Biggest Gains came from Struggling Schools, New Test Scores Show

Examine the source data for this story here.

By Burt Hubbard
I-News Network

Most of Colorado’s lowest performing school districts posted some of the biggest gains in state standardized tests this year, while scores at many top performing districts stagnated, according to an analysis of scores by the I-News Network.

Some Students Falling Behind

More than 100,000 public school students are not on pace to achieve proficiency in math and writing over the next three years, or by the time they reach 10th grade, an I-News Network analysis of state testing data shows.

The I-News analysis found:

Of the public school students who fell below state standards in math, 137,869 of them, or 87.9 percent, aren’t advancing fast enough to reach proficiency in three years or by the 10th grade. Last year it was 86.5 percent.
Among students not meeting state standards in writing, three quarters of them, or 125,250 students, are not on pace to achieve proficiency. That is a jump from 67.5 percent last year.

Reading was the only improvement. Of students not scoring proficient or better in reading, 80,344 of them, or 67.3 percent, were not on track to meet state standards. That is down from 71 percent last year.

In some subjects and grade levels, such as high school math, a very low percentage of students are on pace to catch up, said Bill Bonk, longitudinal growth consultant for the Colorado Department of Education.

State officials said they hope more students will catch up in coming years as districts work more closely with each other to share teaching techniques that work and embrace more detailed analysis of test scores to pinpoint why students fall behind.

The I-News analysis showed some districts did better than others in reducing the percent of deficient students not catching up.

“Some districts are aware of the kids that are not making progress and they are progress monitoring these kids over the course of the year. Those are the systems that are showing progress in growth,” said Colorado Department of Education deputy commissioner Keith Owen.

In reading, the Harrison, Colorado Springs 11, and Academy 20 districts in El Paso County saw more students catching up, raising their levels by between seven and 11 percentage points. The Pueblo City and Littleton districts also had sharp drops.

The Durango school district saw a jump of six percentage points to almost 70 percent of students not on tract to achieve state reading standards. In Aspen, the increase was four percentage points, to 45 percent.

Almost all the state’s largest districts saw an increase in the percent of students not on pace to catch up in writing. The exceptions were the Littleton and Westminster districts.

In math, Boulder Valley, Aspen and Steamboat Springs lowered the percentage of students not catching up, while the rate rose in the Poudre, Durango and Greeley districts.

— Burt Hubbard / I-News Network

However, racial and income gaps remained wide, confounding educators.

“We are losing generations of kids,” said State Education Board member Elaine Gantz Berman after the state presented the test results to the board.

The I-News analysis also showed:

Minority and low-income students posted stronger gains or smaller declines than white and wealthier students in reading, writing and science. However, the scores for low income and Hispanic and black students remained about 30 percentage points lower than white and Asian scores in all subjects. “This is a persistent and unacceptable achievement gap,” said Jo O’Brien, assistant commissioner for assessment at the Colorado Department of Education.

Statewide student scores in reading and science inched up last school year. The percent of students statewide scoring proficient or higher in reading and science rose about one percentage point, to 69 percent and 49 percent respectively from 2011.

Students scores fell about one percentage point in writing, to 54 percent. Proficiency in math remained at about 56 percent for both years.

Huge drops in scores at Denver Public School’s Beach Court Elementary School, the low-income school involved in a test cheating scandal last year. This year’s scores dropped by up to a half in all subjects. In reading, the scores fell from about 80 percent proficient or advanced in 2011 to less than 50 percent this year. In fourth grade writing, scores went from 75 percent proficient to 16 percent.

I-News analyzed scores from the TCAP testing (Transitional Colorado Assessment Program) that temporarily replaces the CSAP testing until new state tests are put in place later this decade. The TCAP scores are directly comparable to CSAP scores from prior years.

I-News calculated composite scores for each district and the state. This score shows what percent of all third through 10th graders combined met or exceeded proficiency in reading, writing and math, and what percent of fifth, eighth and 10th graders do so in science.

The analysis showed that many of the state’s lowest performing and poorest districts made some of the strongest gains this year compared to 2011.

O’Brien said it’s too early to tell what is behind the trend. The state will need to look at next year’s test results to get a better idea of what is behind the gains and stagnation, she said.

In reading, several districts outperformed the state average for gains. The Harrison and Colorado Springs 11 school districts in El Paso County, the Pueblo City district and the Mapleton, Denver, and Westminster districts in the metro area posted gains of two to five percentage points in proficiency, exceeding the average gain statewide.

In math, Harrison, Westminster and Brighton increased the percent of students scoring proficient during a year where scores stagnated statewide.

And in writing, the Denver and Westminster districts increased the percent scoring proficient or better at a time when most districts saw scores fall.

One of the exceptions was Greeley, which saw the percent scoring proficient in math and writing drop. However, reading scores did increase between 2011 and 2012.

Commerce City, one of the state’s poorest districts, saw scores drop in all three subjects.

O’Brien singled out the Harrison and Westminster district for making substantial gains this year.

Traditional top performing districts saw scores stagnate or fall this year compared to last year.

They included Aspen, Poudre in Larimer County, Five Star in Adams County, and Jefferson County school districts.
Durango had no change in the percent of students scoring proficient in math, but saw the percent drop in reading and writing.

Source Data

The four charts show composite TCAP and CSAP standardized test scores for school districts in reading, writing, math and science for the past three years. They also show how the scores changed between 2011 and 2012, and between 2010 and 2012. 2>Source Data
Click this link to download the Reading, Writing, Math and Science source data in Microsoft Excel format

This “catchup chart” shows the number and percent of students in each school district for 2011 and 2012 not proficient in reading, writing who are not on pace to acheive proficiency within 3 years or by the time they reach 10th grade. The chart also shows how that percent has changed between 2011 and 2012 – i.e. if it has gone down or up.

Click this link to download the “Catchup Chart” source data in Microsoft Excel format

Uses this link to download ALL the .html and .xls files in one compressed archive [115 kb]

Scroll down the page to see the four interactive FreeDive charts — reading, writing, math, science — for each dataset. There are three additional FreeDive charts for the “catch up” data.Science is not included in the catchup dataset.

These HTML files are for use with an iframe on your web site. Please contact your site administrator for details on using this with your specific content management system. (Here is a short video tutorial explaining the iframe tag.)

Reading

<p>Your browser does not support iframes.</p> <p>
To embed this interactive chart on your website, control-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) on the link below to download the html file for this iFrame: http://www.inewsnetwork.org/partners/TCAP_06AUG2012/reading.html

Writing

Math

Science

Catchup Data

Reading – Catchup

Writing – Catchup

Math – Catchup

Madeline Novey

Thank you all for your work! These data charts made my life so much less stressful this week.