The investment that Denver International Airport made in the new security checkpoints certainly paid off during the government shutdown. The wait times were hardly affected, and my visitors had no troubles at all. Great job, DIA!

Tobi Howell,ĚýIdaho Springs

Support public health intervention at immigration center

Re: “Adams Co. Health Department admonishes ICE detention center,” March 30 news story

It is appalling to read that the ICE detention center in Aurora is acting with impunity in not complying with the public health inspection and not following recommendations intended to protect the health and safety of detainees and staff alike. All the Adams County Health Department can do at this point is “admonish” them!

The appalling conditions inside the detention center have been well-documented by the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, including insufficient medical and prenatal care, extreme temperatures, nutritional neglect, and deteriorating mental health.

We cannot accept these injustices and the human suffering that is being inflicted on our community members. We are not helpless! is making its way through the state legislature. It would expand the health department¶¶Ňőap authority and subject the detention center to a civil penalty and/or revocation of its license for failure to comply with its directives.

I implore everyone to contact their state legislators today and demand the passage of this bill.

Maureen Daly, Wheat Ridge

Troubled waters for our republic

America is the Titanic.

Trump 2.0 is the iceberg.

The 99% are the steerage class.

The 1% get all lifeboats.

It took the Titanic 2 hours and 40 minutes to sink. It’s taken America 250 years. Democracy isn’t unsinkable after all.

Scott Stoddard, Aurora

Don’t cut the education all Americans need — especially now

Re: “,” March 28 news story

No, no, no to cuts to social studies testing and learning. Inflation is spiking because high-level decision makers didn’t understand the importance of the Strait of Hormuz, and Colorado thinks we should de-emphasize both geography and economics? It’s never a good time to tell teachers, students, and parents that civics doesn’t matter, but now? When our democracy is in peril? To save a million bucks? What’s tested is taught, and what’s not tested is not taught. Our state and our country depend on people who understand civics, history, geography and economics. Cutting it is foolish.

Joan Jacobson, Lakewood

Go ahead, try out that turn signal

Modern-day automobiles can drive themselves and park themselves. They come with global tracking systems that direct motorists to their destinations. Cars are capable of providing verbal answers to spoken questions, playing favorite songs on demand, brewing coffee, showing films, placing bets and reciting poetry.

Many even come with something called “turn signals” that indicate a driver’s intention to turn. However, these require thoughtfulness and respect and, therefore, here in the United States, they are rarely used.

Craig Marshall Smith, Highlands Ranch

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˛Ń˛ą°ů°ů±đ°ů´ÇĚýmet at least 85% of his goals during the previous academic year, according to his 2024 evaluation.

The board unanimously approved the superintendent’s evaluation at a public meeting Thursday after several discussions that were held behind closed doors in executive sessions. Board members did not speak at length about the evaluation beyond praising Marrero.

“Your passion really is Denver Public Schools,” board President Carrie Olson.

The seven-member school board extended Marrero’s contract through 2028 earlier this year.

At the time, directors said they did so because they wanted DPS to have consistent leadership as K-12 institutions face threats to federal funding, but community and political groups criticized the contract extension because members hadn’t yet conducted this year’s evaluation of Marrero’s leadership and because control of the school board could change after next week’s election.

In extending Marrero’s contract, directors also stripped Marrero’s ability to earn a bonus and made it harder for future boards to fire the superintendent without cause by requiring a supermajority, or five votes.

Marrero, who was hired in 2021, has led DPS through school closures because of declining enrollment, and as the district likely became the first in the nation to sue the Trump administration in an effort to prevent immigration raids from occurring in schools. DPS dropped the lawsuit after the federal government said it hadn’t changed federal policy around immigration enforcement on school property.

“(I’m) really appreciative of all that you did to bring your teams together and work really close with us as a board to ensure that, at a time a really tough decision had to be made, that we were on board,” board member Kimberlee Sia told Marrero about his handling of school closures.

DPS also met expectations in enough academic performance areas — such as test scores and graduation rates — during the 2024-25 academic year that the district received aĚý“green,” or Accredited rating from the for the first time in six years. Green is one of the top ratings a district can receive on the .

DPSĚý recently celebrated students’ performance on last year’s , which saw students perform the same or better in almost every grade when compared to the 2023-24 academic year.

The school board lauded Marrero for students’ growth on the standardized tests, but noted that pupils’ performance in literacy failed to meet the district’s goals. “Persistent achievement gaps by race and special population status require continued focus, particularly in early literacy and differentiated supports,” members wrote in the 22-page report.

