Salem — About a month after scores for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium test were released, additional results continue to show students at Salem School are prepared for East Lyme High School.

All students in the fifth and eighth grades take the science portion of the Connecticut Mastery Test. A higher percentage of Salem students in both grades scored either at the "proficient" or "goal" levels than the state average: 87.2 percent of Salem fifth-graders and 66.2 percent of eighth-graders performed at the goal level, as opposed to 59.6 percent and 60.2 percent, respectively.

Fifth-grade test scores also increased from the 2014-15 school year to 2015-16, though the percentage of eighth-grade students who scored at the goal level decreased nearly 10 percentage points in that time. Principal Joan Phillips said small class sizes can skew results when each child represents 2 or 3 percent of the class, and the year-to-year comparison looks at different groups of children. She said the school is also using a new science curriculum, while the CMT is based on an older science curriculum.

Overall, Phillips said she is very happy with the percentage of children at proficiency and above. She was especially pleased because about half of the eighth-grade students in the "goal and above" category scored at an advanced level.

Results from East Lyme High School students on a variety of tests were also released. Phillips said scores from the high school are no longer broken up by Salem students versus East Lyme students because the administration wants all students to be treated like East Lyme students. However, the districts meet regularly to coordinate their curricula, and she said that in meeting with various academic committees, she has been told that Salem students are well prepared for the high school.

On almost every test, including both the new and old SAT, ACT and CAPT, East Lyme High School students scored higher than both the state and nation averages.

Phillips said the test scores provide a useful snapshot of information that the district can use in conjunction with other methods to evaluate student and district progress.