At its Focus on Achievement session tonight, the board took a deep dive into data demonstrating record student gains in student achievement district-wide last school year.
"The vision and clarity of the board's Denver Plan 2020 gave DPS clear goals and the direction we needed to create strategies that allowed us to focus on critical work," said Deputy Superintendent Susana Cordova. She credited much of the gains to the district's focus on early literacy, teacher leadership, progress monitoring, flexibility, tiered supports, whole child supports and building the capacity of school leaders. Three panels of school leaders shared their insights on these areas of focus with the board throughout the discussion.
Early Literacy
Last year, DPS began work on a new, comprehensive
Early Literacy plan
with the goal of ensuring at least 80% of our students are reading at or above grade level by third grade. Since implementing the plan, we've seen strong growth in just one year -- in fact, one third more k-3 students were reading at grade level at the end of last year compared to the previous year, and we saw our biggest gains ever in statewide third grade reading assessments. Reading by third grade is an important milestone because research shows that students who are reading by third grade are four times more likely to graduate. Additionally, students across all grade levels are experiencing significant increases in reading proficiency -- including on both our English and Spanish language arts assessments.
"This is truly extraordinary and shows all of us what is possible," said Board Chair Anne Rowe. "I think this was incredibly intentional work to prepare for extraordinary results."
College and Career Readiness
In order to meet our Denver Plan goal of ensuring our students are
ready for college and career
, we are focused on increasing our four-year graduation rate for students who start ninth grade in DPS up to 90% and we want to double the number of students who graduate college and career ready.
Advanced Placement (AP) and Concurrent Enrollment have long been touted as proven strategies to postsecondary readiness, and in DPS, these numbers continue to climb. During the 2016-17 school year, DPS increased the number of both AP and concurrent enrollment courses taken by 14%. The largest number of AP exams in DPS history were taken last school year, which translates to 823 more exams passed by students, intensifying the potential for free college credit. While growing the programs, the district simultaneously improved scores across all subject areas -- a significant accomplishment given that participation growth is traditionally linked with a decline in scores.
"I think it's great that we are seeing so many more students doing this," said Board Member
Rachele Espiritu, adding that she'd like to explore the distinctions in scores between English and math further.
Board Member Mike Johnson said he was intrigued by the idea that "taking a concurrent enrollment or AP class might be a better predictor of college success than how well you do on the SAT," and encouraged the district to continue probing the data about the success of these programs.
You can read the full presentation and see detailed data here.