Beach Court Elementary students, shown in a photo from the school's website.

In 2009, for example, 76 percent of Beach Court fifth-graders scored proficient on state math tests. Just 29 percent of those same students scored proficient in math the following year when they entered sixth grade in a variety of middle schools.

By contrast, in Denver Public Schools overall, sixth-graders in 2009 scored 1 percentage point higher in math then they did fifth grade the year before – 47 to 46 percent.

In conducting the analysis, I-News studied student test score records obtained from the Colorado Department of Education. DPS has declined to provide any data or other information until after the state wraps up its investigation.

Earlier this week, Education News Colorado reported that Beach Court Principal Frank Roti has been placed on administrative leave while the state investigates testing anomalies at the school. Hallett Fundamental Academy is also being investigated. The I-News analysis of test scores did not find test score drops at Hallett similar to those at Beach Court.

Sources confirmed the district’s analysis of Colorado Student Assessment Program results included an examination of erasure marks on student answer sheets. Results showed the two schools far exceeded district averages in the number of wrong answers erased and replaced with correct responses.

The I-News analysis of Beach Court scores found that:

• Between half and three quarters of fifth-grade students in 2007 through 2009 saw their math scores drop at least one level when they left the school and tested in sixth grade.
• Between a third and almost half of fifth graders dropped a level in reading  over three years of testing  and a level in writing over two years of testing after leaving the school.

As a result, the percentage of fifth-grade students at Beach Court achieving proficiency in math, reading and writing dropped by a half or more between 2009 and 2010 when they were sixth graders in a different school

I-News looked at how fifth graders who took the tests at Beach Court in 2007 through 2009 fared on the CSAP tests the next year when they entered a new school in sixth grade.   The analysis compared how the same students scored – unsatisfactory, partially proficient, proficient or advanced. Between one and three fifth graders each year did not have scores the next year as sixth graders.

The biggest declines took place between 2009 testing at Beach Court and 2010 tests in sixth grade.  Thirty-seven of the 49 fifth graders, or 75 percent, fell at least one level in math.  The biggest drop was from proficient to partially proficient. Twenty of the 21 fifth graders fell below proficiency when they took the math test in sixth grade.  In addition, 13 of the 17 fifth graders who scored advanced on math at Beach Court fell to proficient  or lower after they left the school.

For reading in 2009, 22 of 49 students dropped a level the next year and 25 of 49 dropped a level in writing. As with math,  the biggest declines were from scoring proficient at Beach Court to scoring partially proficient in sixth grade.

The declines bucked the districtwide trends.

For all DPS schools, 46 percent of fifth graders scored proficient or better in 2009 in math, rising to 47 percent when they became sixth graders in 2010.

For all of DPS, the percent scoring proficient or advanced in reading rose from 48 percent in fifth grade in 2009 to 54 percent in sixth grade in 2010. In writing, the scores were the same in fifth grade in 2009 as they were in sixth grade for 2010 – 41 percent proficient or advanced.

Earlier years

About half of the fifth graders who took math tests at Beach Court in 2008 dropped a level the next year. For reading and writing, it was about 30 percent of fifth graders who lost ground the next year.

Just under half of the fifth graders dropped a level after taking reading and math tests in 2007 at Beach Court. A break down on proficiency levels was not available for writing. Only scale scores were used in the data base analyzed by I-News.

I-News also  analyzed scores for Hallet Fundamental School, but the database used by I-News did not include scores to compare the 2010 and 2011 years that are the focus of the investigation. The analysis found that most scores stayed the same or rose between fifth and sixth grades.

Reflections of a former Beach Court teacher

Bernadette Lopez taught third grade at Beach Court from 2005 to 2008, when she left to join the teacher-led Math and Science Leadership Academy. Lopez has since left teaching to enroll in law school.

During her three years at the school, Lopez said CSAP tests were closely monitored. Teachers picked up their boxes of tests in the morning before testing and the boxes were immediately picked up after testing was over.

She also pointed out that no teacher had access to the tests for all of their students. That’s because of testing accommodations allowed under state testing rules. So students who qualified for extra time, for example, or other special circumstances would be under the supervision of a different proctor.

“I never had access to 100 percent of my students’ tests,” she said.

Lopez said she heard about the cheating investigation and “felt really bad for the teachers who have worked so hard … it tarnishes what we did.”

“When I was there, things were on the up and up,” she said. “I never saw anything that would be suspect.”

But she also noted, “I don’t know what happens after someone picks up the boxes” of tests – “you turn in your box … you never see it again.”

“It’s almost too bad the district made such a big deal out of the school – it felt like there was so much pressure to keep scores up,” she said.

Lopez said the second year she taught at Beach Court, 89 percent of her third-graders scored proficient or advanced in reading; the next year, the figure was 100 percent. “I didn’t even think it was possible for all of my students to do so well.”

Still, if someone were trying to cheat, why falsely create 100 percent proficiency, which could create suspicion, she asked.

Lopez and other teachers pointed out that Frank Roti, the Beach Court principal, did not always have the best relationships with teachers.

“If teachers were aware of cheating going on, it probably would have been reported,” she said. On the other hand, if teachers felt nothing would really happen to a principal, they may not have felt it would make a difference.

“You’re going to have different kids every year, your scores are going to fluctuate,” she said. “If there is something to it, the pressure got to somebody.”

The board heard more than three hours worth of speakers during an afternoon public comment session, and most of them were there to talk about possible plans to open a West Denver Prep High School somewhere in northwest Denver. Several of the options the district is considering involve co-locating the proposed new charter high school on the North High School campus. West Denver Prep Highlands Middle School already shares campus space with North, albeit in a detached building.

North supporters expressed concern that putting a separate charter school within their building would limit North’s potential for future growth, and said they are loath to do anything that might derail recent, modest  academic improvements at the school. They brought with them a petition signed by 600 people requesting the board not co-locate West Denver Prep High School at North.

Jenny Davies-Schley spoke of her desire to send her child to a traditional comprehensive public high school with a broad array of sports, academic and cultural activities. She said she fears that if North must share its facilities with a charter school, students living in the neighborhood who want to attend North may one day find there’s no room for them.

She also said she fears putting two schools in the same building would harm the North’s culture.

“What I heard loud and clear at the community meeting is there are a lot of West Denver Prep families committed to their school,” she said. “But I also heard they hold North in very low regard. That’s a problem. Putting a culture together in schools where there is no respect, we’ll have problems. We’ll have to revisit that next year and the year after.”

Supporters of West Denver Prep, on the other hand, brought with them 328 letters of intent from parents who say they would send their children to the charter high school if it were located in the neighborhood.

“Since it opened, hundreds and hundreds of students who go there have discovered they are academically capable,” said Marie Sierra, parent of a West Denver Prep middle school student. “I want an opportunity for my son to continue his education in his neighborhood.”

“They don’t need to get on buses and drive long distances,” said Joshua Smith, principal at West Denver Prep’s Harvey Park campus. Smith rejected options that would place the charter school at Remington or Del Pueblo, recently closed school buildings that are empty but are farther away from the northwest Denver neighborhoods where most WDP students live. “Placing the high school at Remington or Del Pueblo would be unjust.”

Original story starts here: West Denver Prep’s request to open a high school in Northwest Denver drew hundreds of neighborhood residents to a community meeting Wednesday night, packing the auditorium at Smedley Elementary to overflowing.

Northwest Denver residents jammed into the former Smedley Elementary auditorium Wednesday to hear and debate possible options for opening a West Denver Prep High School in the neighborhood.

On one side of the room were fans of the charter school, which currently has four middle school campuses, including two in Northwest Denver, all of which consistently rank among the most distinguished academically in the DPS system. They want to see that sort of option available to high school students as well.

On the other side were fans of North High School, the community’s beleaguered public high school that has endured years of failed reform efforts, but that supporters believe may at last be on the road to redemption. They want to see North’s new principal, the highly-regarded Nicole Veltze, given the time and resources needed to turn the school around the way they say she did Skinner Middle School.

Many said they fear charter schools – particularly those sharing a campus with a non-charter – absorb space and resources that the non-charters need to thrive.

And at the front of the room: DPS officials trying to manage a roomful of parents, students, staff and community members whose emotions were running high, and see to it that all felt that their concerns were being heard, and that all understood the options confronting the school board as it weighs the pros and cons of where to put a new school.

Some of the options involve putting West Denver Prep High School onto the same campus as North.

Lack of trust an obstacle

It was apparent that those three groups – Denver West Prep supporters, North High School supporters, and DPS officials – were unsure about one another’s motives.

“I hope we can have some trust as we go through the agenda,” Yana Smith, director of regional community engagement for DPS, told the packed house at the start of the meeting. “You can push back respectfully. That’s welcomed. It’s not our intention to stand here and talk AT you for the next two hours.” No yelling, no name-calling, respectful listening – those were the evening’s ground rules.

Some parents explained why they sent their children to West Denver Prep and would never send them to North. Others explained why they sent their children to North and why they felt every parent ought to consider doing so. North alumni extolled the education they got. Current North students extolled the education they are getting. Most agreed they hoped this dispute wouldn’t turn neighbor against neighbor, but feared it might.

Two-and-a-half hours later, after facilitators had roamed the room with microphones allowing many – but not all – of those who wanted the speak the chance to do so, Smith drew the meeting to a close. “I can’t say it didn’t go the way I had hoped,” she said. “Anytime there’s such a division between perspectives, emotions, options, priorities, having purposeful dialogue is challenging.”

School board to weigh options over the next month

Those who are interested will get another bite at the apple today when the Denver school board hosts a public comment session, starting at 3:30, as part of its regularly scheduled meeting. And another community meeting is planned for May 30 at Smedley.