Community groups and school board candidates have criticized Marrero, and the district more broadly, for not doing enough to address academic gaps that persist among students of color and their white peers. For example, only 14.4% of fourth-graders who took the Spanish language arts exam showed proficiency in the subject, according to the latest data from the education department.

“This past year was difficult because of everything that was brought up to us,” Marrero said when asked by Sia about academic outcomes. “We have an opportunity upon us (to improve academic outcomes).”

It is a proverbial “tale of two cities.” One plot line reveals that approximately three quarters of DPS white students are proficient in reading, outscoring their Colorado peers by 17 points. A parallel tale suggests that of Black, Hispanic, and low-income students who 70% or more are not proficient in reading and, in contrast to their white peers, underperform similar students statewide.

These same terrible patterns hold true in math, where over 80% of Black and Hispanic students perform below grade level and behind peers statewide. We are not making a “real difference” for most of our kids as 65% of students are Black or Hispanic. In fact, the long-term trend suggests that, for many, the situation is only getting worse.

The data is even more confusing. Over three years, test scores for all student groups went up. Up is good and we credit DPS, generally, for this trend. However, when you put the starting line at 2019, scores have just now surpassed pre-pandemic levels for DPS white students, while scores among DPS Black and Latino students are still recovering on most metrics. There is nothing exceptional about the recent rise – we are merely back to where we started, for some.

Search your school’s 2025 CMAS scores

There is a glimmer of promise when we observe growth scores. These scores reflect performance relative to an expected amount of learning for any given school year, based on typical performance of similar students the previous year. For most DPS subgroups, growth was slightly higher relative to state peers. But there, again, the group that is growing fastest is white students. Most minority students are not growing as much as peers or quickly enough to ever achieve grade level proficiency. Unless DPS can radically accelerate growth rates for historically underserved students, the nearly 50 point achievement gap between white students and students of color will only expand.

It is worth noting that DPS' actual performance bears no relationship to the wildly unrealistic targets proposed by the superintendent and approved by the school board in January. DPS set strategic targets for minority student subgroups between 10 and 20 points higher than those actually achieved. This failure is not surprising as DPS did not articulate a realistic plan for lifting up the achievement of chronically underperforming groups.ĚýIt is surprising, however, in the context of DPS’ stated success.

We celebrate the fact that some schools in the district are defying their “demographic destiny.” As measured by test scores, students of color are better served by charter schools than by district-managed schools, and some DPS charter schools have made great headway in closing the gap. There are also some district-managed schools exceeding the odds, which begs the question: What steps is DPS taking to identify and scale strategies that work?

As members of EDUCATE Denver, we invited the superintendent to speak to a forum of community members to find out. We were interested in learning about DPS’ bright spots, challenges, course corrections and efforts to leverage best practice. The Superintendent declined the invitation, refused to send a delegate, and countered that the district would hold its own forum next year – a decision we certainly hope was not motivated by the upcoming Board of Education election this November.

When test scores were publicly released in August, the district celebrated recent gains without putting them into proper perspective. Community members deserve a fuller picture, which we attempt to provide here:

With a budget of $1.5 billion and just over 90,000 students, DPS spends $11,452 per student each year. According to the data, less than one in two students are proficient in literacy and fewer than one in three students are proficient in math. Shareholders (taxpayers) of any other $1.5 billion organization would demand a complete overall of such a failing institution. (In the case of a $1.5 billion public entity whose core business is students’ futures, a more practical solution is to follow the evidence.)

So, what now? Schools and programs in DPS that are closing the achievement gap between white and minority students should be replicated urgently in other schools across the district. In addition to studying the high performers in our midst, DPS should dive into the extensive body of research that exists to identify promising practices around the country. What they will find is that higher performing school districts not only have ambitious goals; they have detailed plans to achieve them. They have leaders who talk to, and work with, their communities. They have school boards who maintain focus on student learning and monitor that plans are executed.

There is no question that DPS teachers, staff and students are working hard, but they need more direction and support. The citizens, taxpayers, and voters of Denver need to express their desire for clear goals from the school board and coherent strategy from the superintendent. It is well past time for serious conversations about the structural issues plaguing Denver Public Schools. It is our only hope for a “tale of one city” in which all children learn and thrive.

