Colorado’s new model for tracking student achievement was publicly unveiled Friday, showing itself to be a powerful new lens through which to view academic growth.
However, its metrics are going to take some getting used to — for parents, teachers, students and communities at large.
Still, it’s a much needed and welcome step, and we hope Coloradans with an interest in education (and in their tax dollars) will take the time to look at how schools are doing.
The website is , and the big change is contained in the charts labeled “growth.” Rather than simply measuring achievement of a particular group of students in a certain topic, this model does something far more complex, and in our minds, far more useful. It looks at a student’s Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) scores over the last several years and compares them to other students in the same grade who had similar scores.
The state Department of Education used that information to create a growth percentile that answers questions about how much progress a student, school or district is making and how that progress stacks up.
“It’s so important and so vital in changing the dialogue,” said Tom Boasberg, Denver Public Schools superintendent.
In previous years, snapshot test scores would prompt school leaders to worry about low test scores, and deservedly so. But with this data, parents and educators also can track whether schools are helping good students get better.
Each school has access to growth information for individual students, and that information may be shared in a print format with parents. Eventually, state educators hope to create a parent portal that will allow parents to access their child’s specific information online.
In the meantime, the model also has provided some disturbing information at the macro level that ought to provoke serious discussions among educators.
According to a Denver Post analysis by data specialist and staff writer Burt Hubbard, somewhere between 74,000 and 135,000 Colorado students are not on track to becoming proficient in reading, writing and math over the next three years.
That means the status quo in education won’t bring these students up to proficiency.
The Colorado growth model, while new and perhaps difficult to understand at first glance, has sown the seeds for educational reform. Now, the challenge becomes one of optimally using this information to bring up underachieving students and move others forward.
