Local school districts posted some gains on the state’s new testing framework.
The Colorado Department of Education recently released results for this year’s Transitional Colorado Assessment Program, or TCAP.
About 500,000 students in Colorado took the test, which evaluates grades 3-10 in the areas of math, reading and writing. Students in grades 5, 8 and 10, meanwhile, are tested in science.
In Adams County, most school districts showed modest improvement, including Adams 12 Five Star Schools. The county’s largest district, which serves some 42,000 students, made gains on the majority of the tests administered through TCAP.
The percentage of kids in Adams 12 scoring “proficient” or “advanced” was up on 14 of the 27 TCAP tests this year, according to officials. That’s a marked improvement over 2012, when the district posted proficiency gains on just six of the tests.
“We’re pleased to see the district’s overall performance was much stronger than in 2012,” Adams 12 Superintendent Chris Gdowski said.
Seven test scores, however, showed declines in 2013. The remaining six remained stable.
Adams 12 showed the most improvement this year in the area of science. The district saw a 6 percent increase in students scoring proficient or advanced in that subject.
Test scores for reading and writing, however, remain stubbornly low, Gdowski said.
“While we’re encouraged by this growth, we have more work to do,” he said. “The gap in proficiency rates between the district and the state are the greatest in reading with a 5 percent gap and writing with a 7 percent gap.”
Adams 14 also made positive gains in this year’s TCAP scores. The district, which serves Commerce City, is in the third year of a five-year turnaround plan and needs to boost academic achievement quickly in order to avoid sanctions from the state.
Adams 14, one of the lowest-performing districts in the state, scored “proficient” or higher this year in all four content areas compared to 2012.
At Adams City High School, students tested higher in reading and writing this year than any time over the past eight years. Meanwhile, at Kearney Middle School, students tested about 10 percent higher in writing.
“We have a lot of work left to do, particularly at the elementary level, but we’ve stopped the decline,” said Pat Sanchez, superintendent for Adams 14. “In fact, at the middle school level, we’ve made tremendous progress.”
The district is moving forward with a new “data-driven instructional model” to boost performance over the next few years, Sanchez said.
“We no longer aim for the middle ground,” he said. “We are going from one of the worst performing districts in the state of Colorado to the best performing district in the state.”
District 27J, which primarily serves Brighton, showed improvement on 16 of the 27 tests this year, according to officials. In the past five years, the district has an overall incremental increase of 5 percent on 19 of the tests.
“The data show from year to year that we are making steady gains in our academic achievement,” District 27J Superintendent Chris Fiedler said. “When you take a longer look back at scores from the past five years, a clearer picture emerges of our continued growth.”
Joey Kirchmer: 303-954-2650 or jkirchmer@denverpost.com