Federico Peña is a former mayor of Denver and an EDUCATE Denver member. Rob Stein is a former superintendent of the Roaring Fork School District, a former principal of Manual High School and a member of Educate Denver.

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DPS has received a “green,” or Accredited, rating from the , meaning the district met expectations in most academic performance areas during the 2024-25 school year, according to preliminary data released by the state agency Wednesday.

The district previously held a yellow rating, meaning the state viewed DPS as lower-performing when it came to standardized test results, academic growth, graduation rates and other measures. The last time DPS held a green rating — the second highest on the framework — was in 2019.

“I knew this day — just like COVID recovery — was going to come,” Superintendent Alex Marrero said. “…We’re in a better space.”

DPS’s improved ranking comes months after Marrero announced a new districtwide policy that could seeĚýschools close for poor performance.

Under the policy — called the School Transformation Process — DPS will close a school once it has spent four years on the state’s Accountability Clock. District officials will also try to improve academic outcomes by replacing staff or changing how a school operates — and conversations around such changes could begin in the coming months, Marrero said in an interview Wednesday.

“We potentially have some schools that may go on to this next year,” he said of the School Transformation Process.

The goal of the districtwide policy, Marrero has previously said, is to turn schools around before the state intervenes.

DPS said the district now has 23 schools on the state’s — meaning their ratings are low enough that they are ticking toward state intervention — which is down from 25 last academic year. Eleven of the schools that were on the clock last year fully exited this year, according to the district.

The state’s ratings are color-coded. Red is the lowest score and means that a school or district is among the lowest performing in the state.

Districts with the highest rating — Accredited with Distinction — are blue, while the highest rating for individual schools is green.ĚýBoth ratings mean that students are meeting or exceeding expectations in most academic areas.

One DPS school — Columbine Elementary — saw its individual rating jump from orange to green, meaning the school is no longer on the .

“This is the result of the groundwork that has been laid over the past several years on the focus of the science of reading,” Columbine Principal Corey Jenks said. “…A lot of it is the culture we have… High expectations for ourselves as well as high expectations for our students.”

Other DPS schools saw their ratings drop enough to place them on the clock this year, including both Maxwell Elementary and Munroe Elementary. Both schools were among the six to receive red ratings this year, according to state data.

Abraham Lincoln High — which is in its eighth year on the clock for having some of the lowest PSAT and CMAS scores in the state — also improved academically, going from red to yellow, which is the second-highest rating possible.

Statewide, DPS is one of 84 school districts and , or BOCES, to hold a green rating. Other metro-area districts with such ratings include the, the and .

Only 17 districts or BOCES hold the highest rating — blue — and only one of those K-12 systems, the , is in the metro region.

“The steady progress in the school and district frameworks is a testament to the dedication and hard work of our students, staff and communities over the past few years,” Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said in a statement.

Fourteen districts, including the , are on the Accountability Clock, meaning they received the two lowest ratings possible. That’s up from 11 schools during the 2024-25 academic year, according to state data.

As withĚýlast year’s Colorado Measures of Academic Success scores, fourth- and eighth-graders’ literacy scores continue to lag behind those recorded by students in 2019. Eighth-graders’ math results also haven’t recovered since the pandemic, according to data released by the on Thursday.

Here are Colorado’s top-performing schools on 2025 CMAS tests

Still, metro Denver districts and state education leaders said this week that they are encouraged by the test scores, especially given the improvements students have made in math.

"I would have loved to see (the rebound) happen earlier, but it's appropriate that it's happening at the five-year mark," Superintendent Alex Marrero said.

CMAS tests cover English language arts, math and science. The statewide exams are offered to students in third to eighth grades. Pupils who score at least 750 on the exams “met or exceeded expectations,” meaning they are on track to be college- or career-ready.

In literacy, seventh-graders saw the biggest improvement from last year. The percentage of seventh-graders who met or exceeded expectations in English language arts not only surpassed pre-pandemic levels but also rose 2.5 percentage points from 2024 to 48.8%.

“It¶¶Ňőap obvious that in-person learning really matters for kids and that personal connection with their teachers makes a difference,” Superintendent Tracy Dorland said. “It means that our students are learning at higher rates.”

The data released Thursday showed fourth-graders made the most progress in math, with 36.5% of students meeting or exceeding expectations compared to 34.1% last year.

“We do now see that performance is at or above pre-pandemic levels in most grades and subjects,” Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said. “…We saw enormous declines in mathematics during the pandemic.”

