The state Department of Education today released scores for this year’s Colorado Student Assessment Program tests and touted them as the best in 6 years.
Across Colorado’s public schools, math scores improved. And, in all but two grades, reading tests appear to be on an upward climb.
Some school districts showed remarkable improvements in some subjects. In Greeley and Montezuma-Cortez, two struggling school districts that saw their state accreditation status put in jeopardy last year by low test scores, students’ scores improved dramatically.
It is the 10th year of data for the state test, which began with 4th grade reading and writing and now measures how well the state’s estimated 750,000 public school students meet state standards for math, reading, writing and science. The test is administered to students in grades three through 10 in late winter and early spring in more than 1,600 schools.
And state leaders are heralding the results as an indication of strong growth and that more students are benefiting from demands that schools be held accountable for educating all children. These results how the greatest overall growth in 6 years, Education Commissioner William Moloney told the Post last week.
But results also reveal some sobering trends. An achievement gap of about 30 percentage points persists between the scores of white and Asian students and their black and Latino peers. In the fifth grade science test, for example, 14 percent of Latino students were proficient in science, compared to 50 percent of white students.
And poverty – or the lack of it – continues to be a major factor in a school’s performance on the CSAP.
A Denver Post analysis of fourth-grade reading scores over 10 years identified 40 elementary schools that, since 1997, have consistently ranked in the top quarter of schools for percentage of students at or above grade level. On average, only 5.5 percent of students in those schools qualified for free- or reduced-price lunches last fall.
By contrast, an average of 86 percent of students qualified for free- or reduced-price lunches at 71 schools that consistently ranked in the bottom quarter, the analysis found.
Most of the schools at the bottom are in Denver or Aurora. The schools at the top are spread out among generally wealthier districts such as Cherry Creek, Douglas County and Boulder Valley.
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-820-1684 or at krouse@denverpost.com.
Computer-assisted reporting editor Jeffrey A. Roberts contributed to this report.
