Five superintendents, five different report cards

NORWALK, Conn. — Norwalk Public Schools laid out a year’s worth of test scores, attendance numbers and growth data for the Board of Education Tuesday night, and the district’s own numbers show a mixed picture.

Science scores beat the state average for the first time on record. Growth in English and math also topped the state, something the district’s assessment director called a genuine milestone.

The graduation rate hit a new high of 92.6 %, well above the state average. “For three years among these large cities, Norwalk ranked number one for graduation rate,” said Diane Filardo, Norwalk Public Schools Director of Testing and Accountability.

The presentation came at a transition point for the district. The Board of Education is searching for its next superintendent after Dr. Alexandra Estrella announced in March that she was leaving to lead schools in Georgia. Her successor will become the sixth person to lead Norwalk Public Schools in just over two decades.

Each superintendent also governed through conflicts that shaped the district beyond what appears in a spreadsheet: a still-unresolved lawsuit over autism services, battles over special education, a fractured school board, and many public fights with City Hall over money.

Comparing those tenures is not straightforward. Connecticut has changed its standardized tests, graduation-rate calculations, and other accountability measures over the years. Still, the available data trace distinct chapters in Norwalk’s schools: periods when graduation surged, attendance improved, academic performance stalled, or the district gained, and sometimes lost, ground against the rest of Connecticut.

Salvatore Corda, 2001–2009: Fewer dropouts, stronger middle school scores

Salvatore Corda’s eight years as superintendent brought some of the clearest gains among Norwalk’s middle school students, along with a steep decline in the number of students dropping out. High school test scores, however, largely stagnated or declined. The dropout rate changed most sharply.

For the class of 2001, 9.4% of Norwalk students dropped out within four years. By the class of 2008, that had fallen to 2.9%, well below the state average.

Eighth grade math scores also climbed sharply. The share of students meeting the state’s goal rose from 42 percent in 2001-02 to 56.2 percent by 2008-09, a gain of more than 14 percentage points. Eighth grade reading increased from 54 percent to 58.6 percent.

Those gains did not extend as clearly into high school. On the 10th grade Connecticut Academic Performance Test, or CAPT, the share of students meeting the state goal in reading fell from 42 percent to 36.1 percent. Average SAT math scores declined from 473 to 466, while reading was essentially flat, slipping from 470 to 469.

Connecticut changed how it calculates graduation rates after Corda left office, meaning his tenure does not have a directly comparable graduation-rate measure to those that followed.

Corda’s tenure also included a decision whose consequences are still playing out nearly two decades later.

In 2007, Norwalk Public Schools hired Stacy Lore and her company, Spectrum Kids LLC, to provide services to autistic students. Lore claimed credentials she did not have, including a doctorate from New York University.

A lawsuit brought by families of two former students alleges the district never conducted a background check that would have exposed the false credentials. It also alleges that Corda and two other administrators failed to investigate after parents raised concerns about Lore and the services their children were receiving.

Lore was later arrested and sentenced in 2010. The families’ case against the district and former administrators continued for years, including litigation that reached the Connecticut Supreme Court. In 2026, nearly two decades after Lore was hired, the remaining case was headed to mediation.

Susan Marks, 2010–2012: Reading improves while other scores slip

Susan Marks led Norwalk Public Schools for two years before resigning in 2012. During her tenure, eighth-grade reading improved, from 66.5% of students meeting the state goal to 70.1%. High school writing scores on the CAPT rose from 51.1% to 52.5%. The graduation rate also ticked up, from 83.6% to 84.2%, remaining above the state average both years.

But most other test measures moved in the opposite direction. Eighth grade math fell from 62.4% to 59.2%. Writing dropped from 57.1% to 55.7%, while science slipped from 56.3% to 55.9%. At the high school level, CAPT reading fell from 39.6% to 36.8%, while math dropped from 34.7% to 32.2%. Science also declined slightly. Average SAT scores fell across all three sections. Math dropped from 477 to 462, reading from 476 to 472 and writing from 485 to 477. The annual dropout rate for grades 9 through 12 nearly doubled, from 1% to 1.8%.

Marks’ administration also confronted growing concerns over the district’s relationship with special education families and its use of outside attorneys. Former Board of Education member Steven Colarossi later said the board reviewed the district’s use of outside legal services during Marks’ tenure after finding what appeared to be inadequate cost controls and oversight of litigation. Some special education parents also complained that the district was taking an overly adversarial approach to disputes over services.

Colarossi pointed to one case in which a state education due-process hearing officer found that Norwalk Public Schools had unfairly sought repeated delays and then attempted to use the resulting delay against the student seeking services. The board ultimately changed law firms. Colarossi later said the decision reflected broader concerns that the Special Education department lacked direction and had developed poor relationships with families.

Marks’ tenure ended amid another major problem: a school budget crisis that left the district confronting a multimillion-dollar shortfall and substantial cuts.

Manuel Rivera, 2013–2015: Better attendance, but a hole in the testing record

Manuel Rivera’s tenure presents one of the biggest problems in making a 25-year comparison: there are essentially no comparable state test scores. Connecticut was shifting to the Smarter Balanced assessment system, and the state did not report scores from the 2013-14 field test.

