North Stonington — The town is in the unique position of having its seventh- through 12th-grade school named a Focus School based on a factor that applies only to the seventh and eighth grades.

To address that, North Stonington Public Schools administrators are looking to separate out their middle school data going forward and to focus on the small number of students who contributed to the designation.

Last month, the Connecticut State Department of Education released its 2018-19 scorecard for the state’s public schools and districts. Wheeler High School was one of 10 new schools named a Focus School, joining the 10 schools the department identified last year.

Focus Schools are marked as such “because their academic achievement/growth of students with high needs is consistently among the lowest in the state,” the state education department said in a news release.

Wheeler saw improvements from 2017-18 in its math and English Language Arts scores, percentage of students passing college and career readiness exams, four-year graduation rate, and arts access, plus in its overall index, which is above the state average. Its high school math, ELA and science scores last year were above those in neighboring Stonington.

But Wheeler was named a Focus school because the school met only 35.9% of the target for growth in math performance among high-needs students.

One issue for North Stonington: As a year-over-year metric for individual student improvement, growth is measured only through eighth grade.

That’s because elementary and middle school students take the SBAC, the Smarter Balanced assessment, every year whereas there is no annual test for high school students. That means that growth is not included as a metric to measure performance in ninth- through 12th-grade schools.

Connecticut defines high-needs students as those who are English language learners, from low-income families or disabled.

“We will own the fact that we have some kids at the middle school we’re going to have to work with,” Superintendent Peter Nero said.

Wheeler Principal Kristen St. Germain said that as a small school, Wheeler has only 28 middle school students categorized as high-needs. Of those, she said that 13 didn’t show growth, and some of them went from the highest score of 4, meaning “exceeds the achievement standard,” to a 3 for meeting the achievement standard.

North Stonington currently pulls data for the elementary school and for Wheeler Middle/High School, but administrators plan to start pulling separate data for seventh to eighth and ninth to 12th grades. Sixth grade is in the elementary school.

They would start reporting the data differently next school year, meaning the change would be reflected when the 2020-21 scorecard comes out in 2022.

“I just think if we were to split it would give us a much more accurate depiction of our high school,” St. Germain said. She thinks it will make it easier to compare North Stonington High School to other local high schools.

While comparing schools apples to apples can be difficult, Nero said he’s “not casting any aspersions on the state” when it comes to the scorecard. He agrees with the system because he finds it a “holistic way to look at schools,” rather than just looking at test scores.

North Stonington last reported middle and high school data separately for the 2015-16 school year, and the high school was named a School of Distinction for high performance that year.

e.moser@theday.com