Every grade saw improvement in their math scores except for third-graders, whose results remained mostly flat. Córdova attributed students’ progress in math to schools increasing their focus and resources on the subject after significant declines during the pandemic.

But, she also cautioned, “We are nowhere close to where we need to be.”

The percentage of fourth-graders who showed proficiency in English language arts (42%) stayed flat from last year and was 6 percentage points below where students scored in 2019.

Fourth grade is a transition year for elementary students as children move from learning how to read to applying those skills toward their learning, CĂłrdova said.

Search your school’s 2025 CMAS scores

More eighth-graders met or exceeded expectations in both English language arts (43.9%) and math (34.7%) than they did last year. But their scores remain below pre-pandemic levels in both subjects.

DPS, the state's largest district, saw CMAS scores increase or stay flat for almost every grade when compared to 2024 results.

The district's seventh-graders saw the largest gains from last year, with the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations in English language arts jumping 3 percentage points to 45.4%.

"We've been very intentional and very thoughtful in how we engaged our school leaders in what we need to do better," Deputy Superintendent Tony Smith said.

Despite the good news, DPS saw significant drops in the proficiency of students who took the Spanish version of the literacy exam.

Only 18.7% of third-graders and 14.4% of fourth-graders who took the Spanish language arts exam met or exceeded expectations, down 2.1 and 6.7 percentage points, respectively, from last year.

DPS has welcomed thousands of immigrant students in recent years, many whose families crossed the southern U.S. border. Marrero said the new arrivals weren't included in 2024's CMAS results, but his efforts to have the state exclude them again this year were unsuccessful.

The students, the superintendent said, faced death and tragedy on their journey to Denver and had their education interrupted before enrolling in the city's schools.

"These families were recalibrating what life was in society," he said, of the district's request to exclude them from testing. "...That's the humane thing to do."

DPS Chief of Academics Simone Wright added, "The new arrivals are coming with less educational experience and that is something we are working to upgrade our systems to truly meet students where they are -- to ensure that language is not a barrier to success."

Colorado students’ math, literacy scores largely reach or exceed pre-pandemic levels

At the state's largest school district, 41.9% of students across all grades met or exceeded expectations in English language arts, and 32.9% showed proficiency in math.

"We are at all-time highs in CMAS math and CMAS science," DPS Superintendent Alex Marrero said. "We are so close when it comes to literacy. We have rebounded from COVID and the pandemic at all levels, and in some cases, surpass it."

, the second-largest district in the state, saw 52.5% of students show proficiency in English language arts, while 42.8% students met or exceeded expectations in math.

, the state’s third-largest K-12 system, saw 63.4% of students meet or exceed expectations in English language arts and 55.5% demonstrated proficiency in math.

“We’re really encouraged with the data,” Douglas County Superintendent Erin Kane said. “We continue to have increased proficiency overall.”

Here are the schools that ranked the highest in literacy and math across all grades based on their mean scale score, which is the average from the students who took the exam:

Top 5 performing Colorado schools in English language arts

1. Polaris Elementary, Denver; Denver Public Schools; 792
2. ĚýDennison Elementary, Lakewood; Jeffco Public Schools; 791
3. ĚýBear Creek Elementary, Boulder; Boulder Valley School District; 786
4. Zach Elementary, Fort Collins; Poudre School District; 786
5. Morey Middle School, Denver; Denver Public Schools; 785

Top 5 performing Colorado schools in math

1. Polaris Elementary, Denver; Denver Public Schools; 788
2. Aurora Quest K-8, Aurora; Aurora Public Schools; 786
3. High Peaks Elementary, Boulder; Boulder Valley School District; 785
4. Summit Charter Middle School, Boulder; Boulder Valley School District; 785
5. Challenge School, Denver; Cherry Creek School District; 783

Search your school’s 2025 CMAS scores

The schools failed to meet state expectations on standardized tests, academic growth and preparing students for life after high school, earning them a spot on Colorado’s .

Sixteen of the Denver schools have spent two or more years on the clock, meaning they are ticking toward state intervention, or, in the case of Abraham Lincoln High School, already there.

“It’s a call to action, as a system, that we need to be doing better in supporting our communities, especially our communities of color, our language learners,” said Joe Amundsen, DPS’s executive director of school transformation.

Under DPS’s new policy — called the School Transformation Process — district leaders will consider shutting down a school once it has spent four years on the Accountability Clock. DPS officials have said the goal is to reverse poor-performing schools before they reach closure or state intervention by shaking up the building’s staff and operations.