The measures that are available moved in different directions. Chronic absenteeism fell from 10.8%, equal to the state average, to 8.3%. That put Norwalk 2.3 percentage points below the state’s 10.6% rate. The suspension and expulsion rate also declined, from 6.2% to 5.3%, remaining below the state average in both years. But the four-year graduation rate fell from 84.7% to 83.8%.

Norwalk also lost ground compared with Connecticut overall, moving from less than a percentage point behind the state graduation rate to more than 3 points behind it.

Rivera’s short tenure was also marked by a growing rift with the Board of Education. When he announced his departure in 2014, Rivera stressed that his primary reasons for leaving were personal. But he also described a divided board that he believed did not always understand the line between governing the district and running it. Rivera also acknowledged mistakes of his own, saying he should have moved faster to build a stronger central-office team that could handle academic and operational issues while he focused on broader reforms. He ultimately left Norwalk for New London, where he said he would take a pay cut of more than 20%.

His departure and the state’s testing transition leave an unusually narrow window for judging how academic outcomes changed during his administration.

Steven Adamowski, 2015–2020: Gains before the pandemic

Steven Adamowski arrived as Connecticut’s newer accountability system was taking hold, giving Norwalk its first sustained stretch of data under measures closer to those used today. During his first two full years, the district’s math performance index rose from 57.4 to 59.8. The graduation rate increased from 89.6%to 90.4%, widening Norwalk’s advantage over the state average from 2.4 percentage points to 3. Chronic absenteeism also fell sharply, from 10.2% to 8.5%. Norwalk went from having a higher absenteeism rate than the state to being nearly 1.5 percentage points lower.

Not every academic measure improved. Science performance fell from 55.1 to 51.7, a 3.4-point decline. English language arts was essentially flat, moving from 64.7 to 64.8.

Adamowski’s final year also brought a public fight between the school district and City Hall over how Norwalk was paying for its schools. During the 2020-21 budget process, city Chief Financial Officer Henry Dachowitz accused NPS of presenting its finances in ways that understated the district’s total spending and the size of its requested increase. He called the district’s presentation “sneaky and deceptive,” while then-Mayor Harry Rilling said the relationship between the city and school board had become increasingly adversarial.

Adamowski pushed back sharply, calling the city’s presentation inaccurate and unprofessional. He argued that Norwalk historically underfunded its schools compared with surrounding districts while serving large populations of high-needs students, and advocated using some of the city’s substantial fund balance for one-time education costs. The dispute left city and school officials publicly arguing not only over how much Norwalk should spend on education, but over how the district’s finances themselves should be presented.

Then came COVID-19. The pandemic interrupted state testing and normal school operations as Adamowski’s tenure ended, making 2020 another break in the district’s long-term data.

Alexandra Estrella, 2020–2026: From pandemic lows to new highs

Alexandra Estrella became superintendent in July 2020, inheriting Norwalk Public Schools in circumstances unlike any of her predecessors. Schools were operating through a pandemic. Normal testing had been disrupted. Attendance, academic performance, and graduation would all be affected in the years that followed. That makes her starting point particularly difficult to define. Using 2021-22, the first year with broadly usable post-pandemic data, Norwalk saw substantial gains in math, graduation, and attendance.

The math performance index rose from 54.9 to 58.6. The graduation rate climbed from 87.8% to 92.6%, the highest rate in the district’s available data. Norwalk went from below the state average to above it; Connecticut’s rate was 88.9% in the latest year. Chronic absenteeism saw an even larger swing. In 2021-22, 26.8% of Norwalk students were chronically absent. By the latest year, that had fallen to 17.9%: a decline of nearly 9 percentage points.

Estrella also found herself at the center of a political fight over school funding and her contract in 2025. The Board of Education accepted a $6 million state-and-city funding package to restore arts, music and other student-facing programs. But the deal had a provision delaying consideration of Estrella’s contract extension, a provision the BOE could not legally follow. This briefly derailed the funding deal and sparked a public dispute between the board and elected officials. The disagreement was resolved within days, and the $6 million moved forward.

Tuesday’s presentation added several more milestones to that record. Norwalk’s science performance surpassed the state average for the first time in the district’s available data. Students also exceeded statewide growth rates in both English language arts and math. But there is an important caveat: Estrella’s starting point was a post-pandemic low, not a normal school year. Some of the improvement represents recovery from an extraordinary disruption rather than entirely new academic ground. And that recovery is not complete.

Even at 62.2 in 2024-25, Norwalk’s English language arts performance index remained below its pre-pandemic peak of 65.0. Chronic absenteeism, despite falling dramatically, remained slightly higher than the state average, and more than twice the 8.5% Norwalk recorded before the pandemic. The latest SAT results add another complication. Scores fell in 2026 after peaking the year before, a decline district officials said Tuesday they could not yet explain.

Twenty-five years, different yardsticks

No single number tells the story of Norwalk Public Schools, and the yardsticks themselves kept shifting under each superintendent’s feet, from the CMT and CAPT to Smarter Balanced, from one graduation formula to another, through a pandemic that erased a year of testing entirely.

What survives that shuffling is a district that has gotten harder to drop out of and slower to show back up to, real progress, but not a straight line. The next superintendent inherits both the gains and the asterisks.