Parents can now see for themselves if the school their child attends is the among the best or worst in the state.

A new website with school-by-school ratings — based on a 100-point scale — was published by the State Department of Education Monday afternoon.

As expected, many of the schools in urban districts scored low.

These ratings will be used for several policy decisions.

The lowest-rated schools — also known as “Turnaround Schools” — will be guaranteed state and district intervention. These are the schools targeted to become Commissioner Network schools. The “Review” and “Focus” schools will require those schools to work with the state department to plan a strategy to improve.

The state panel tasked by Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to fix the way schools are financed is also considering using this 100-point scale — also known as the School Performance Index — to determine how the state dishes out state education funding.

Education Commissioner Stefan Pryor in a statement said these ratings are better than the previous system used under No Child Left Behind that tracked for “Adequate Yearly Progress” and labeled schools “in need of improvement”.

“The state’s new school accountability and support framework enables more precise, more helpful snapshots of school performance,” Pryor said. “By heralding schools making significant progress and highlighting schools in need of greater support, the system will also help districts and the state focus our efforts where they are needed most.”

Here’s the story the Mirror published last month on this new rating system.

Jacqueline was CT Mirror’s Education and Housing Reporter, and an original member of the CT Mirror staff, joining shortly before our January 2010 launch. Her awards include the best-of-show Theodore A. Driscoll Investigative Award from the Connecticut Society of Professional Journalists in 2019 for reporting on inadequate inmate health care, first-place for investigative reporting from the New England Newspaper and Press Association in 2020 for reporting on housing segregation, and two first-place awards from the National Education Writers Association in 2012. She was selected for a prestigious, year-long Propublica Local Reporting Network grant in 2019, exploring a range of affordable and low-income housing issues. Before joining CT Mirror, Jacqueline was a reporter, online editor and website developer for The Washington Post Co.’s Maryland newspaper chains. Jacqueline received an undergraduate degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University and a master’s in public policy from Trinity College.

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