On June 4, the school board will hear presentations from all those applying to open new schools in the fall of 2013– West Denver Prep is one of five new schools seeking to open in or near northwest Denver – and on June 7, district staff will present its recommendations to the board. There will be time for more public comment on June 14 and possibly on June 18. The board will vote on the applications on June 21.

Here’s the background, and the facts the school board will consider when deciding what to do.

Pros and cons to every scenario

Over the next four to five years, the district expects to see about 400 to 500 more students enrolling in North and its feeder schools. The existing elementary schools in the area are full. But there’s some space available at the middle and high school level.

Another consideration is the number of students who live in the area, but choose to go to school elsewhere. School officials calls this the “capture rate,” and North’s is quite low. There are 1,366 high-school-age students living in the North boundary area who attend school somewhere in DPS, but only 824 of them attend North or one of the small alternative high schools nearby.

That means that roughly 500 high school students who could be attending North have chosen to attend another DPS school, and officials estimate an additional 400-500 high school age students live in the area but don’t attend any DPS school. That’s a total of 900 to 1,000 students who live within North’s boundaries, but who choose not to enroll there.

Antonio Esquibel, executive director of West Denver Schools, reassures participants at a community meeting that DPS fully supports North High School and principal Nicole Veltze.

Enter West Denver Prep SMART High School, which projects it would eventually enroll 500 students. Another proposal, for Four Winds Indigenous, an expeditionary learning school with an indigenous-based curriculum, projects it could serve 200 high school students in the northwest area.

DPS officials estimate that the North campus – including the 1913-era building that West Denver Prep Highlands Middle School currently occupies – could accommodate a maximum of 2,070 students. North’s projected enrollment for fall is 1,254, and WDP’s Highland campus middle school projected enrollment is 314. That leaves space for 816 more students.

Thus, one proposal before the school board is to co-locate North, WDP Highlands Middle School and WDP high school all on the North campus. That’s an attractive option financially because it wouldn’t require much in the way of new construction, North’s central location is highly desirable, and the campus is already well-equipped to meet the needs of high school students. On the downside, that doesn’t leave much room for North to grow. The school presently has 940 students. Under this proposal, it would be able to accommodate up to 1,110, but more than that would be tight.

West Denver Prep middle school might relocate

Option 2 involves moving WDP middle school to Remington, an elementary school at 4735 Pecos that was closed in 2008, and letting WDP high school take over the 1913 building at North, plus just three or four classrooms in the main building, and having the two high schools share the gyms, cafeteria and library. That option provides space for North to grow, but it’s more expensive, and Remington is so far away from other schools that students would most likely have to be bused there.

Option 3 involves putting the WDP high school at Remington. That has the advantage of giving the high school its own independent facility, and the Remington building is in good condition. But Remington was built to serve as an elementary school, so remodeling it to serve high school students would be costly.

Option 4 would bring Smedley, which closed as an elementary school several years ago, back into play. Smedley, 4250 Shoshone St., which has a capacity for 447 students, could house WDP high school, or it could house WDP middle school. Either option would be  costly, however. Among several limiting factors: The school doesn’t have the space to create the parking required for a high school and  it has no playing fields.

Or WDP high school or WDP middle school could open at Del Pueblo, another school that closed in recent years. But Del Pueblo’s location – at 7th Avenue and Galapago Street – puts it out of northwest Denver, and with a capacity of just 311 students, additional construction would be required.

Also on the table is a proposal to move either the WDP high school or middle school into Skinner Middle School. Skinner has been held up by some advocates as a model of a neighborhood school turnaround. Data from the Colorado Department of Education show that in 2011, an average of 42 percent of Skinner’s students were proficient or advanced in reading, writing and math CSAP tests. That’s up from 32 percent in 2008. And the school’s median growth percentile 58.7 percent in 2011, up from 54.3 in 2008.

Skinner is a large building, and it would be especially well-suited for the middle school students, but adding a second middle school on the campus could constrain Skinner’s ability to grow.

So none of the options are without drawbacks. And community members on Wednesday had some suggestions of their own. Among them: Converting the now-empty St. Anthony’s Hospital into a high school. Or making whatever arrangements are selected only temporary, and building a new school. Or aligning North’s curriculum more closely with West Denver Prep’s, so the two schools could, in effect, become one.

Residents plead for more time

Or doing nothing, at least not yet. “We have the right to ask for more time,” one parent said. “June 21 is not time enough for anyone to present an answer that will succeed. And we’ll have to revisit this again and again if we don’t take the time now to make this work.”

Already, a new neighborhood organization calling itself Choose North Now has formed to lobby against any proposal to co-locate an additional school at North.

“For too long the district has subjected North to almost-yearly reforms, leaving the curriculum and staff in disarray,” said David Diaz, a former North teacher and coach, and neighborhood parent. “Now that proven leader Nicole Veltze is in place as principal, we need to give her the space and empowerment to build the high-quality school that our diverse neighborhood deserves.”

Choose North Now has launched a petition drive to encourage the school board not to mess with what supporters hope will be strong growth for the venerable high school.

“We could be aligning the curriculum at North and West Denver Prep. We could do that, and it’s free. And we could have the school we all want, and it’s North,” said Mike Kiley, a parent of two school-aged children and a leader of the group.

West High School teacher Nick Childers talks to LEAP peer observer Marianne Kenney.

On this spring day, however, there is an unexpected – or at least partially unexpected – guest. Marianne Kenney is one of Denver Public Schools’ 45 paid “peer observers.” She’s a former Cherry Creek teacher and passionate school reformer. She also helped write the state’s content standards in social studies as Colorado’s former social studies specialist.

It’s her job to unobtrusively watch DPS teachers in action and grade them against a grid of expectations. She is in charge of observing 70 secondary and 25 upper elementary educators. Today, the subject of her scrutiny is Mr. Childers, U.S. history teacher and Teach for America alumnus.

Kenney sits at a desk in a rear corner of the room, and flips open her laptop. Childers begins the lesson.

Welcome to the fish bowl that is teacher effectiveness in Colorado. Right now, one of the biggest fish in the bowl is Denver Public Schools.

DPS stands apart from other Colorado districts for its combination of size and magnitude of challenges. Seventy-three percent of its 80,000 students qualify for free- and reduced-priced lunch based on family income.  It also stands out because of the work and money it is pumping into LEAP, Leading Effective Academic Practice, the district’s pilot teacher evaluation program, which focuses as much – if not more – on professional development as it does on rating teachers. Other Colorado districts testing out new teacher evaluation models are Jeffco, Eagle, Harrison, Brighton, and Douglas County.

All Colorado districts will be required to implement some form of “educator effectiveness” measures after the passage of Senate Bill 10-191 two years ago. With the help of a three-year, $10 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, DPS got a jump start and created its own system.

“What sets us apart is how thoughtful we’ve been,” said Tracy Dorland, deputy chief academic officer for teaching and learning in DPS. “It’s not just a system of evaluation. It’s a system that respects the teaching profession.”

DPS test-drives teacher effectiveness  

Key to SB 10-191 are comprehensive teacher evaluations to  “provide a basis for making decisions in the areas of hiring, compensation, promotion, assignment, professional development, earning and retaining non-probationary status, dismissal, and nonrenewal of contract.” Most teachers now work under collective bargaining rules that place a greater emphasis on years in the classroom than results. Under SB 10-191, at least half a teacher’s evaluation beginning in 2014-2015 will be based on his or her students’ academic growth as evidenced by test scores and other, yet-to-be-determined academic measures.

Nick Childers talking to students about the causes of World War II.

With LEAP, DPS is also experimenting with peer observations, principal observations and student feedback. In addition, the district is piloting meetings between teachers and school leaders to discuss a teacher’s “professionalism” –  the things a teacher does that don’t always get captured during a classroom visit, such as relationships with colleagues and parents. Built into LEAP is support for teacher improvement: Books to read, videos to watch, online or in-person classes to take – all available to the teacher via Schoolnet.

“There is not a teacher out there in any classroom who doesn’t want to be the best they can be,” said former LEAP spokeswoman Amy Skinner, who is now working for the Colorado Department of Education as Race to the Top communications director. “It’s the hardest job in the world. You’re not doing it if you don’t want to get results for kids. (LEAP) is about giving them more of that support they’ve never had.”

LEAP began with a 16-school pilot in spring 2011, then expanded to 127 district schools this year — 94 percent of all district schools — resulting in 3,800 teachers going through the process.

A centerpiece of LEAP was the hiring of 45 peer observers – trained and experienced educators who have the knowledge and expertise in the same subject area as the teacher they’re evaluating. The $3.8 million price tag of the peer observers  comes out of the DPS general fund. The average peer observer salary is nearly $64,000.

Under the old teacher evaluation system, teachers were rated “satisfactory” or “unsatisfactory.” More nuanced  information was provided to teachers, but most ranked “satisfactory” nonetheless. Statistically speaking, the ratings didn’t add up. In 2007-08, DPS principals and assistant principals gave unsatisfactory ratings to 33 out of 2,185 teachers evaluated – or 1.5 percent. And that was actually one of the highest percentages of unsatisfactory ratings in any metro district, according to a report in Education News Colorado.

It remains to be seen whether a similar pattern will emerge with LEAP, which uses numerical ratings against four major areas: Positive classroom culture and climate; effective classroom management; masterful content delivery; and high-impact instructional moves, such as checking for understanding of content and language objectives or differentiating lessons based on ability.

A score of 1 or 2 means the teacher is not meeting expectations; a 3 or 4 means a teacher is approaching expectations; a 5 or 6 signals an effective teacher; and 7 is distinguished.

During the first of three evaluation windows this year, teachers were given numeric scores. In the second window, they weren’t. In the third, numeric scores were used again but the framework had changed. As a result, DPS officials declined to release any of the ratings at this time.

