My Goal: Recover COVID learning losses and substantially improve student achievement results.
Background
We all want to believe our children are being offered the best education possible. For years Jeffco School District has been telling us how well they are doing by comparing Jeffco achievement numbers to other districts and the whole state of Colorado.
But the reality is our children won’t be competing for jobs only in Colorado or only against other Coloradans. They will be competing on a national and international level. When the District compares Jeffco to the whole state of Colorado, we were given a false sense of security. The real comparison is how Jeffco students compare to students in other states such as Massachusetts or Virginia, and countries such as Canada and Switzerland.
We have a persistent achievement problem in Jeffco schools that is growing worse, and has a serious negative impact on our children’s ability to thrive in the 21st century economy.
In 2019, before COVID arrived, 54% of Jeffco 3rd graders failed to meet the state standard for reading proficiency. 65% of 6th graders failed to meet the math standard. And 62% of 8th graders failed to meet the science standard.
And while our achievement results for students eligible for free and reduced lunch (FRL) are indeed atrocious, we cannot blame Jeffco's achievement problem on poverty, however much some people would like to do so.
In 2019, 75% of FRL 3rd graders failed to meet the state reading standard, 85% of FRL 6th graders failed to meet the state math standard, and 84% of FRL 8th graders failed to meet the state science standard.
If you're not serious about dramatically improving these results, you're not serious about equity.
But in 2019, 44% of non-FRL 3rd graders also failed to meet state reading proficiency standard, 55% of 6th graders failed to meet the state math standard, and 53% of 8th graders failed to meet the state science standard.
Between 2017 (when Colorado switched from the ACT to the SAT) and 2019, the scores of Jeffco 11th graders fell on both the Evidence Based Reading and Writing and the Math assessments.
I've summed up Jeffco's declining achievement trends in this presentation.
In this presentation, I evaluated the different options for recovering students' COVID learning losses, based on their effect sizes.
I've also prepared a very detailed analysis of school-by-school achievement proficiency and achievement growth results for each of the district's 17 articulation areas.
The last measure we have of the effectiveness of the education Jeffco provides our students is their performance on the Grade 11 SAT, which every student in Colorado must take. The following table shows the percentage of students at each of our 17 Articulation Area high schools who met the SAT's College and Career Ready standard on both Evidence Based Reading and Writing and Math.
Make no mistake about where I stand: These are extremely unimpressive and completely unacceptable results.
Since we moved to Jeffco from Calgary in 2010, the state of Colorado has shifted from CSAP to TCAP to CMAS for the purpose of conducing its annual assessment of student achievement results. Regardless of the test used, however, for the past 12 years we have seen a pattern of continued decline, even as the bar for what it takes to thrive in the 21st century economy has continued to rise.
The last time Jeffco experienced significant gains in student achievement was more than 20 years ago, when Jane Hammond was the district's Superintendent.
Make no mistake. We are failing to prepare our children to thrive in the 21st century economy.
What are the Root Causes of Jeffco's Academic Decline?