Nearly half of Colorado students attended a school rated “excellent” or “high” last school year, according to the School Accountability Report released this morning.
Overall, the numbers did not change much from last year — with 20 more schools getting “excellent” ratings and nine schools falling off of the “unsatisfactory” category.
But generally the same number of schools received high, average and low rating as last year.
“The big news is that there is no news,” said Alex Medler, vice president of research and analysis for the Colorado Children’s Campaign. “We can celebrate that things haven’t gotten worse. And the need for change is as urgent as it was last year.”
The report has been released in the first week of December every year and eventually goes to 1 million parents around the state at a cost of $290,000, providing a score for each of the state’s schools based on an average of how students performed on the Colorado Student Assessment Program or CSAP.
Reports also show academic progress in schools — ranging from “significant improvement” to “significant decline” or “no growth.” And they convey information such as teacher-student ratio, number of paraprofessionals and safety statistics.
“The steadily increasing number of students learning in strong schools is an upbeat trend,” said Education Commissioner Jones in a prepared statement. “We know from looking at the overall CSAP results that students from every background are fully capable of reaching state standards when expectations are high and instructional practices are aligned to meeting the needs of children.”
In every previous year of the release, Gov. Bill Owens held press conferences in the Capitol to unveil the reports that were his invention and he wanted them to be part of his legacy.
This year under a new governor and education commissioner, the release was via a press release and Gov. Ritter instead plans speak about education reform at a forum about cutting the school dropout rate.
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
