Darien officials recommend ending STAMP testing at middle school, keep test at high school

Darien Board of Education curriculum staff recommended on June 4 that the district stop administering the STAMP language-proficiency exam at Middlesex Middle School (MMS) while continuing to use it at Darien High School (DHS) for students seeking the Seal of Biliteracy.

The district review, presented by Scott Webster and middle-school teacher Kathy Chaffee, concluded the test has served as a useful snapshot but is expensive, time-consuming and often duplicative of quarterly classroom-based assessments that better reflect student growth. “Each test costs about $23 per student and takes an average of 2 to 3 weeks to administer at MMS, including practice and makeups, which is disruptive to the curriculum,” Webster said.

Why it matters: STAMP is one recognized route to earn a Seal of Biliteracy and is already used at DHS; continuing it there preserves a standardized path to the credential. At the middle-school level, district staff argued the test provides limited new placement information, arrives too late to inform ninth-grade placement decisions and disrupts classroom instruction.

What staff told the committee - Scott Webster said STAMP was adopted in 2018 for both MMS and DHS to measure proficiency and to help ninth-grade placement, but the timing of the test at MMS prevented its results from informing placement decisions. - “A student’s coursework, classroom performance, participation, and teacher recommendations provide a more comprehensive view of their abilities than a single test,” Webster said. - Kathy Chaffee, an MMS French teacher, described how quarterly Integrated Performance Assessments (IPAs), aligned with ACTFL rubrics, give teachers a longitudinal view of students’ abilities. She said administering STAMP required about three weeks away from curriculum, posed logistical problems for speaking assessments (background noise, microphone failures) and sometimes produced unusable speaking scores when recordings failed: “I’ve had students score zeros on the speaking because it didn’t record what they were saying.”

Cost and timing District presenters reported the per-test cost at $22.90. With 308 eighth-graders tested this year, staff estimated immediate savings of roughly $6,000 by discontinuing MMS testing; administration noted the budget had been set at roughly $7,000 to account for a projected 10% increase. The presentation said STAMP administration at MMS typically required a multiweek window for practice, testing and makeups, which staff said limited instruction time.

Alternatives and classroom practice Staff recommended relying on quarterly in-house benchmark assessments, classroom performance, teacher judgment and other state assessments already taken by eighth-graders (the presentation listed NGSS, AIMSweb, SBAC and DRP). Chaffee and Webster argued those measures, combined with teacher observation and course work, give a fuller picture of proficiency and better inform ninth-grade placement.

Board and administrative response Supervising administrators said the recommendation was both an instructional and a financial decision. A district leader noted an initial administrative decision to cancel STAMP at MMS for 2024–25 after the department’s analysis.

Next steps and limits The committee presentation framed the change as an administrative recommendation to phase out STAMP at MMS while retaining it at DHS for Seal of Biliteracy qualification. The committee discussion recorded no formal board vote on the recommendation during the meeting. The district said it will continue to use STAMP at DHS, where language labs and testing facilities reduce the technical problems Chaffee described.

Ending note: The district emphasized the intent to preserve meaningful measures of student language growth while reducing disruptions to instruction and district testing costs.