Chicago Public Schools students scored better than predicted this past year on the new and tougher statewide tests used to decide promotion, schools officials said.

That news, coupled with a revised district promotion policy, means that far fewer students are in now summer school than last year.

“This is interesting in a good way,” said Annette Gurley, CPS’s chief of teaching and learning, in a phone interview Wednesday. “The NWEA is a much more rigorous assessment than the ISAT […]. We actually thought we’d have fewer students scoring at or above the 24^th percentile.”

With that predicted decline in mind, last fall CPS officials unveiled a new system that uses test cut scores and grades to determine promotions for third-, sixth- and eighth-grade students. They expected that enrollment in the district’s Summer Bridge program wouldn’t change much under the redesigned promotion policy.

Instead, enrollment fell from some 14,000 last summer to about 10,000 today – a nearly 29-percent drop from one year to the next.

Read the full story on Catalyst Chicago.