“Until we are able to show more data points, it is unfair to share the observation data,” said Skinner.

In the past, teachers also complained about inconsistency in how principals evaluated them. At one school, a principal might have said a teacher was “top-notch.” But at another school, a different principal gave the same teacher negative reviews. Politics could also become a factor. And observations by principals were not consistent and only happened once every three years.

“It was more about a relationship with an adult as opposed what you did with the kids,” said Pam Shamburg, a Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) representative on LEAP.

A look at peer observation

At first, many DPS teachers weren’t happy about unannounced visits to their classrooms by peer observers.  But LEAP

LEAP peer observer Marianne Kenney takes notes during her visit to teacher Nick Childers' U.S. History class.

staffers say teachers are warming up to the idea now that they’re getting used to the observers. Of the teachers who participated in LEAP observations in spring 2011, 81 percent reported they would be able to improve their practice based on feedback, and 74 percent said they would speak positively about the observation and feedback experience to colleagues.

This year, trained peer observers visited teachers at least twice, evaluating them against the original 21-indicator rubric and later  against a condensed, 12-point rubric. (Check out the revised rubric.)

Candis Hitchcock, 57, a veteran special education teacher at South High School, said she likes the idea of peer observations – even though she was skeptical at first.

“You’re going to be evaluated no matter what,” Hitchcock said. “It’s nice to have someone from outside come in. My observer was wonderful. She taught special ed, too. Just because I have all these years of experience doesn’t mean I know everything.”

But she worries about all the things an observer doesn’t see – like the time spent running a sensitive IEP meeting with parents, or carefully completing mounds of legal paperwork.

“I would love to be observed holding an IEP meeting,” Hitchcock said.

And she’s not sure other parts of her job are captured, either.

“It’s much more than academics,” she said. “I’m a counselor, a mother, a father, a feeder. I take time to be patient with kids if they’re upset. You can’t say, ‘You can’t do that – we’re doing math right now. You can’t cry.’ There are many things they don’t really see us do.”

Shamburg, though, said there are other teachers who have not been too happy about their peer observers – especially if the observers are young and brash and telling a veteran teacher how things should be done.

Building principals also play a key role as to whether teachers embrace the peer observations.

“You can feel it when you go into a building,” Shamburg said. “The (teachers’) attitude is mirrored by the principal.  They’re not always comfortable having a second eye.”

Childers’ number comes up

As for Childers, he knew he had one more observation this school year by Kenney. He found out five minutes before her visit. For the next 45 minutes, he would be watched closely.

LEAP peer observer talks to students during a recent teacher evaluation at West H.S.

A timer on a cord dangles from Childers’ neck – his way of making sure he stays track with his lesson plan, which he carries out with military precision. The 20 students sit in clusters, working silently at their desks. They draw pictures and write a sentence to go along with each of four vocabulary words: totalitarianism, fascism, Nazism, and militarism.

Many of his students are English language learners, so images are a key part of building vocabulary.

Kenney occasionally gets up and wanders around the room with her laptop. She listens in on quiet, one-on-one conversations. Sometimes, she asks students questions about what they’re doing, and why.

Childers watches his timer, then moves on to the next segment of the day’s lesson. He instructs students to write down the day’s “content objective.” Today, the objective is to analyze Hitler’s goals for Germany and the reasons for Japanese militarism. He shares stories about his own family members being persecuted in the Holocaust.

A follow-up visit

Kenney is back the next day over Childers’ lunch hour. This time, her visit is no surprise. This is the most delicate part of the LEAP peer observation process. Kenney has to talk to Childers about his teaching in a way that is non-judgmental. She has to keep her opinions out of it, and avoid “should” statements.

They talk about her earlier visit this school year and what he has worked on over the past several months based on Kenney’s first round of feedback. He says he has worked on creating “thoughtful” class groupings, and differentiating assignments. Both agree his classroom management skills are top-notch.

Peer observer Kenney meets with Childers a day after she visits his class.

Now, she has to deftly guide him to the conclusion she wants him to reach. She wants to see more passion about the subject matter, more creative ways to engage students in historical events.

“Not a moment is wasted in your class,” she tells him. “While working on things, you supported each kid, gave them feedback on their notes. I saw a difference from last class to this class.”

Kenney asks him to provide more context about the lesson she observed. She wants to know “the big idea.”

He talks about his students being able to write strong, 11-sentence paragraphs, support their opinions, and explain how facts or quotes support certain statements. His first answer is narrower than she wants it to be.

She tries a different tack: Say these kids are all married and have their own kids in high school. They’re now studying World War II. What would these former students – now parents -  say about what they learned in Mr. Childers’ class?

Childers pauses, then says students should remember the goals these countries had leading into World War II, the political motivations that led to war and connect them to current or future situations, such as the conflicts in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Kenney wants more.  “In your heart of hearts, what’s really important; what sticks with them?”

“Half of my family is Jewish,” Childers says. “Half escaped; half didn’t. How can these things happen? How did totalitarian regimes come to be? …How can we make sure they don’t happen again in the future?”

In the end, Kenney encourages Childers to go deeper with his lessons. She offers him tangible ideas. She suggests he put students in the role of historian, have them pretend to be journalists on carrier planes when the atomic bomb was dropped. She suggests he have students think about whether they have ever felt repressed and without choices the way people living under totalitarian regimes may feel.

Then she asks Childers how she can do a better job as an observer.

He describes her feedback as “excellent.” He says he liked how she pushed him to think about the big idea, but he’s also a bit frustrated. Considering the amount of time in class and the fact that many students are well below grade level, is it more important to teach a student how to write a topic sentence or emphasize the big picture?

“I think they can do both,” Kenney says, before sending him a link to a book called Reading Like a Historian, along with some tip sheets.

For now, this observation is merely a way to help Childers improve. It has no bearing on his tenure status or movement up the pay scale. But, in 2014, it will – along his principal’s observations of him; a review of his professionalism, which includes how well he knows his students and their personal backgrounds; student test scores; and student feedback, which asks questions such as, ‘Are you always busy in this class?’ or ‘If you don’t understand something, does the teacher help explain it in a different way?’

What’s next for LEAP

The LEAP pilot will continue next year.

Peer observer Marianne Kenney records her thoughts in Nick Childers' U.S. History class at West.

The district will use the revised rubric. Teachers complained the first one was too long, and sometimes redundant. The new one is more focused. The new framework also better integrates instructional technology and best practices for linguistically diverse students. Most importantly, Dorland said, the revised framework is now tied to the Common Core Standards. 

The length of the observation was also increased based on teacher feedback in the early pilot, from 30 to 45 minutes. Ratings summary sheets are now provided to the teacher in advance of the final wrap-up meeting with the observer to make the meetings as efficient and useful as they can be.

The principal observations have also not been as strong as they should be, with very few teachers actually having been observed twice during the year by a principal, Shamburg said.

LEAP staffers are now starting to put more work into the student outcomes side of the equation (i.e. test scores), to be piloted next year. The tricky part is what measures to use in non-tested subject areas, such as music, art or library.

For Shamburg, a former lawyer turned educator, adding test scores into the mix demonstrates how “politics has overcome common sense.” To the public, it seems straightforward to link test scores to teacher evaluations. But in DPS, for instance, a majority – or about 70 percent of teachers – do not teach classes in which standardized tests are administered, which means the district must figure out what other reliable assessments to use.

Unlike many of his peers, Childers said he supports the idea of linking student achievement to teacher evaluations – the most controversial aspect of SB 10-191 – with conditions.

“If you didn’t have that it would be like having a sales job and none of performance tied to how many sales you made. If there’s not any learning going on, then there’s not any teaching going on.”

But Childers is adamant that the focus needs to be on where the student starts out the school year, and the growth he makes while in a class. It is not fair, Childers said, to apply the same benchmark goals to all students without taking into consideration where they started the school year. Some of his students start off at a third grade reading level.

Another huge piece that needs to be worked out is how each piece of the evaluation will be weighted for each teacher.

“The pieces that will be in the new evaluation system aren’t all there yet,” Shamburg acknowledged.

In 2014-2015 when LEAP becomes the law, things will be different. While no one category would result in a teacher losing non-probationary status or being placed on an improvement plan, an overall score will ultimately be used to determine these and other decisions.  However, non-probationary teachers in the “approaching” category would maintain their status even though their overall rating is not in the “effective” range.

Then, there’s the continued cost of LEAP. The Gates grant runs through next summer. The  main ongoing expense is  the peer observers. There are sure to be debates about how to best spend the $3.8 million it took to hire them.

“We are being deliberately more responsive and more open,” DPS spokesman Mike Vaughn said. “ We want to think about this long and hard, and make sure we take the time to get it right…(People) complain about tenure. But there has not been enough attention paid to how broken the support system for teachers has been.”

Denver Public Schools leaders were releasing limited information about the investigation, including the names of the schools, which have been confirmed by other multiple sources.

DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg said district staff conducted a “very thorough” analysis of 2011 assessment data for schools across the city.

“Where that analysis raised statistical concerns, we shared the information with the state Department of Education and asked the state to lead an examination,” Boasberg said. “I want to stress that the existence of this statistical analysis does not imply wrongdoing nor have we reached any conclusions.”

The Colorado Department of Education, though its legal counsel, the state Attorney General’s office, has hired a New York-based consulting firm to assist in the investigation. DPS is footing the bill. The same firm, Alvarez & Marsal, was hired in March to look into similar concerns in the Washington D.C. public schools.

“We do feel we have a duty to look further where we saw statistically unusual patterns, and that is why we asked the state to look into those cases,” Boasberg said. “Ultimately, the decisions on any potential consequences, if any wrongdoing is discovered, is for the district.”

