Data hold few surprises

A new school for troubled teens was the only one in the Pikes Peak region to receive an “unsatisfactory” rating on what many people consider the Consumer Reports of public education, school report cards.

Most of the region’s “excellent” schools were found in the traditionally top-performing districts, Cheyenne Mountain School District 12, Lewis-Palmer School District 38 and Academy School District 20.

The Colorado Department of Education released the School Accountability Reports on Tuesday. The one-word performance ratings are based on springtime test results from the Colorado Student Assessment Program.

Unlike CSAP or other accountability measures, the simplicity of these reports makes them one of the most consumer-friendly guides in the confusing, data-driven world of standards, many educators say. Schools are rated “excellent,” “high,” “average,” “low” or “unsatisfactory.”

The reports contain other information on schools, such as the number of disciplinary incidents, student-to-teacher ratios or the years of experience for teachers.

“Being a parent, I think it’s nice to have things simple,” said Ken Turner, deputy superintendent in D-20. “Too often I think educators get into all this psychobabble.”

The Life Skills Center of Colorado Springs, in Colorado Springs School District 11, opened in fall 2004. The “unsatisfactory” rating is the charter school’s first grade by the state.

Life Skills Principal Charles Holt was hired in July, too late to help make a difference on this year’s report card. He expects the school to earn a better grade next year.

Life Skills has an inherent challenge: Students who attend the charter school must have dropped out of another school for at least 30 days before enrolling.

Earlier this year, students were attending class only half the time. A combination of incentives — students with good attendance get iPods — and followup phone calls from teachers has increased that to 80 percent. The school has raised its standards, Holt said, and the teens are responding.

Shivers Academy of Art, Science and Technology, also a charter school, and Tesla Alternative Middle School shed their “unsatisfactory” ratings this year but remained “low.” Like Life Skills, they are designed for students struggling to make it in traditional secondary schools.

Twenty-six of the region’s 31 “excellent” schools were located in Cheyenne Mountain, Lewis-Palmer and Academy. They are home districts for three of the region’s most affluent areas, Broadmoor, Monument/Tri-Lakes and northern Colorado Springs. The same districts earned the most “excellent” ratings last year too. There were 35 “excellent” schools last year.

In Cheyenne Mountain, only two schools fell short of the “excellent” rating, Piñon Valley and Skyway Park elementary schools.

Superintendent Harlan Else said they’re improving and that’s what counts.

Four schools in D-11 and one school in Harrison School District 2 also earned “excellent” ratings.

At the D-2 school, James Irwin Charter High School, students and staff participated in a pep rally Tuesday to celebrate their accomplishment.

“This really is the big one,” said Donald Zimmerman, chief executive officer and president of James Irwin schools, about the School Accountability Report.

The one-word rating resonates with parents, he said. For a charter school that depends heavily on competition, that word can mean success or failure.

Donna Arrington is a parent in Falcon School District 49, where 11 of 14 schools scored “high” this year. She uses the ratings and other report card information to evaluate how her two children’s schools, Stetson Elementary and Skyview Middle School, compare with others. Other parents, she said, use the report cards to determine where their children will attend school.

“I’ve had friends who, when they were looking to move here, went online and looked at these reports,” she said. “That helped them determine where they wanted to live.”

Nanette Anderson, spokeswoman for D-20, said parents will visit schools or the central office — report cards in hand.

“I think it’s much more a consumer tool, and I think it was designed that way,” she said.

Turner agrees.

“Wise, educated, informed consumers these days look around and say, ‘Where do I want my children to attend?’ ” he said. “I think this is one more piece of information for parents as consumers so they can make those decisions.”

The schools themselves find the report cards less useful. Districts use the CSAP results long before they are fed into the report card, and the rest of the information is already known to the districts, because they must supply it to the state.

“This is old data to us,” said Widefield Superintendent Mark Hatchell. He believes the oneword label that’s so easy for parents to grasp is a narrow look. Nearly every school in Widefield was “average” this year, but Hatchell said schools are improving in achievement and adding new programs, and those points get left out.

HOW IT WORKS

School Accountability Reports are one of three education accountability systems in Colorado.

State accreditation and the federal No Child Left Behind Act’s adequate yearly progress are the others.

On the accountability reports, each school receives one of five ratings — from “unsatisfactory” to “excellent” — based on Colorado Student Assessment Program scores. Other information — ranging from average teacher salary to number of fights — is also included on the report that is sent to every parent by the school district.

School Accountability Reports were first issued in September 2001 based on data from the 2000-01 school year.

If a school is rated “unsatisfactory,” it must develop an improvement plan approved by Colorado Department of Education. The school also receives additional money from the state and has three years to attain a higher rating.

If the school remains “unsatisfactory” after three years, the state can recommend the school be converted to a charter school.

Becoming a charter school is also eventually a ramification if a school does not make adequate yearly progress, one of the other two accountability systems in Colorado.

Title 1 schools, those with a high percentage of students who qualify for free and reducedprice lunches, that miss adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years in the same subject area — reading or math — can face sanctions. These may include being required to provide transportation to another school, offering tutoring or, after several years, being restructured as a charter school.

Adequate yearly progress information, based on CSAP test scores, is released in October. In the Pikes Peak region, 38 schools did not make adequate yearly progress this year.

Accreditation, the third arm of accountability, is based on many indicators, including test scores, safety and finances.

The state accredits districts; districts, in turn, accredit schools. No Pikes Peak area schools have lost accreditation; two districts are on “accreditation watch,” meaning the district is not meeting all indicators but is working to meet them while remaining accredited.

A school district can lose funding or be reorganized if accreditation is lost.