But DPS has long faced criticism for past policies of closing and restarting schools, which pupils, parents and community members said displaced students of color.

“It¶¶Ňőap another tool to close down our schools where the students are black and brown,” said Milo Marquez, chair of the Latino Education Coalition, about DPS’s new policy.

The district¶¶Ňőap most recent round of school closures occurred this year, but the decision was made because of declining K-12 enrollment. Like the schools on the Accountability Clock, most of the buildings that were consolidated because enrollment served a majority of students and children from lower-income families.

“We do have to close schools for financial reasons and for academic reasons,” said Theresa Peña, a former member of the Latino Education Coalition and a previous DPS board member.

But, she said, “There has been a history of things being done to the community,” rather than with them.

As part of the district¶¶Ňőap efforts to turn around schools, DPS has created the Elevate Schools Network. Elevate will have eight low-performing schools that DPS will work with to improve so that they are no longer on the Accountability Clock.

“If we’re able to be successful in these schools, community will be engaged in the improvement, staff will feel a sense of support,” Amundsen said. “…This is us as a district saying we are putting resources and support in these schools to ensure really strong instructional systems are in place.”

‘We need to do something different’

The 25 DPS schools on the Accountability Clock are both big and small. Their main similarity to the seven schools closed for low enrollment this year is who’s in the classroom.

DPS is the state’s largest school district and among Colorado’s most diverse, although gentrification throughout Denver’s neighborhoods is making classrooms whiter and more affluent.

At DPS, 75% of the 90,450 pupils are students of color, and about 63% qualify for free or reduced lunch, a measure of poverty.

Twenty-three of the schools on the Accountability Clock enroll a higher percentage of students of color and children from lower-income families than the district does, according to data from the .

At the two other schools — Columbine Elementary and Denver Center for International Studies at Fairmont — children of color still make up a majority of the student population, even though the percentage is below the district¶¶Ňőap, data showed.

“This is what happens when kids go to segregated schools,” Peña said.

The state education department rates schools based on various metrics that fall into three broader categories: academic achievement, academic growth, and postsecondary and workforce readiness. Schools receive points on metrics ranging from Colorado Measures of Academic Success — or CMAS — scores to their graduation rates.

If a school receives a “turnaround” rating (which is red) or “priority improvement” (which is orange), then they are considered to be on the Accountability Clock. Schools are only allowed to receive low ratings for five years in a row before the state steps in.

Abraham Lincoln High, which is in its seventh year on the clock, had some of the lowest PSAT and CMAS scores in Colorado. But there was also a bright spot: the school saw English language proficiency grow among multilingual learners, according

“We need to do something different to support the students in the schools and recognize they need additional support,” Denver school board Vice President Marlene De La Rosa said. “…I am always concerned when our students are not doing the best that they can — that there’s something where we’re not helping them reach their potential.”

Three of the schools that closed this year for low enrollment were on the state’s Accountability Clock for poor performance before they shut down. A fourth, Castro Elementary, was initially on the clock in 2024 but was removed after the state adjusted the school’s rating.

Superintendent Alex Marrero has said small schools receive less money and resources because funding is based on the number of children in the classroom. This means it is more difficult for a small school to hire enough counselors or interventionists to help students struggling in math or reading.

“We don’t support more school closures,” said Marquez, of the Latino Education Coalition. “But we also understand that it¶¶Ňőap based on per-pupil funding. We need to find a way to fix that.”

What can lead to a school’s low rating

Schools’ academic performance can drop low enough that they earn a red or orange rating from the state education department for many reasons, Amundsen said.

“Most of the time with just focus and support, the schools get off (the clock),” he said. “…It¶¶Ňőap really when these schools continue to see year-over-year low performance that this becomes a problem.“

Schools with persistent poor performance typically have staff turnover and struggle to find substitute teachers — a sign that there’s a deeper problem within the building’s culture, Amundsen said.

“We really know that after five years of low performance, we don’t want to have a student have that experience,” he said. “…They’re not in a school that¶¶Ňőap getting support from the school district at the level they should.”

De La Rosa, the school board vice president, pointed out that several of the schools on the clock or that recently have closed for low enrollment have also borne the brunt of issues affecting not just DPS, but the city as a whole.

For example, Columbian Elementary, which closed this year and was on the clock, is based in northwest Denver, where gentrification and high housing costs have reduced the number of children living in the region. Columbian was supposed to have an arts-focused curriculum, but couldn’t afford to do so because of low enrollment, De La Rosa said.