Parents of students at the two schools were notified of the investigation and a districtwide communication to parents went out Tuesday afternoon.

Sources confirmed the analysis of DPS test results included an examination of erasure marks on student answer sheets. Results showed the two schools far exceeded district averages in the number of wrong answers erased and replaced with correct responses.

As part of their initial analysis, district officials placed testing monitors in a number of schools during the spring administration of the TCAP state exams. Last week, when third-grade reading TCAP results were released, both Beach Court and Hallett posted double-digit declines.

Beach Court dropped 40 percentage points on both the English and Spanish-language versions of the exams while Hallett, which did not administer the Spanish-language version, dropped 12 points. Remaining TCAP results will be released in late July.

Beach Court Principal Frank Roti has led the school since 2002 and Charmaine Keeton has been Hallett’s principal since 2008. Both principals were notified Tuesday of the investigation; DPS school board members were briefed Monday afternoon in closed session.

Beach Court has been the recipient of glowing media reports and district praise since 2005, when the high-poverty neighborhood school in Northwest Denver began posting strong increases in reading, writing and math.

In 2009, the district held a press conference at the school to announce DPS’ strong state test results and to applaud the work of Roti and his staff. The school also has received national praise, highlighted at NBC’s Education Nation event in 2010.

Hallett, also a high-poverty school, is a magnet program drawing students from across the district to its back-to-basics curriculum. The school was formerly known as Knight Fundamental Academy and its program was moved into the former Hallett Elementary building in Northeast Denver in 2009.

Both schools have recorded strong gains in test results, particularly Beach Court, which saw its reading proficiency rate rise from 40 percent in 2004 to 85 percent in 2011. Hallett’s reading proficiency hit 63 percent in 2004, dropped to the 50 percent range from 2005 to 2010 and then climbed from 50 percent in 2010 to 66 percent in 2011.

Beach Court is rated on the DPS performance report card as a “blue” or distinguished school, meaning it “exceeds expectations” and ranks as one of the district’s highest-performing schools. Hallett is rated as a “green” school, or one that “meets expectations” set by DPS. Both schools are rated “performance” by the state, its top rating.

It’s unclear whether additional years will be examined as part of the investigation or whether additional schools might become involved.

“This will not be a protracted investigation,” said Jo O’Brien, the state’s assistant commissioner for testing. “The due diligence on the data, initially performed by DPS, which was very thorough and very well done, has been confirmed and added to with the resources of the state’s larger metrics and methodology … We do not expect this to be long at all.”

O’Brien said it’s not unusual for a school or district to call and ask state officials to check out a statistical anomaly in the million-plus state tests administered annually. What is unusual about the data brought forth by DPS, she said, is “a level of severity that caught our eye.”

Tuesday’s action marks the first state-led cheating investigation at a Denver school, but it’s not the first time questions have been raised about gains in DPS.

Last year, USA Today conducted an analysis of reading and math scores in seven states, including Colorado, and found 69 Colorado schools where students moving from one grade to the next posted dramatic growth, or jumps greater than 99 percent of their peers in the state. Of that total, 29 percent were in DPS. Beach Court was on the list for gains made between 2006 and 2007.

But state assessment officials admitted Colorado leaders declined to pay for erasure analysis as part of their testing contract with CTB-McGraw Hill and their own statistical analysis did not flag those schools. DPS administrator Connie Casson said then that district leaders did not conduct systemic analysis of scores, such as what was done by USA Today, for potential cheating. She said they did look into incidents brought to their attention by staff in schools or by district instructional leaders poring over results.

In March, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a national look at cheating and cited DPS among districts with test score results warranting a second look.

“The accuracy of our student progress data is very important,” Boasberg said Tuesday. “Families … use the data to understand how kids are doing, and how much progress they’re making. Teachers use the data to inform their instruction, to know what to focus on, to know how to target their teaching, and therefore it’s very important that we have completely accurate information about how our kids are doing.”

Van Schoales, executive director of A+ Denver, a citizens advisory group to DPS, said the possibility of cheating is “incredibly disappointing and sad for the kids and families of the schools, if true.”

“It suggests that kids have a certain level of knowledge and skills that they don’t have,” Schoales said. “If you’re told in elementary school, you’re a good reader and writer and mathematician and you switch into another school and all of a sudden your scores drop, you could draw all kinds of conclusions that may not be right about why that is. The real reason why is because you don’t know those things in the first place.

“If you’re not self-aware about what you know and can do … then you’re really not in a position to get any better.”

Higher test scores can mean more money in Denver, where a performance-based system known as teacher and principal “ProComp” awards bonuses based on student growth and performance on state exams.

For example, a teacher enrolled in ProComp this year could earn bonuses topping $2,000 each if their students exceed district expectations on state exams or if their school is designated as a “high-growth” school or a “high-performing” school on the district’s annual report card.

Statewide, the full implementation of Senate Bill 10-191, the Great Teachers and Leaders Act, in 2014-15 will link student test scores with decisions about teacher and principal pay, retention and dismissal.

Because of those added consequences, as well as the state’s accountability system, which also relies heavily on the exams, O’Brien said the Department of Education this fall will debut enhanced test security policies.

A student at work in Sheridan's Fort Logan Elementary, where Wednesday's results show third-grade reading scores are on the rise.

Results of the first administration of the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program, which is replacing the Colorado Student Assessment Program as the state shifts to new academic standards, show 73.9 percent of third-graders scored proficient or advanced.

Proficiency rates have hovered between 70 and 74 percent since at least 2003.

That leaves 25 percent of the state’s third-graders – more than 16,000 mostly 9-year-olds – struggling to master basic literacy skills.

More boys than girls need literacy help as third-grade tests provide the first look at a reading gender gap that persists through high school. A seven-point gap separates girls from boys on the 2012 third-grade exam; the most recent tenth-grade exams revealed a 13-point divide.

Gaps are similarly revealed by income and ethnicity on the third-grade reading tests, with 26 points separating students eligible for federal lunch aid and their more affluent peers. And 25-point gaps divide Hispanic and black students from their white classmates.

Those gaps have been cited in recent legislative debates about a literacy bill but the bill is not linked to statewide exams. Instead, the bill – approved Wednesday by state lawmakers – calls for existing early childhood literacy tests to assess whether third-graders meet a “significant reading deficiency” standard to be set by the State Board.

Highs and lows among schools

Some familiar school names show up at both ends of the spectrum in gains and declines on the TCAP results.

Center’s Haskin Elementary, recently profiled by EdNews, saw its scores rise 35 percentage points in a single year, from 41 percent of students achieving reading proficiency to 76 percent.

Haskin Elementary Principal Kathy Kulp works after school with students as part of an intense literacy focus in the Center School District.

The 310-student school in the rural San Luis Valley is wrapping up its second year of a three-year, $1.6 million federal School Improvement Grant, awarded to the nation’s lowest-performing schools.

Last year’s scores also saw a big jump, from 28 percent proficiency to 41 percent.

Center Superintendent George Welsh, a key player in the recent Lobato school funding lawsuit, said the results show more money spent well can make a difference.

“I think the results we are achieving are a real life indication that a significant infusion of dollars, spent wisely in targeted areas, can produce the kinds of results the state has striven for through the education system it has designed,” he said.

“Without the training and resource opportunities that were afforded to us through our turnaround grant, we would probably still be where we were in 2010 when only 28 percent of our third-graders could read at grade level.”

Part of Center’s federal funding went to Lindamood-Bell, a for-profit company focused on intensive literacy training, including implementing summer and after-school academies for struggling readers. The company moved a trainer into Center for 18 months.

At the other end of the spectrum, Denver’s Beach Court Elementary saw its third-grade scores drop by more than 40 percentage points on both the English and Spanish-language reading exams over the past two years.

Beach Court, a high-poverty neighborhood school in Northwest Denver, has been publicly lauded over the years for its high performance.

This year’s, 40 percent of the school’s third-graders scored proficient or advanced on the English exam, down from 78 percent last year and 85 percent the year before. On the Spanish version, the proficiency rate was 48 percent, down from 73 percent in 2011 and 92 percent in 2010.

Beach Court’s veteran principal, Frank Roti, did not return a call seeking comment.

“The district regularly reviews all test scores for any signs of unusual patterns and takes the necessary follow-up action,” DPS spokesman Mike Vaughn said.

Asked if the district sent monitors to Beach Court during TCAP testing this year, Vaughn responded that monitors were in “a couple dozen schools” to ensure “proper testing procedures” were followed.

He said he did not know if Beach Court was among them and declined additional comment.

Results of school reform efforts

In terms of growth, Center’s Haskin led all 14 of Colorado’s SIG elementary schools – meaning they’re the recipients of federal grants after having been deemed among the lowest-performing in the U.S.

But Westminster Elementary in the Adams 50 Westminster school district wasn’t far behind, with a 34-point gain over last year.

Five other SIG schools also posted double-digit gains in 2012; only one SIG school, Mapleton’s Meadow Community School, saw a decline.

Sheridan’s Fort Logan Elementary, another SIG school recently profiled by EdNews, continued its gradual but steady increase. Its reading proficiency rate grew to 52 percent, up 7 points in the past two years.

Nathaniel Stuart, a student at Sheridan's Fort Logan Elementary, focuses on literacy.

Denver Public Schools touted gains at several schools undergoing major reforms, including two receiving federal SIG grants.

At West Denver’s Greenlee Elementary, part of a contentious 2009 reform proposal, third-graders posted a 21-point gain over last year. Fifty-five percent of third-graders were reading at grade level on this year’s exams.

Greenlee’s principal was replaced in fall 2010 when a new literacy program was adopted. The school also was restructured, shifting from a K-8 to an elementary school.

In Far Northeast Denver, two elementary schools that were part of another controversial reform plan approved in 2011, also saw gains.

