Report cards will rank each school/ Critics fear CSAP scores will

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jul 26, 2001 | by Kyle Henley

DENVER - It all will be much clearer in a month.

Sometime between Aug. 15 and Sept. 15, the dizzying array of test scores, percentages and spreadsheets that make up the most recent results of the Colorado Student Assessment Program tests will be distilled into a report card for each school in the state.

It is a report card that will tell parents how their child's school ranks compared with all the other schools in the state, using the terms excellent, high, average, poor and unsatisfactory to describe and rank each school.

Those rankings are based on how well children perform on the CSAP tests, the scores for which were released Wednesday.

"Now, we can do what every other professional group or business group does - use data to improve our effectiveness," said Bill Moloney, state education commissioner.

In 2000, state lawmakers passed a landmark piece of legislation, Senate Bill 186, requiring the CSAP test be given to all fourth- through 10th-grade students in the state and that report cards then be distributed to parents based on those results.

Wednesday's results are the "first fruits of SB186," Moloney said. "It is a very important achievement for us as we move ahead on our pathway of reform."

Because this is the baseline year for CSAP tests, next year's school accountability reports will include a separate assessment for improvement, a grade that shows whether a school has been able to boost performance in the classroom and on the CSAPs.

Low-performing schools - schools that this year rank in the unsatisfactory category - will have three years to improve student performance. Those that don't will be taken over by the state.

This year, 2 percent of 1,600 schools will earn the failing marks, putting the pressure on administrators, principals and teachers to find ways to improve the quality of instruction. By publishing the rankings, supporters of the system hope parents will take more interest in their child's education and perhaps get more involved at school.

But some fear just the opposite will happen.

"The unfortunate thing is that schools, teachers, neighborhoods and principals are going to be rated based on how all the children did on one test on one day of one year," said Jeanne Byer, spokeswoman for the Colorado Education Association. "That is not right."

Byer suspects that many parents with kids in schools ranked on the low end of the scale will demand their child be removed and transferred to another campus.

But nobody really knows how parents are going to react.

"Some parents are going to be interested on how well schools that have mandatory uniforms do and some will care about staffing," said Don Watson, chief of assessment for the Department of Education. "I guess you could say the clock starts ticking when the report cards come out."

- Kyle Henley covers state government and politics and may be reached at (303)837-0613 or khenley@gazette.com

A NOTE ABOUT THE SCORES

The state did not release all CSAP data Wednesday.

Information about 10 percent of the roughly 1,600 schools where the test was administered was excluded because 15 or fewer students took the test at those locations.

Fifteen or fewer is the threshold at which the state determined the media and members of the public might be able to determine an individual student's CSAP score based on the composite score put together by the state.

Releasing the data for small schools and districts would violate federal right-to-privacy laws, Colorado Department of Education officials said. It also means that no one, except state officials, can figure out how the schools in the state will be ranked.

The volumes of data released Wednesday do, however, include CSAP results for students that do not speak English, special education students who began attending a school after Oct. 1, 2000.