Connecticut Magazine: Darien 3rd Best Among State’s Affluent Towns, Best in Education

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Hindley School

Stone walls at the intersection of Nearwater Lane and the Post Road, where some of the local militia are said to have died when Tories raided the area during the Revolutionary War. The town has no commemoration of this event.

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Connecticut Magazine, in its annual ranking of towns and cities in Connecticut, rates Darien as the third “best” among the state’s expensive towns and the best town in that group in terms of education.

Hindley School

Hindley School on a pretty fall day (not this year; picture from Wikimedia commons)

The rankings are published in the magazine’s November issue and rely on various kinds of data in five different categories — “culture & leisure,” economy, crime, “community engagement” and education.

Each town in a particular economic group (based on home value) is then ranked and the ranking numbers are added up — Westport had the lowest total with 50 (giving it the best score), Ridgefield had 51 and Darien had 56.

Darienites will want to know that, yes, we beat New Canaan (which scored 66 for 8th place overall). The other top contenders:

4. Greenwich (57);

5. Essex: (60);

6. Wilton (64);

7. Lyme (61)

Darien had the 8th lowest crime rate, ranked 20th in “culture/leisure” and 24th in “community engagement,” (a category that the magazine said was based on voter turnout and “amount of local news coverage”).

The magazine said it came up with an education rating by combining rankings in four sets of test scores: 2013 Connecticut Mastery Test, the 2013 Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT), SAT scores for 2014 and the 2013 cohort graduation rate.

“2013 was the last year the Connecticut Mastery Test and CAPT were given,” the magazine noted. “Those tests were replaced by the Smarter Balanced Test, which is aligned to the Common Core. However, there is only one year of baseline data for the new test, making it inappropriate for this ranking.”

For the “economy” category (where Darien was ranked No. 3), the magazine used the 2015 Public Investment Community score, which is put together by the state Office of Policy and Management. The OPM’s formula takes into consideration “population, per capita income, the adjusted equalized grand list per capita, the unemployment rate, the equalized mill rate and per capita aid to children.”

In other words, the magazine noted, Darien is less needy than other towns in the state — outranked only by Greenwich (No. 1) and New Canaan (No. 2). Westport ranks No. 4.

The difficulty in putting together a ranking is that some parts of it will be arbitrary if relying on hard numbers and more of a judgment call when not relying on hard numbers. Take the “leisure/culture” category, which relies on numbers of cultural venues and other entities in a town, including colleges, shops and restaurants that made the magazine’s list of the best.

As a small town between two larger municipalities and linked by highways to them, Darien residents get to take advantage of their cultural offerings and restaurants (along with what New York City has to offer after about 45 minutes in a train). None of that is considered in the rankings, although the rankings do consider proximity to state parks, not just having a state park in town.

Darien was ranked in a group of towns with median home values above $325,000 (with figures obtained from Zillow.com). There were three other groups of towns, separated by home values, and another category for cities in the state.

The other top communities that score best in their group: Norfolk (under $200,000), Tolland (from $200,000 to $249,000), and Glastonbury ($250,000 to $324,000). In the rankings of the state’s eight largest cities, Stamford came in first; Norwalk, second.

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Editor’s note: Darienite.com’s coverage of this topic in no way endorses Connecticut Magazine’s criteria for ranking them or even the decision to rank them. Ranking in broad categories like “best” town is inherently silly. Even the education rankings are made up of test scores that are sometimes only a little different from other towns. The rankings, at best, can give a reader a vague idea about a town’s strengths and weaknesses.

A potential home buyer, for instance, can get some food for thought about what to look for and where else to look for things that are important to the individual. A music lover with a lot of money who likes having a beach and museums close at hand might like Greenwich the most and a hiker who likes to fish in rivers and needs more affordable housing might prefer to live in Tolland. 

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