Three-quarters of the students at Westminster’s Mesa Elementary School qualify for free or discounted lunch, an indication of poverty. Barely half of the fifth-graders are at least proficient in writing, placing them below the state average on the Colorado Student Assessment Program exam.
Thirty miles and one income bracket away in Parker, only a handful – 6 percent – of Douglas County’s Legacy Point Elementary School students qualify for free or discounted lunch. Four out of five fifth-graders are at least proficient in math on the CSAP, far above the state’s average.
If ever there were places to predict test results, it would be at these schools on different sides of the socioeconomic tracks.
Yet while the state has rated Legacy Point as a high-achieving school and Mesa simply as average, the Westminster school is achieving far more with poorer students, according to a Denver Post analysis of CSAP data that predicted elementary schools’ exam scores based on poverty status.
The analysis of scores released Wednesday shows that Mesa is well above predictions for its fourth- and fifth-grade reading, writing and math exams. The most dramatic difference was in fourth-grade math, where 71 percent of the students were at least proficient in the subject. That’s 20 percentage points higher than expected when taking into account free or reduced-price lunch status – a general way to determine poverty in public schools.
Legacy Point, meanwhile, was below predictions on nearly every fourth- and fifth-grade exam. In writing, for example, the school saw 48 percent of its fourth-graders earn proficient or advanced marks, 21 percentage points below predictions.
The review indicates that palpable progress can be made at struggling schools – and is a call to arms for wealthier schools that should be achieving even higher results.
“Our teachers are going to look at the (CSAP) data and take it to heart, because these (scores) are not what they wanted,” said Legacy Point principal Sheila Beving, whose school still exceeded state averages in five of its six fourth- and fifth-grade exams.
To offset the lower-than-expected scores, Beving said, her school already was focusing more on its third- and fourth- graders while encouraging more communication among all teachers in the 4-year-old school.
“We’re not where we want to be, and we won’t be satisfied with this,” Beving said. “We have high expectations, and we will meet them.”
While there is no consensus nationwide on the exact role that poverty plays in scholastic achievement, Colorado’s poorest elementary schools scored far below average on CSAP exams.
At schools such as Mesa – where 76 percent of the children receive a free or reduced-price lunch – scores in general were 22 percentage points below the state average in fifth-grade writing.
“Just from that data, when you’re looking at economics, the idea that every kid should be proficient in every subject is still years away,” said Paul Teske, who leads the University of Colorado at Denver’s Center for Education Policy Analysis. “At the same time, you have to figure that there are a lot of high-income and middle-class districts that are getting scores just because of the school’s socioeconomic status.”
At Mesa, principal Christian Cutter said his school has made inroads with traditionally low- achieving students by examining how those children are being taught.
“We had to put out expectations that we weren’t going to be below average; and we had to be honest with ourselves about how we had to improve our school,” said Cutter, who is in his fourth year at Mesa.
The list of Mesa’s changes is dramatic, and there have been incremental gains, though the school still is below state averages on five out of six fourth- and fifth-grade CSAP exams.
As part of the transformation at Mesa, students in first through third grades often meet in combined classrooms so teachers can better understand needs of students moving through the school. Mesa also replaced many of its fiction books with nonfiction after research showed students perform better on tests when writing is based on real-life events.
A bulletin board at Cutter’s school displays reports that rate everything from whether a student is becoming proficient in short-writing to whether the youngest students know where to put punctuation marks. The information is exchanged freely among teachers.
“Some of our kids don’t speak English at home, or their parents have two or three jobs, so that means we have to work that much harder to bring these kids up,” said Beth Ellis, who taught Mesa’s fourth- and fifth-grade students last year. “You can’t argue with the progress we’ve made with them.”
Cutter said Mesa’s experience underscores the fact that there is no silver bullet to help the state’s poorest children. At his school, he said, “it’s about taking small steps” to realize eventual gains.
“But that’s what makes our jobs challenging and gives our work meaning,” he said. “No matter where you teach, there’s always room for improvement.”