Both Green Valley and McGlone elementaries saw 17-point increases in third-grade reading proficiency over last year.  Reform efforts at those schools included the requirement that teachers reapply for their jobs this past fall.

Another Denver school reform effort, the teacher-led Math and Science Leadership Academy, also saw strong gains. MSLA third-graders nearly doubled their reading proficiency, from 24 percent to 52 percent.

School district ups and downs

DPS continued to lead the state’s largest districts in reading proficiency growth, with 59 percent of third-graders performing at grade level.

That’s the highest result achieved by the district since state testing began, according to a press release.

Results from the state’s ten largest districts ranged from a 3-point bump in Denver to a 2-point drop in Fort Collins.

Rankings for the big ten districts align closely, though not completely, with poverty rates – Boulder and Douglas County, with poverty below 20 percent, produced the highest scores. Denver and Aurora, with poverty rates topping 65 percent, produced the lowest scores.

Among all metro-area districts, Adams 50 Westminster had the biggest single-year gain.

The district, which has eliminated traditional grade levels and advances students based on proficiency, saw its third-grade reading scores increase six points, from 41 percent proficiency to 47 percent.

Littleton Public Schools produced the highest results of all metro-area districts, with an 88 percent proficiency rate. Its growth also continues, improving six points since 2010.

Another district of interest, the state Charter School Institute, saw its overall third-grade proficiency rate decline eight points, from 77 percent to 69 percent.

Two other trends are evident in the TCAP results, with fewer students taking Spanish-language exams and small districts reporting no public results because they have few test-takers.

Colorado state exams are available in Spanish only in grades 3 and 4. The number of third-graders taking the Spanish version of the reading tests has declined from 1,500 in 2008 to 1,200 in 2012.

And the number of Colorado school districts with no public test scores – meaning they have fewer than 16 third-graders taking the state exams – continues its gradual climb. The state doesn’t report scores for fewer numbers because of privacy concerns.

In 2011 and 2012, 48 of the state’s 182 districts reported fewer than 16 young test-takers. This year, the Agate school district reported a single third-grader. In 2010, 44 districts had no public third-grade scores.

Stevenson is to present the language to the board at its June 7 meeting, when a majority of members are expected to approve placing the tax questions before voters.

If so, Jeffco would likely be the third large metro-area school district asking its citizens to increase funding for schools while they’re making their presidential picks.

Cherry Creek school board members already have approved asking voters for a $125 million school bond issue and a $25 million increase in operating dollars. And a Denver Public Schools advisory committee is meeting through June, when it’s expected to present recommendations for tax ballot questions.

Presidential-election years are popular times for school districts to plead their financial cases before their communities, largely because higher voter turnout tends to be more amenable to tax increases.

Denver voters in 2008 approved the state’s largest bond issue, $454 million, while Cherry Creek voters signed off on a $203 million building tax question. Jeffco, however, struck out on its 2008 request for a $350 million bond issue.

Thursday night, some public speakers urged the board of the state’s largest school district to go to voters in November.

“We believe strongly now is the time,” said Kelly Johnson, a member of the group Citizens for Jeffco Schools. “We simply cannot wait.”

Group recommends range for bond and operating increases

Citizens for Jeffco Schools, founded by community leaders such as Hereford Percy, a former Jeffco board member who now chairs the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, is advising the district on the tax questions.

Citing survey results, committee members recommended the board seek a school bond issue of just under $100 million and an increase in operating dollars of between $37 million and $39 million.

School board member Paula Noonan questioned whether the amounts shouldn’t be larger, noting the district is projecting another $43 million in cuts in 2013-14.

But Buddy Douglass, another member of the advisory group, said their research suggests more prudent requests are more likely to be successful.

“There is concern in the community. In the surveys we’ve done, there is support and a majority support,” he said. “But it’s not 80-20. There is a big part of this community that is not going to accept the premise that we need additional funding.”

In response to questions from board member Laura Boggs, group members declined to release specific survey or polling data. They indicated support for the tax questions exceeds 60 percent and that they would be able to raise at least $100,000 to fund a campaign backing the tax increases.

How tax proposals would impact Jeffco homeowners

Tax increases in the ranges suggested by the advisory group would cost about $1 more per month for every $100,000 of home market value. The average Jeffco home is valued at about $250,000.

The amount is smaller because it assumes a continuation of taxes assessed for a 2004 school bond issue that is due to be paid off in December.

In other words, tax bills in the sprawling suburban county are scheduled to decline at the end of 2012 as that old bond debt is retired.

If Jeffco board members decide not to seek tax increases, or if voters say no, Jeffco property tax bills will decrease about $2.66 a month for every $100,000 of home market value – or $32 per year.

If Jeffco board members ask for tax increases, and voters say yes, property tax bills will not decline but will instead increase by $1 a month for every $100,000 of home market value – or $12 per year.

At least three of the board’s five members – Noonan, Robin Johnson and board president Lesley Dahlkemper – indicated support for asking voters for tax help. So Dahlkemper directed Stevenson to return next month with possible ballot language. The board did not formally vote on that direction.

The move is not a surprise. In February, Jeffco district leaders proposed delaying painful budget cuts in 2012-13 by one year to allow community members to decide whether to improve school funding.

Speakers complain about board member’s behavior

Jeffco school board members hosted community budget forums last Saturday to gather input on the budget plan.

Thursday night, two groups of speakers publicly chastised Boggs, who frequently disagrees with her board colleagues, for her remarks and behavior in hosting the forum at Evergreen Middle School.

Tammy Story, accompanied by three other Jeffco parents who live in Boggs’ district, described the forum as “a farce” and said Boggs “latched onto the microphone” for 60 of the forum’s 90 minutes.

“Her singular goal appeared to be to discredit Jeffco Public Schools,” Story said. “Her backhanded attacks on the district seemed to be purposefully devised to plant seeds of mistrust in the minds of the attendees.”

Story asked that board members schedule another forum in the mountain area, to be conducted by a different board member, so that community could be heard. That request was seconded by Mike Long, executive director of the district’s administrators association.

Long, who was accompanied at the microphone by representatives of employee groups and the Jeffco PTA, also asked the board open a “formal review” of Boggs’ conduct.

“We believe her conduct was an embarrassment to the district,” he said, “and we believe that that conduct actually rendered the meeting of very little value in the effort to gather community budget input.”

Dahlkemper, the board president, apologized to the speakers on the board’s behalf and said board members will consider the requests for additional action.

Boggs, who was previously censured by other board members but who maintains a vocal following, did not respond to the criticisms during the meeting.

Later, she said the descriptions of her behavior were not accurate “but public perception is public perception.”

Asked why she chose not to defend herself, Boggs said, “We’ve got much more important issues to deal with than somebody who doesn’t like the facts.”

Aurora students Ona Kola-Kehinde, left, and William Damon, explain pulse oximetry in a mock hospital room on Thursday.

Of course she has to graduate from high school first, which she’ll do this spring, from Aurora’s William Smith. She’s been accepted into the BA/BS-MD program at the University of Colorado Denver so once she’s received her bachelor’s degree, she’ll go straight into her medical studies.

But in one sense, she’s already commenced her medical work. She’s enrolled in the Health Careers pathways program at her school. Her first class was Introduction to the Medical Sciences, followed by a class in Human Body Systems, and a class in Medical Interventions. She discovered her interest in the digestive system – and gastroenterology – in the Human Body Systems class.

“While many students are still trying to decide their career paths, I already know mine,” she said Thursday, while speaking to a crowd of adults gathered to celebrate the district’s Academic and Career Pathways program.

“Life changes, and I’ll change”

“Life changes, and I’ll change,” she said later, assessing the wisdom of settling on a medical specialty before she even gets out of high school. “But I’m convinced I’ll still want to do this.”

Janet Mensah, a student at Aurora's William Smith High School, is interested in a career as a gastroenterologist.

Aurora Superintendent John Barry likes to point to students such as Mensah when skeptics wonder whether the district’s ground-breaking career-focused curriculum is really working.

“This is clear evidence of the unique things in Aurora Public Schools,” he said at the gathering, meant to showcase the work students are doing in the four career pathways: Health Sciences; Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM); Business; and Arts and Communication. “What we’re seeing today is unique in the nation.”

Lt. Gov. Joe Garcia praised the district for advancing the notion of “P-20” education, shorthand for an integrated education system that extends from preschool through graduate school. In Aurora, students can start taking career pathways classes as early as elementary school.

“Colorado does have a national reputation as a leader in P-20, and Aurora is one of the leading districts in the state in demonstrating what’s possible,” he said. “Schools need to partner with the business community so we’re not just handing kids off, not knowing if they’re really prepared to be successful in the workforce.”

Students can sample a variety of careers

Students are able to jump from career track to career track, as well as taking their core academic classes. That’s because it’s just as important to figure out early on what they’re not interested in pursuing as to figure out what they are interested in, Barry said.

Rangeview High School students Brandi Cameron and Stephen Francoeur exhibit the circuit board project they created in their Digital Electronics class.

Brandi Cameron, a 17-year-old student at Rangeview High School, was showing off the circuit board she designed in her Digital Electronics class. Her task was to design a schematic and build a functioning miniature drawbridge, using binary computer code.

She has loved this experience in engineering. But she considers herself “undecided” when it comes to her career path. She’s really leaning toward medicine.

“I’m doing an internship at a hospital next year,” she said. “But I love working with circuits and engineering, and one day, if I decide I don’t want to go into medicine, I’ll have all this engineering experience to fall back on. Plus, this class has made me a lot more organized.”

Alex Santana, 16, a student at Vista Peak, wants to become a pastry chef. He wants to own his own business. “But before that can happen, I’ve got to grow my education,” he said. “I’ve got to learn more about the stock market.” That’s why he’s in the Business pathway program at Vista Peak.

