Flat CSAP scores a bad sign for school reform

Berny Morson and Burt Hubbard, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 1, 2007 at midnight

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Statewide achievement test scores stayed largely flat this year, with only small, scattered gains, particularly in science and all middle school subjects.

The results of the Colorado Student Assessment Program tests, released today, indicate that school reform is stalling. One- third of students still cannot read adequately and nearly half are substandard in math.

A breakdown of the data, included by the Colorado Department of Education this year for the first time, shows that few of the students who scored at the lowest level two years ago advanced to a higher level.

Students did show gains in math, with increases in five of the eight grades tested. But some of the gains were small, and 70 percent of 10th-graders are still below proficiency in math.

The fewest gains occurred in reading, considered by educators to be the key to success in all other subjects. Scores were flat and even down in some cases since 2003.

"That has been and continues to be one of our most disappointing areas," said Education Commissioner Dwight Jones.

"We’ve invested a lot of money, a lot of training, a lot of support ... around reading, yet the results continue to elude us," Jones said. "(We’re) still trying to figure out why that is happening because I know it’s not because of lack of effort."

Gov. Bill Ritter called the areas where scores were up "statistically insignificant."

"Certainly, we need to have better progress than we experienced this year. There were places where we fell back, and that is certainly disappointing," Ritter said.

Ritter said a committee he appointed in June to study education from preschool through graduate school will revitalize school reform.

The 11th annual CSAPs were administered in the spring to more than 458,000 students in grades three through 10. The tests covered reading, writing and math at all grades, plus science at grades five, eight and 10.

Eleventh-graders took the ACT college entrance exam. The average composite score of 19.1 was virtually unchanged since 2003. The national average for 2006 was 21.1.

The test scores are used to monitor Colorado’s progress toward meeting the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Compliance with the federal law will be part of a separate report to be released in the fall.

Jones, who took over as commissioner in June, said he will discuss strategies to raise achievement with the state Board of Education later this month.

The latest scores show a continued achievement gap between higher-scoring Anglo and Asian students and lower-scoring black, Hispanic and American Indian students.

That gap is significant — more than 30 points in reading at most grade levels between Hispanics and Anglos and Asians.

Similar gaps exist between children from low-income families and those from higher-income homes.

"There’s been a lot of folks talking about the achievement gap. There’s been attention, but there’s been no progress," Jones said. "It makes me think, ‘Are we still giving lip service to the achievement gap and really not doing the necessary work and actions that it takes to narrow that gap?’"

Jefferson County Superintendent Cindy Stevenson said the state’s lackluster results reflect a failure to ake "breakthroughs" with the block of kids who are farthest behind, many of whom live in poverty.

In addition to work by educators, breakthroughs with the lowest-achieving students will require attention to programs in health care, nutrition — even job training so parents don’t have to move as often, yanking their children from school, Stevenson said.

"In my mind, I think those are the factors that have caused us to plateau," Stevenson said.

"We’ve moved the easy kids to move. Now we have to get serious," she said.

Jefferson County is the state’s largest school district, with 11 percent of the state’s enrollment. It is considered a microcosm of the public school system, including a poverty level approaching 25 percent.

Jeffco’s scores were mostly up and somewhat better than the state as a whole.

"This is good for us. We are pleased. It’s not great," Stevenson said.

University of Colorado education professor Kevin Welner, who follows testing issues, said scores are flat in many other states as well.

Schools have learned to use test data to identify students who need extra help and have a good idea of what instruction to provide, but they can’t provide that help without additional resources, especially when the most needy kids require expensive small-group or even one-on-one attention, Welner said.

"Kids don’t learn more and schools don’t necessarily do better without providing resources to do that," he said. "Simply telling schools to do better — which is what No Child Left Behind does — doesn’t accomplish a heck of a lot."

School districts with large concentrations of students in need of extra help face an uphill struggle, with students falling farther behind every year they do not get tutoring, Welner said.

That problem occurs in Colorado’s most challenged districts.

"We’re trying to educate the whole child and keep arts and music alive and at the same time put all of these individual plans in place for each student," said John Lange, superintendent of Commerce City schools, where the poverty rate is 80 percent. "It’s getting expensive, and we’re having to make tough budget decisions."

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