Cheltenham Elementary, which is in its second year on the clock, received students from Fairview Elementary afterĚýthe school board closed itĚýin 2023 because of low enrollment. The Sun Valley neighborhoodĚýfought Fairview’s closure, and not every family wanted to attend Cheltenham, De La Rosa said.

Then there’s Place Bridge Academy and Ashley Elementary School, which are both in their first year on the clock and have been on the frontlines of Denver’s migrant crisis.

DPS has taken in more than 4,000 immigrant students since 2023, and many of the children had their education interrupted on their journey to the city, are struggling with trauma and are now living under the threat of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, De La Rosa said.

“We have to really take a deeper look, a deeper dive at what is happening in a school building,” she said. “…We want to get ahead of the state having to take over a school and get ahead of recognizing that these are schools that need additional support.”

Marrero announced last month his plan to end the 7-year hiatus of DPS school accountability by developing a new system to judge school performance.

We know school improvement plans often fail, but ignoring students who are not learning is not the answer either. This city has an abundance of schools where students are thriving academically, including some of the best schools in the state. We cannot allow zip codes to determine who has access to the best education and who is stuck in some of the worst schools.

Take, for example, Denver’s Abraham Lincoln High School, a place that is on Year 7 of accountability watch from Colorado’s Department of Education.

In 2024, despite having a “Directed Pathway” performance plan in place, only 12.8% of juniors met or exceeded expectations on the reading and writing portion of the SAT, and only 5.1% met or exceeded expectations on the math portion. In March of that year, the school’s former principal wrote that “overall academic achievement in math and English is low and decreasing from past years and this needs to be addressed comprehensively for all students.”

This year, Marrero and a new principal, NĂ©stor Bravo, are optimistic that gains in test scores will show improvement.

“We’ve seen incredible evidence of our approach,” Marrero said, pointing out that Manuel High School has improved test scores, attendance and graduation rates enough to come off the state’s watch list. “We’re also seeing it with Lake Middle School.”

Continuous improvement is necessary at these schools to provide even a semblance of equity with the experience students have at other high schools and middle schools in the district. It’s what Marrero calls having a “minimum equivalency” for all schools in the district, and” having a Blue Ribbon school in every neighborhood.”

Bravo told us that he does think closure should be on the table for low-performing schools, but he added that Lincoln is an “iconic community hub” with a “multi-generational sense of belonging.”

“Closing a place like this has consequences that go way beyond academic performance,” Bravo said.

Which is why it makes sense for the district and the state to pull out all the stops to give students at Lincoln an equitable education.

Bravo said he took over the school and faced a $1.2 million budget deficit. Since then, he said, he has created a clean and efficient system that puts employees where they need to be based on their strengths, provides training and support, and then focuses resources on intervention and foundational skills for students.

The school still has a tough road ahead. Many students stopped attending school when federal immigration raids started in Denver, and Marrero said the school’s metrics on attendance took a hit. We don’t see any sense in the state holding Lincoln High School accountable for students who are afraid of deportation.

But we have also seen time and time again that accountability works to improve school conditions.

After years of pushback and reluctance from the Adams 14 School District, officials finally turned over Adams City High School to outside control. Almost immediately, test scores and performance began to improve. It took the threat of closure for the district to finally concede that it needed help running the school.

We know that every student in this district can succeed. Marrero said he knows that the state’s tests — the PSAT, SAT, and the CMAS — are imperfect measures of students’ abilities. The tests have an obvious bias toward good test takers and students who have been trained to test well; also, the tests have a bias against English language learners and students with IEPs or other learning needs.

But Marrero said he is eager to “prove that we can and our kids can in spite of the missing equity components.”

Marrero is asking charter schools in the district to agree to being held accountable by the district and not just the state. He pointed to the school board’s failure to close Academy 360 despite poor performance. There has got to be high accountability that comes with the autonomy of a charter school, he said.

We are concerned that, given the current anti-charter school ethos among district leaders and school board members, the policy could be abused to shutter good charter schools that perhaps just need a little help.

But we also resolutely believe that charter schools should be held to the exact same standard as district schools, and that closure should be on the table when charter schools fail students.

To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online or check out our guidelines for how to submit by email or mail.

The national test, the , known as NAEP, was given to fourth and eighth graders in the spring of 2024, and results were released Wednesday. The test is administered about every two years.