So far, he’s not only learned about the stock market and managing a portfolio, he’s become certified in Microsoft Word, Excel and Power Point programs, as well as becoming a certified blogger. “I’m much closer to my dream by being able to create and use the technical documents,” he said.

Medical careers a popular option

In one corner of the room at the district’s Professional Learning and Conference Center, students had set up a mock hospital room, and Health Careers students were showing off some of the skills they’d learned.

Seventeen-year-old Damon Williams, a William Smith student, was explaining how a pulse oximeter works, using a computerized mannequin of a baby.

“I got to work side by side with an RN at Children’s Hospital,” he said later, after explaining the process. “We had patients come in with all sorts of different things. I saw a case where an infant came in who was believed to be affected by bed bugs.”

Williams, too, is an aspiring doctor. “I already knew I wanted to study medicine,” he said. “This has just helped me know more about what it will be like. It’s been a very enriching experience.”

Brittany Wright, a 17-year-old Aurora Central student, isn’t envisioning a career as a physician. “I got to intern at a lab where we made vaccines,” she said. “I think this pathway can help you work in any medical career.”

Hinkley High School student Ona Kola-Kehinde, 17, is also looking to a career in medicine, and he’s grateful for this time of early preparation. “Right now, you can mess up a little,” he said. “I’m having fun right now. Later on, it will be time to get serious.”

Center's Haskin Elementary Principal Kathy Kulp works after school with students Joaquin Moreno, right, and Mark Maldonado.

“It’s been pretty contentious,” admitted George Welsh, superintendent of the 600-student Center School District in the southern center of the state. “If you were to interview my middle and high school principal, they have been at times jealous of the extra support.”

Education funding in Colorado, as in many states, was chopped in the Great Recession as the ambitious effort to turn around the nation’s lowest-performing schools began funneling billions of dollars into selected campuses.

A year and a half later, Welsh calls the grant “the best thing that’s happened to Center schools in the 16 years I’ve been here.”

Center, a town of fewer than 2,300 residents, lies in Saguache County in the rural San Luis Valley, ringed by the Sangre de Cristo and San Juan mountains. U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar frequently describes growing up nearby on a farm with no running water. The closest chain grocery store is the next town over. The nearest “big city” is Alamosa, population 9,000, some 30 miles southeast.

In 2010, when the district’s only elementary school became eligible for a federal School Improvement Grant, Haskin Elementary was averaging a new principal every two years. Teacher turnover was marginally better:

“The district’s teacher applicant pool traditionally has not been a deep one,” Center’s grant application states, “thus the district has had to do the best possible with the applicants available to fill positions.”

Results of the state’s 2009 exams showed one in three Haskin students reading at grade level or above. One in four students performed at that level in math. In writing, it was one in five.

“I own where we were,” said Welsh, who in 2009 was in his 13th year leading the district.

Starting point: Transformation model, with a twist

Haskin enrolls 310 students in the district’s former K-12 school, built in 1918. More than 90 percent of children receive federal lunch aid and 40 percent of students are learning English. In recent years, as many as one in four students have been from migrant families who work farms up and down the state.

There are no charter schools or private schools in Center, which lists “new Family Dollar store” among its top 10 assets on the town’s barebones website.

“For us, closing a school down is not an option. It’s the only elementary school we have in the district,” Welsh said, ticking through the four models required for schools accepting the federal grant. “We didn’t see that turning it into a charter made a whole lot of sense.”

As for replacing half the staff, part of the turnaround option, “We’re not Denver. We didn’t think that just firing half of our teachers and hiring whatever was available out there was going to be necessarily a higher quality option than what we currently have.”

But district leaders didn’t want to replace Haskin’s principal, the most dramatic change required in the transformation model, the least radical of the four options.

They had hired Kathy Kulp two years before, in 2007, when their principal search yielded only one qualified candidate – “meaning they had certification but a ‘bounce around’ and ‘asked to leave a lot’ track record,” according to the grant application.

So they chose Kulp, a Center schools graduate and 22-year Haskin teacher nearing the end of her administrative training.

To convince state officials charged with overseeing the grant that they were serious about change, district leaders agreed to hire an instructional coach for Kulp and fund the position at their own expense. Welsh also agreed to spend 15 hours a week in the elementary school working with Kulp.

“Kathy is homegrown – we don’t anticipate her moving on,” Welsh said. “This grant was an opportunity we’ve been dying for for years. We didn’t want to have a person trained and just looking for the next job.”

Constant teacher churn, contradictory instructional theories

Despite concerns about being required to replace half the 20-teacher staff, Kulp ended up doing just that over two years’ time.

John Noriega, a classroom aide at Center's Haskin Elementary, helps student Odalys Mendoza with a math lesson.

In the first year of the grant, 2010-11, Kulp had eight teaching jobs to fill – another came open before the first week of school was up when Kulp and Welsh realized a new teacher hire was “a major mistake.” Said Welsh: “If there was a chandelier in the room, the kids would have been swinging on it.”

This past fall, the second year of the grant, Kulp had four openings, including a teacher who took another job in a nearby district shortly after the school year began. The principal called Kulp to check the teacher’s references on the day after students returned to class.

Few Haskin teachers live in Center – Welsh estimates “maybe two” – because available housing is limited and there are few amenities. Most drive in from slightly larger towns nearby; some commute as far as 45 miles each way.

Teachers frequently leave Center because it’s not hard to find a job paying more than $30,000 a year. Those who’ve stayed have had disparate instructional training as the district chased different grants.

“If you’re a school in a district rolling down the path of accountability, when different grants become available, you tend to want to jump in and participate in the grants,” Welsh said.

So teachers received grant money for training in Reading Excellence, a whole-language literacy program. That was followed by Reading First, a phonics-based literacy program. Somewhere in between, in chronology and theory, was Read to Achieve.

“A kid being taught literacy in Center would bounce between one theory and another, back and forth,” Welsh said. “I know the intent of those grant programs was all well and good, but I think we kind of became a pinball machine as a result.”

Kulp, who taught kindergarten and first grade, said teachers were working hard.

“Every year, we’d come back and get the bad news about our CSAP scores, the elementary had low scores,” she said. “We’d be kind of defeated and we’d roll up our sleeves and try again. But it was just so unfocused.

“We had so much money coming through this place, so many different kinds of grant programs that made you buy something. We just never had a clear enough plan about implementing it, making sure it was happening, sticking to something.”

Major step: A curriculum for the first time

In 2009, Colorado Department of Education officials sent a team to Haskin to conduct a diagnostic review. One of the “root causes” of the school’s poor performance, the team found, was lack of a defined curriculum in reading, writing and math.

Welsh said educators in the tiny district struggled for years to create a curriculum based on the state academic standards approved in the mid-1990s that sets out what is to be taught, and when. They failed.

“We, as a district, were never able to really come together and put it into some kind of document form that said, teach this in August, teach this in September, teach this in October, for each subject area That’s a big process. Now Cherry Creek or Denver, they have the personnel to do that,” Welsh said.

“I believe for the most part, what we were teaching kids, kids were learning. We didn’t know what to teach kids. We weren’t able to figure out what the state was going to hold us accountable for.”

Part of the federal SIG grant went toward purchasing a K-8 curriculum from Focal Point, a for-profit company started by Harrison Schools Superintendent Mike Miles. The document sets out a sequence for teaching the state standards and color codes those that show up most frequently on annual state exams.

The company has agreed to update the curriculum to the recently adopted new academic standards.

Welsh said it’s frustrating the state officials did not assist smaller districts by offering a baseline, optional curriculum for them to follow.

“We’ve got 600 kids and 50 certified staff and if I’m creating kindergarten curriculum, I’m pulling a kindergarten teacher out of the classroom to do it and that’s not an effective model,” he said.

Kulp said teachers might once have been reluctant to accept a purchased curriculum, preferring to go it on their own. But she said the past years spent trying to create their own, with little success, made it more attractive.

“The curriculum is no longer dependent on who the teacher is. The curriculum is the curriculum,” Welsh said. “How effectively it’s delivered is dependent on the teacher. And that’s what we get to focus on, how effective your delivery of the curriculum is. We’re not focusing on what you teach.”

Center teachers say expectations higher, work harder

JoAnn Lopez, an 11-year kindergarten teacher at Haskin, said she was initially “overwhelmed” when she saw the curriculum or instructional map last year.

Haskin Elementary kindergarten teacher JoAnn Lopez, left, works with Adams State College student and classroom aide Jerica Kroeger.

“It states kids should know their letters and sounds by October,” she said. “And in the past, it was a yearlong journey for us. Now we’ve stepped up the expectations.”

Expectations were also raised for how many words kindergartners should know on sight – before, it was 25 to 32 words by the end of the year. Now it’s 100.

Before the Focal Point curriculum or the new reading program, Lindamood-Bell, Lopez said teachers from grades K-12 met to discuss annual benchmarks for students. The results weren’t as detailed.

Lopez said some teachers used textbooks, working from start to finish over the course of the year. Others had favorite lessons they taught.

“If there is something you wanted to teach,” she said, “you could find a standard to cover it.”

Nicole Neufeld, a six-year teacher in her first year at Haskin, said the curriculum is “a relief.”

“I think in some ways there’s been kind of an assumption that teachers would or could look straight to standards for some scope and sequence for what should be happening in their classroom and I think that is a good idea – but I don’t think that was happening,” she said.

Both Lopez and Neufeld said they’re working harder in Haskin as a SIG school than they have previously, citing the higher expectations, the requirement that detailed lesson plans be submitted weekly and an infusion of classroom technology.

They’re also being observed in their classrooms more frequently. Teachers with less than three years of experience, or those who lack tenure, are observed six times per quarter. Teachers with more than three years of experience, or those who have tenure, are observed three times per quarter.

