the proficiency benchmark.
“Overall we’re happy with the results,” said Amy Beldotti, the school district’s chief academic officer. “We continue to see rising scores since COVID and are heading back to where we were pre-COVID.”
The performance of Asian and Hispanic students in the English test improved compared with the previous year. The percentage of Asian students who reached proficiency increased from 56.9% in the 2024-25 school year to 59.9% last school year. White and Black students showed slight decreases in proficiency in the assessment.
In math, the percentage of students who reached expectations showed a similar trajectory, with a small increase from the previous school year, from 32.8% in 2024-25 to 32.9% percent in the most recently completed school year. Asian and Hispanic students also posted improved marks in the math assessment compared with the previous year, while white and Black students fared worse.
In both the English and math tests, Stamford scored well below the state numbers. Across Connecticut, 51% of students met or exceeded expectations in English, while 46.7% of students did the same in math, each of those numbers representing an improvement over the previous school year.
The Smarter Balanced Assessment is administered to students in grades 3 to 8.
The district’s effort to roll out consistent curriculum across all grade levels and schools over the past few years has contributed to improvements in test scores, Beldotti said. This year will see the last big part of the rollout, with new math curriculum for grades 3 to 5, she said.
In the Next Generation Science Standards assessment, the percentage of Stamford students who met or exceeded expectations dropped slightly, from 37.6% in 2024-25 to 37.3% in the last school year. The performance of Hispanic students in Stamford stayed level, with 27.9% meeting or exceeding the proficiency level. Asian, Black and white students all posted lower scores than the year prior in the assessment.
Across the state, 51.4% of students met expectations or exceeded them on the science assessment.
The Next Generation Science Standards is given to students in grades 5, 8 and 11.
Science will be an area of focus for the district in the future, Beldotti said.
“I think our science scores are an area I’d like to see better growth in,” she said. “We don’t see as much growth in the sciences as we’d like to see.”
Scores for the SAT, taken by 11th grade students, increased by a small margin in English and math. Of the 955 students who took the test, 23.8% met or exceeded the math benchmark, compared with 23.2% of students who reached the same level the prior school year. In English, 50.9% of students met the expectations, an improvement over the 50.6% percent who achieved that level in the prior school year.
Stamford’s changing demographics can pose a a challenge when it comes to state scores, Beldotti said.
About 66% of the student body is classified as “high needs,” meaning they either have a disability, are an English learner with limited understanding of the language, or are eligible for free or reduced-price meals.
That figure is about 55% across the state of Connecticut.