Test administrators determined that none of Colorado’s average score results represented a significant change from . But a slightly higher percentage of Colorado students performed at basic and proficient levels in 2024 compared with 2022.

Part of the explanation for that is another trend NAEP identified this year nationwide: Students who are high performing continue to improve, while students who are typically low performing have continued to struggle. Average scores mask those widening gaps.

Compared with 2019, before the pandemic, Colorado students are making progress toward recovery in math at fourth and eighth grade, but in reading only at the eighth grade level.

Reading scores are a concern nationwide

In fourth grade reading scores, Colorado students have fallen further behind, following a national trend. In 2024, 36% of fourth graders tested proficient in reading, down from 38% in 2022.

Despite that drop, the state’s average reading score for fourth graders, 221, is still significantly higher than the national average of 214, and places Colorado near the top of all states.

The state’s performance on eighth grade reading scores held steady, breaking with the national trend of large declines. In 2024, 35% of Colorado students tested were proficient, up from 34% in 2022. The state change was not identified as statistically significant.

Nationally, reading scores had been declining since before the pandemic, so officials cautioned against blaming only the pandemic-era disruptions.

Colorado’s own data from in fourth grade reading performance. The rate of students meeting expectations on those state tests dropped by 1.8 percentage points from the previous year, the largest drop of any grade level.

Colorado’s math test results were more encouraging

Colorado’s results for fourth graders taking NAEP math tests showed a significant increase in the percentage of students reaching proficiency. In 2024, 42% of those students reached proficiency, up from 36% in 2022.

Colorado has invested in math recovery since the pandemic, including making online programs and tutoring available for students statewide.

Colorado’s CMAS test results in math for 2024 were also more encouraging than literacy results. Students in elementary grades in 2024 posted higher rates of meeting and exceeding expectations than students did in 2019, before the pandemic.

On NAEP, where proficiency has a different definition, Colorado students are still not doing better than in 2019, however.

NAEP releases data for large urban districts, including Denver

Denver students had some reading scores that were better than scores in other cities for which the program compiled data, but in most categories, their improvement over 2022 wasn’t statistically significant.

Denver Public Schools students ranked near the top of the 25 cities in average scores for eighth grade reading. Denver’s average of 258 was up from 255 in 2022 and 257 in 2019. In 2024, 31% of eighth graders in Denver were proficient in reading, up from 28% in 2022.

The only improvement that was identified as significant in DPS was the increase in the proficiency rate for fourth grade math. In 2024, 36% of students tested proficient on that test, compared with 28% in 2022.

The NAEP standard for proficiency represents “competency over challenging subject matter, a standard that exceeds most states’ standards for proficient,” according to the federal agency that compiles the data.

In fourth grade reading, for instance, the administration states that students who test at the basic level, but below proficiency, may still have some reading ability to “provide some support for ideas related to the plot or characters.” Testing in the proficient category, above basic, might require a student to be able to “make complex inferences about the characters’ actions, motivations, or feelings, using relevant evidence within or across literary texts.”

Officials from the board who oversee the testing say it¶¶Ňőap students who score below basic who may be struggling to read and warrant concern.

Among Colorado fourth graders, 35% tested below basic in reading in 2024, a higher percentage than anytime in the last two decades. In Denver, 42% tested below basic.

Among Colorado eighth graders, 26% tested below basic in reading, off from 27% in 2022. In Denver, this group accounted for 35%.

Nationally, the trends show that in many cases, the percentage of students in below-basic levels grew as students who typically perform at high levels did well, and groups of students who usually struggle are doing worse.

Hispanic students and those learning English as a new language struggle

In both Colorado and in Denver, Hispanic students and those identified as English learners continued to struggle and have the widest gaps compared with their counterparts.

In Denver, the gap grew on the eighth grade math test to a 56-point difference in average scores, compared with a 42-point difference in 2017. In 2024, only 9% of Hispanic students in Denver schools were proficient in eighth grade math.

English language learners in Denver had more significant decreases in scores from 2019 than English learners statewide, or across the country.

For instance, in eighth grade math, students identified as English learners had an average score of 225 in DPS, compared with a statewide average of 226, and national average of 237. But the DPS average score was down 20 points from 2019.

For students who aren’t identified as English language learners, Colorado had an average score of 283 on eighth grade math tests, and Denver’s average was 278.

seem to be struggling to recover academically compared with other students.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

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