“Wanting to do right by our kids is a huge driving force,” Neufeld said. “But the other part of it is we are constantly evaluated … It’s ‘A’ game all the time or you’re going to see that reflected in a walk-through.”

In her prior job, she said, she was observed once a semester and the feedback was along the lines of, “Maybe you could put more posters on the wall.”

The feedback at Haskin is more immediate, with Kulp inputting her observations electronically and the forms sent automatically to the teachers. An instructional coach then follows up on Kulp’s suggestions.

“I think I’ve changed more as a teacher in this school year than I had in five years previously,” Neufeld said.

Lopez said some teachers weren’t happy with the changes, worrying that a curriculum was too scripted, for example. But the progress shown by students on district assessments has eased those concerns.

“It helped justify everything we’re doing and it helped us to know that we’re doing the right work,” she said.

Improved results, and sustaining the changes when grant dollars are gone

Welsh said the SIG grant is providing something the district’s other grants did not.

Haskin Elementary students prepare to board the bus at the end of a March school day.

“The missing link in all of these things was the leadership training,” he said. “I’ve become the best administrator that I’ve ever been because of this turnaround and that’s what is happening at my elementary school as well.”

Because the consultants have allowed it, the middle and high school principals – along with others identified as potential leaders – also have sat in on the training. Welsh said that’s helped the hard feelings about the extra dollars going to Haskin.

State test results after one year of the transformation were improved. Spring 2011 scores were 4 percentage points higher in reading than in 2010; writing was up two points and math was up nine points.

Welsh said mid-year exams this year show greater growth.

“I can’t wait to see our state test results this year,” he said. “Because what you can see happening in the building and from the benchmark results we’ve already received, it’s going to be pretty exciting.”

A key concern is sustaining change after the grant money runs out. Welsh believes the school’s newly trained staff is invigorated and will stick around.

But other pieces are less certain. For example, the federal dollars help pay for extended learning time for struggling readers – a five-week summer reading academy and small-group instruction after the regular day during the school year.

The burden for that has fallen heavily on teachers. To help relieve some of that, Welsh is now writing another grant – this time to pay Lindamood-Bell to teach community volunteers to help in any way they can.

“Our community isn’t full of people we can train and have them do this,” Welsh said. “We’re going to take ladies out of the church and retired teachers and everyone we can muster in the community who’s capable.”

For the casual visitor, it’s easy to miss that Southeast High School in rural Kansas — once among the lowest academic performers in the state — is in the midst of a profound transformation.

Like so many other Kansas schools, the building in Cherokee, population 722, shows the telltale signs of a suffering economy. Bus routes have been cut, as have supplies. Custodians, secretaries and cafeteria workers took an eight-day pay cut.

But look deeper, and another picture emerges.

Every one of those students is assigned a MacBook for the year. Teachers use iPads on classroom walkthroughs designed to improve instruction and boost student engagement.

And the entire school improvement process is underscored by consultants from Cross & Joftus, a Washington, D.C.-area consulting firm.

The schizophrenic portrait of school funding is not unique to Southeast.

It is one of roughly 1,200 schools in the nation to win a federal School Improvement Grant or SIG, given to those in the bottom 5 percent in the country to spark radical improvements in school culture and student performance.

The backdrop of the recession means that many of these schools have funding to do things they’ve never done at the same time that they’re hamstrung to fund many of the basic things educators typically take for granted.

SIG dollars come as states dramatically cut education funding

Southeast won a $1.4 million grant at a time when Kansas cut its education funding to the lowest levels since 1999. The grant allowed the school to take risks that have paid off: It has leapfrogged from among the worst high schools in the state to achieving “standard of excellence” ratings in reading and math, as well as 100 percent proficiency in science.

“The grant has been a stop-gap lifesaver to us in many ways, enabling us to continue moving forward when everything else is being cut,” said Glenn Fortmayer, superintendent of the USD 247 Cherokee school district. “If we didn’t have the grant, there are so many things for kids we couldn’t even begin to contemplate doing on our own general money.”

While there is some cause for optimism nationally — two recent reports found that states and districts thought the funding was helping — there are also fears that the slow pace of economic recovery could undermine whatever gains schools are achieving through SIG.

A report last October from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan policy institute, found that elementary and high schools in at least 37 states received less funding in the 2011-12 school year than they did the year before, and in at least 30 states school funding now stands below 2008 levels — often far below. The report warned of the impact of sustained decreases in the funding of federal initiatives like SIG, noting that “deep funding cuts hamper (schools’) ability to implement many of these reforms.”

In Pennsylvania, newly elected Republican Gov. Tom Corbett implemented an austerity agenda that cut $1 billion from education. Philadelphia, which has a nearly $3 billion school budget and educates some 12 percent of Pennsylvania’s public-school students, bore roughly one-fourth of that burden. The state cuts were the largest contributor to a budget shortfall that ballooned to more than $700 million—all but $22 million of which had been filled by the district as of March through cost-saving measures.

Despite evidence of improvement in some schools, the state is skeptical that the district can sustain those gains and is leveling a more serious charge — that Philadelphia is using SIG funds to back-fill the extraordinary cuts to state and local budgets.

“We started to delve into things and ask, ‘Where’s this teacher? Where’s this program? You said you were going to do this — where’s the results?’ And they simply can’t produce them,” said Renee Palakovic, division chief for federal programs at the state education department. “They can’t produce a body and say, ‘This person is the school-based instructional leader.’ They can’t maintain their extended-day programs because they have no money, so they’ve started to shut them down.”

Philadelphia school changes SIG to hire teacher whose job was being cut

More troubling, at least one school altered its SIG grant mid-stream to allow for the hiring of a science teacher whose position Palakovic said was eliminated due to the cuts. Philadelphia explained that the new hire was necessary to keep class sizes small. Under the law, reducing class-size is a proper use of SIG funds, but the state suspects this represents another instance of the district using federal funds to supplant state and local funds, a violation of federal law.

The visit left Palakovic deeply skeptical about SIG’s chances for long-term success in Philadelphia: “I just wrote an e-mail to my superior saying, ‘The results in Philadelphia are going to be slim to none because they’re not really offering anything additional in these schools. There’s nothing new. There’s no reform. It’s just keeping the boat afloat.’ ”

Fernando Gallard, a district spokesman, said Philadelphia was working to address the state’s concerns, but denied that Philadelphia was using SIG funds to back-fill cuts.

Federal officials said they were unaware of any other suspicions regarding the use of SIG funds for back-filling. Jason Snyder, who heads the turnaround office at the U.S. Department of Education, reported that at least 12 schools had their grants terminated or not renewed for performance reasons.

With the education sector of the economy emerging slowly from the recession, some states are anticipating level funding for their education budgets next year, while others are hopeful they’ll be able to restore some cuts. This hasn’t quelled a near universal source of angst for SIG schools — the issue of how to sustain programs once the grant funds run out.

School officials worry about what to do when SIG funding runs out

It’s a palpable fear at Harding High School in Bridgeport, Conn., where a $2.2 million SIG grant has sparked a fragile recovery.

With the help of Global Partnership Schools, a New York City-based consulting firm, Harding shows some encouraging signs. Daily attendance is up sharply, now at 85 percent, compared to 60 percent a year ago. And the number of failing grades fell to 26 percent in the first quarter of the school year, down from 34 percent a year ago.

While acknowledging the gains, new Superintendent Paul Vallas, a nationally known reformer, considers himself largely unimpressed. Given the size of the grant, he expected more visible signs of academic improvement.

And, like others, he worries about the future. No one knows what will happen to SIG-funded programs such as the reading laboratory, the summer and Saturday classes, the hallway “climate specialists” or a Virtual Academy for online learning.

“When you spend it as if it’s part of the operating budget, you have a tendency not to spend it efficiently or effectively, and you create a cliff, which means any success that emanated from the (grant) will quickly disappear once that cliff is hit,” he said. “This money is going to run out.”

Andrew Brownstein is an editor with Thompson Media Group in Washington, D.C. He writes about federal K-12 education policy. This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, the Education Writers Association and Education Week. Reporting was contributed by Robert A. Frahm of the Connecticut Mirror and Dale Mezzacappa of the Notebook.

Fourth-graders Alex Medina, left, and Nathaniel Stuart confer during a language arts lesson at Sheridan's Fort Logan Elementary.

Teachers had free rein and, if they wanted, and some did, they could close their classroom doors and shut out everyone else. As a bonus, the day was short – less than six hours of instructional time. Teachers at the nearby middle and high school spent the equivalent of 21 more days in class each year.

But the advent of the Colorado Student Assessment Program proved a rude awakening for the 1,600-student district, as Fort Logan began popping up on the lowest-performing lists that news media and state officials like to compile.

“We realized, oh my goodness, we are not doing as well as we thought,” said Barb Johnson, who began teaching in Sheridan in 1992. “And there was a realization that maybe we’re focused in on making this just a great place to be, and families felt comfortable and kids felt supported.”

In 2003, Sheridan posted the lowest scores among all Denver metro-area districts on every academic subject in every elementary grade tested by the CSAP. The lone exception was third-grade reading, where Sheridan came in next to last.

That year, state officials put the district on academic watch and reforms began rolling through Fort Logan in waves. There was a new superintendent with big ideas and a hefty state grant that demanded dramatic changes in reading instruction.

There was a new principal – and then another, and then another. For the past decade, Fort Logan has averaged a new principal every year.

But while many things changed, test scores – particularly in reading and writing – refused to climb. In 2010, Fort Logan joined the cohort of schools considered the worst in the nation as the recipient of a federal School Improvement Grant.

In three years, given $769,000 a year, a school with a long history of poor performance is expected to find the way to academic excellence.

