Each Denver school will have an annual scorecard that rates how the school performed in dozens of areas, focusing heavily on how well students improve from year to year.
At the same time, thousands of dollars in incentives will be on the table for principals whose schools show the most improvement.
The district’s self-assessment is a new approach to analyzing state data on schools and students, aimed at giving a more comprehensive picture than the state’s traditional ranking system.
The state’s School Accountability Reports typically are released in late fall, rating schools based on how students perform on the Colorado Student Assessment Program.
That report issued by the Colorado Department of Education ranks schools from “excellent” to “unsatisfactory” and lists whether their academic growth from the year before had improved, stabilized or showed a decline.
DPS’s School Performance Framework takes a deeper look at the data — assessing student growth with cohorts from across Colorado, comparing schools with similar populations and even possibly assessing parental satisfaction.
“This is a much more thoughtful approach to data,” Superintendent Michael Bennet said. “We are beginning to ask the right questions. . . . This is moving us from the anecdotal world. We’re moving to a world where there is some slice of reality.”
Grant money to help with data use
The framework was presented to school board members Thursday, hours after the district announced it had been awarded $4.75 million in grants to further improve its use of student data to improve achievement.
The district plans to refine the framework and release the final reports to schools in April, complete with a single overall rating compiled from all of the measures.
Perhaps the most inventive use of data is a measure that looks at how students compare with others in the state.
Here’s how it works: A Denver student, for example, scores 500 in 2006 on the math portion of the CSAP, 420 in 2005 and 390 in 2004. That student’s “growth percentile” is determined by finding students across the state with similar scoring patterns during those years.
Then the Denver student’s 2007 score is compared with how those other students did.
“For a long time we have been comparing apples to oranges,” Bennet said. “This compares apples to apples. It provide a more useful picture. It ultimately will give our community a much more accurate picture.”
The scorecard also looks at how well the school is narrowing the achievement gap, how it is performing compared with others in the district with similar makeups and how the school is preparing kids for college and attendance rates.
Each measure gets a score and a corresponding color — red for not meeting standards to green for exceeding them.
“The purpose of this is to give teachers, principals and kids a richer view of how the school is performing from different angles,” said Robert Good, director of assessment and research.
Administrators hope principals will assess what is working and what is not, compare results with other schools that are having success and figure out how to fix the problems.
Rewarding principals
Administrators also introduced a pay-for-performance system for principals and assistant principals that would pay thousands of dollars to the leaders who work in hard-to-serve schools, improve student achievement and become one of the top-performing schools.
The framework doesn’t let high-performing schools off the hook. It also judges them on whether their students have improved.
Bromwell Elementary principal Jonathan Wolfer, whose school is typically one of the highest-performing in Denver, says he welcomes the information and says the raw numbers on his school that he received this week showed him areas that need to be improved.
“It’s a good assessment,” he said.
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
