DENVER—Colorado schools are doing a good job maintaining the progress of students who grasp the basics of reading, writing and math, according to new data tracking student test scores over three years. However, the information shows that most students who start out behind aren’t progressing fast enough to catch up.
The data, released Friday along with annual test results, also shows that about half of students previously found to be proficient in math have since fallen behind.
The Colorado Department of Education unveiled the information for the first time along with results from this year’s Colorado Student Assesment Program, or CSAP, standardized tests to track the performance of students on tests between 2007 and 2009.
CSAP results have been criticized for giving only a snapshot view of how students are performing and comparing, for example, the performance of this year’s eighth graders to last year’s. The growth model, meanwhile, tracks the same students over three years and measures their progress.
Associate state education commissioner Richard Wenning said people have tended to focus on how many students are ranked as proficient on CSAP tests. He said that short-term view has made it hard to focus on what can be done to help students who are struggling.
He likens it to investors only paying attention to which stocks are worth a lot now rather than which have the potential to gain value over time.
“Unless we have this type of information we’re not prepared to have this conversation,” he said.
Under the growth model, students are judged to be able to “catch up” if they’re making enough progress in a subject area in order to reach the proficient or advanced level within three years or by 10th grade, whichever comes first.
The data shows that the subject area where the most low-achieving students have a chance to catch up is writing, followed by reading and math. About 35 percent of students from all grade levels are judged to be “catching up” in writing. In math, it’s just 14 percent.
The model also tracks how many students are able to “keep up” their proficiency and what percent are on track to “move up” to advanced.
While math is the area that has the most struggling students, it’s also the subject area where the highest percentage of proficient students—26 percent—are on track to move up to advanced.
The majority of the state’s students overall—64 percent—are in the middle, judged to be proficient and able maintain that level. However, among low-income students, only half are on track to keep performing at that level over the next three years.
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