“What I found, when I got here in 2008, was a very, very caring environment,” said Sheridan Superintendent Mike Clough, who added nearly two hours to the elementary school day within months of his arrival.

“We did a better job of taking care of our students’ basic needs than any place I’ve ever seen. I often thought, if we’re not careful, we’ll love them to death.”

Making changes: ‘It’s been really rough”

To receive a federal SIG grant, a school must agree to undergo one of four reform models requiring varying degrees of change. Most schools nationwide chose the least radical model but Sheridan picked turnaround, which mandates hiring a new principal, replacing at least half the staff and adding instructional time.

Fort Logan has fulfilled all three requirements, and then some:

• Only two teachers at Fort Logan in 2009-10, the planning year before the grant funds began flowing, remain at the school today.
• Fort Logan had one principal during the planning year, a second principal during the first year of the grant and yet another principal in this second year of the grant.
• In addition to the additional hour and 50 minutes added in October 2008, Fort Logan has added 90 minutes to the school day on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
• Earlier this month, Sheridan school board members approved a new calendar that shortens the summer break and builds in up to nine days for remediation throughout the year.

For Danita Myers, who has taught elementary students in Sheridan for 25 years, the changes were initially painful though ultimately rewarding.

“I am a better teacher,” said Myers, one of four fourth-grade teachers at Fort Logan. “I definitely see the difference in how the kids are learning.”

But when outside teams began observing Fort Logan classrooms in 2009-10 to help determine which teachers should stay through the turnaround, Myers was flagged as someone who possibly should go.

It was a surprise: “I had been a lead teacher in this district for a very long time,” she said.

“I really had to make a decision that I can do this, I am willing to do this,” she said. “My son’s in college now so I could spend the hours I needed to turn things around.”

Teachers began weeks of training in literacy instruction, writing objectives, data analysis and classroom management. Myers credits training in engagement strategies, such as choral response, for changing her classroom.

“I’m not calling on one student at a time so everybody’s just waiting on whoever raises their hands to be the one that answers the question,” she said. “There’s a lot more partner work now. I feel more like a coach at parts of my day than I am the distributor of the knowledge. And that seems to be real positive.

“I find myself learning to walk around the room a lot more. Where it used to be me-centered, now it’s student-centered.”

Myers likened the past two years to “a self-searching climb up a 14er.”

“It’s been really rough,” she said. “But it’s been satisfying to see that something we’re doing to reform education is working.”

A challenging school, a challenged community

Like most of Colorado’s SIG schools, Fort Logan is a high-poverty school in an impoverished neighborhood facing a myriad of challenges.

Sheridan's Fort Logan Elementary teacher Julie Westing encourages her fourth-graders to dig a little deeper for answers.

More than 90 percent of students come from families poor enough to qualify for federal lunch assistance. More than one in three students is not a native English speaker. One in ten is homeless. As many as 37 percent of students taking state tests change from one grade to the next.

Enrollment across the district, already smaller than that of some Denver high schools, has declined in fits and starts over the past decade.

For years, Sheridan has relied on pulling kids from other districts – namely Denver – who wanted a small school experience. The district markets itself as knowing each student “by name and need.”

But the numbers of families choicing in to Sheridan has dropped, from 40 percent of its total enrollment in 2004 to 25 percent in 2011. And the number of Sheridan students leaving for another district has grown.

Families tend to come in from the north and leave to the south, for Littleton Public Schools, a high-performing district also facing enrollment declines. In the past 18 months, after a K-8 college prep charter opened in north Littleton, Sheridan has lost 55 gifted students.

“That is a typical demographic that we lose,” Clough said.

Because the number of students determines funding in Colorado, the district relies heavily on grants to prop up its budget as it tries to keep its salaries on par with the larger districts that surround it. Last year, Sheridan’s $12.2 million operating budget was supplemented by $9 million in grants.

The city itself, covering two square miles in Arapahoe County, lags the state in education and earnings, according to census data:

• The percent of Sheridan residents with a bachelor’s degree or higher is 10 percent, compared to 36 percent statewide.
• Sheridan’s median average income is $32,382, compared to $56,456 across Colorado.
• The number of Sheridan residents living below the poverty level is 28 percent, versus a state average of 12 percent.

Clough repeatedly praises a school board willing to embrace change, but he also acknowledges an uncomfortable reality. Those who serve on the board are not necessarily representative of those families served by the district.

Only 16 percent of Sheridan’s voters have a Hispanic surname, Clough noted, which, while an imperfect measurement, is far smaller than the 75 percent Hispanic student enrollment. Forty percent of Sheridan residents are Hispanic, according to census data.

And then there’s a tell-tale sign of apparent community apathy – one of Sheridan’s five school board seats has been vacant since 2007.

Drawn to the work: “It seemed like home”

If the challenges of working in a school like Fort Logan drives some educators away, those same obstacles draw other teachers like magnets.

Fort Logan Elementary fourth-graders Ruby Delgado, left, and Jovanna Jaquez partner during a language arts lesson.

“I feel like with students in a turnaround situation … they really need you,” said fourth-grade teacher Sarah Wood, who is in her first year at Fort Logan. “They need those good teachers because you have to know the strategies in which to best teach them, in order for them to do their very best.”

Wood, who taught in a high-poverty school in Greeley before losing her job to budget cuts, said the training, which began before school started, and the scrutiny has seemed overwhelming at times. She cried 13 times in her first four months – she counted – but she has no desire to leave.

“I knew it was going to be a challenge,” Wood said. “This is where I want to be. I love my kids.”

Both Wood and Myers, who is her mentor, point to the school’s latest principal – Barb Johnson, a 19-year veteran of Sheridan classrooms – as a reason to stay.

Before Johnson, the principal came with top-notch recommendations as a turnaround leader. But he’d done that work in high schools and, by mid-year, he’d decided that was a better fit. The principal before that got hired by another district. The list goes on.

Johnson, who grew up not far away in southwest Denver and graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School, taught elementary for nine years and then became an elementary instructional coach.

“Coaching really at that time was about who would be willing to let you come in and not shun you,” she said, adding, “We had a lot of very good teachers here. I think our struggle has always been, What’s our goal? What’s our outcome?”

After nine years of coaching, with yet another principal heading out the door, Johnson signaled her interest in the job. She was the unanimous choice after a selection process that included input from other district principals.

“It’s funny, when I came here and I would hear people say this was an at-risk community, I thought ‘This is where I’ve grown up, it doesn’t seem like at-risk to me.’ ” she said. “It seemed like home.”

Johnson is at ease in the classroom – it’s in the office, dealing with discipline and other managerial tasks, where she’s on less familiar ground. There is no assistant principal.

“It’s complex because kids need to know exactly what we do here and here’s what’s going to happen if and when,” she said, citing a recent focus on more consistent discipline as an example. “Because we’ve had so many principals, there’s been a lot of different approaches so kids have had different responses.

“If we’re going to turn around, there are several systems that need to be worked on simultaneously and sometimes that’s hard to manage. But it has to happen. So it’s really figuring out how are we going to get this worked on, and maintain our instructional level.”

Results: “We are one year behind”

Nearly two years into the three-year grant, the pressure is on for Fort Logan to post strong growth on scores released in August.

Julie Westing, a ten-year teacher in her first year at Fort Logan Elementary, works with fourth-grader Madalyn Webb.

After the first year, the school’s results in reading actually declined by 5 percentage points, from 44 percent proficient or advanced to 39 percent. Results in writing were flat at 26 percent proficiency and math scores rose five percentage points, from 48 percent to 53 percent.

Math was also the only area in which Fort Logan students appeared to be progressing at a rate near the statewide average. In reading and writing, student academic growth lagged the state averages.

That means Fort Logan missed its achievement goals, which were to meet state averages or grow proficiency by at least 10 percent, in both proficiency and growth.

Neither Clough nor Johnson expects the school will meet those goals on the 2012 state tests either, though they do expect stronger growth. They said the school’s internal assessments aren’t predicting 10 percent gains.

Progress at Fort Logan “will start showing up this year,” Clough said. “It will really show up next year. We are one year behind where I wish we were.”

One key change this year was to fold Fort Logan’s only feeder school, Alice Terry Elementary, into the federal SIG grant. While both schools have operated as K-5s in the past, Alice Terry more recently has served grades K-2 while Fort Logan serves grades 3-5.

“Fort Logan takes the brunt of everything and the kick in the pants,” Clough said. “But in actuality, the problem is starting much lower.”

Less than half the students coming from Alice Terry to Fort Logan demonstrate the ability to be proficient or advanced on state exams as third-graders, Johnson said.

“What it feels like is, as they come in to third grade here … you’re constantly playing catch up,” she said. “So you’re teaching skills that are remediation type skills as opposed to grade level skills. That is a combination that is not going to allow you to be proficient on CSAP.”

Teachers at Alice Terry have received similar training this year and the two staffs are working on creating a K-5 reading sequence that sets out academic goals for each grade.

“I feel we have to create reading experts across all elementary staff,” Johnson said. “We know we’re going to have kids coming to us, regardless of what position we’re in, who struggle.”

Alice Terry Principal Lynn Bajaj said more than half of the school’s kindergartners tested at well below grade level at the beginning of the school year. In December, 90 percent tested as proficient.

“We really are starting to move the needle in a pretty exciting way,” she said.

Johnson said she understands the need to show progress but she doesn’t believe in “quick fixes” such as six-week CSAP prep boot camps.

“If you’re teaching well every day, if you’re teaching the right things, if you’re getting feedback around the effectiveness, if you’re looking at the data, you’re going to make gains,” she said.

“What would make me feel sick is no growth, no continuous growth. That would bother me and I would expect someone to say, ‘What is going on?’ Absolutely.”