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Greenwich schools add middle-school science benchmark, slim down end-of-year tests
Summary
Superintendent’s staff presented the 2025–26 assessment calendar to the Greenwich Board of Education, announcing a new benchmark for middle-school science and keeping an overall strategy of fewer, more actionable assessments to protect instructional time.
The Greenwich Board of Education heard an update on the 2025–26 assessment calendar at its Sept. 11 meeting, including one new test for middle-school science and continued reductions to overlapping end-of-year assessments.
District assessment lead Mr. Unito told the board the calendar “remains largely unchanged from last year” but noted one explicit addition: “the inner orbit assessments” will be fully implemented in grades 6–8 at the beginning, middle and end of the year (except at the end of eighth grade because students take the NGSS assessment). Unito said the district added the assessments because it previously lacked a middle-school science benchmark and wanted a tool to track student progress through the middle grades.
Board members and staff emphasized the district’s stated goal of prioritizing instructional time over excessive testing. Unito said the district eliminated the former “benchmark A” in the fall and replaced it with what staff call benchmark C (formerly the prior year’s end-of-year test). Benchmark B will remain in January. He said the district also eliminated the late end-of-year benchmark because state SBA results now arrive quickly enough to make that additional test redundant.
Board members asked how the calendar would help the high school catch students who arrive below grade level. A high-school representative explained that teachers receive a full profile on incoming ninth-graders (SBA, LinkIt and other scores) and that the department uses PSATs and departmental benchmarks, PLC meetings and reading classes or specialist supports when students do not respond to initial interventions.
Unito and other staff framed the changes as targeted: remove tests that were giving nonactionable results and add a single, purposeful benchmark in middle-school science. Multiple board members said they look forward to the district’s achievement report at the next meeting, when staff will show how the current assessment approach maps to recent gains in state and district measures.
The board did not take a formal vote on the assessment calendar at the Sept. 11 meeting.
The district repeated its guiding standard for assessments: give teachers information they can act on rather than adding duplicated tests that reduce instructional minutes.
