Progress at public schools

Changes promised by state leaders on academic focus

By Burt Hubbard, Rocky Mountain News (Contact), Nancy Mitchell, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published December 10, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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Photo by Darin Mcgregor / The Rocky

Soren Fuchs, Matthew Sheber-Howard and Dylan Hoffman, from left, re-enact a historic battle in a class at the Denver Center for International Studies.

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The eighth annual round of state school ratings released on Tuesday appears to be yet another sign that academic progress in Colorado's public schools is stalled.

Slightly more students attended schools rated "excellent" or "high" in 2007-08 - 44.4 percent compared with 43 percent the previous year.

And slightly fewer students attended schools rated "low" and "unsatisfactory" - 19.6 percent compared with 20.7 percent in 2006-07.

The number in the middle moved just as slightly, with 35.9 percent of students attending "average" schools in 2007-08 compared with 36.2 percent the prior year.

Sound familiar? It should. The annual December ratings, officially known as the School Accountability Reports, or SARs, are based on the already released results of state exams given the previous spring - and they've been flat for years.

"Yeah, achievement is flat. That's troubling," said Rich Wenning, associate commissioner for the Colorado Department of Education. "But things not flat in the state are things like poverty, which is worsening."

That's not an excuse, he said, but an example of why Colorado's focus on school reform must shift from the performance of huge groups of kids to the individual academic growth of students from one year to the next.

Wenning and his boss, Education Commissioner Dwight Jones, are leading the effort to overhaul an accountability system created by former Republican Gov. Bill Owens that emphasized labels and sanctions such as the state takeover of struggling schools.

"The basic thing a parent wants to know, or an educator wants to know, is how much progress is this child or this group of children making and is it good enough to meet state standards?" Wenning said. "By changing the conversation, we can provide information that's actually useful for improvement."

A different look

Wenning this summer unveiled Colorado's new growth model, which compares how students with similar state test scores perform over time. It also shows whether students are on track to proficiency on state exams by the 10th grade.

"The growth data showed us some sobering things . . . particularly that our lowest-achieving students are not making enough progress to catch up," he said.

"We also saw from that data that some students . . . once they reach proficiency, they're not making enough progress to stay there and they're falling back."

Tuesday's report cards reflect "a baby step" toward the new focus, Wenning said, with the changing of the academic growth rating for schools.

Instead of five categories, from "significant improvement" at one end to "significant decline" at the other, the new cards have three categories. They are "high," "typical" and "low," aligning with the new growth model's categories for individual students.

The new growth ratings reflect how a school's students are progressing toward proficiency on state standards.

Other changes on the SARs result from a content overhaul approved by the Democrat-controlled legislature in 2007. Lawmakers scrapped categories such as "teacher turnover" and the term "teacher tenure," which is despised by the state teachers union.

They added categories showing whether schools offer advanced classes and extracurricular activities. Schools also can add their own "points of pride" to the reports.

"I think it's clear that parents want to know more about a school other than just testing results," said Sue Windels, who sponsored the changes in the state Senate. "If you're really going to help parents make a wise choice for their child, they want to know some of the things offered in that school."

How much accountability?

Some question whether the changes are weakening the state's accountability system.

Van Schoales, urban education officer for the Denver-based Piton Foundation, pointed out the change in growth ratings results in 62 percent of the state's 1,998 schools being rated "typical."

"If so many schools are rated typical, how can I tell one from the next?" he asked.

And while the state's sole takeover of a school, Cole Middle School in Denver, was considered a disaster by some, Schoales said the state does need some sanctions in its arsenal.

"It's not enough to provide information unless there is some accountability," he said. "The significant portion of school funding comes from the state and the state should say, 'Are you using our money well?' And if you're not, there should be consequences around that."

But Windels and Wenning counter that the focus on individual growth means more accountability, not less.

"We have been working on trying to get this growth model in because that's where the accountability comes in," said Windels, who is leaving the Senate due to term limits.

"You're going to suddenly make CSAP (state tests) very relevant to kids like they've never seen it before because the parents and the teachers will be tracking individual student growth."

It's clear from state leaders that the direction in accountability has been set - and it's moving away from the Owens' model.

"The governor from his very first State of the State speech laid out very ambitious, very bold and very long-term education goals," said Evan Dreyer, spokesman for Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter.

"We know we can do a lot better and the path we have started down . . . is the right one. These are the kinds of steps we need to be taking so that we aren't looking at year after year of flat-lined ratings."

mitchelln@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5245

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