Enrollment and revenue at Dolores public schools have each fallen over 10 percent since 2015, but students have shown notable increases in testing performance, particularly in the lower grades.
According to data from the Colorado Department of Education, achievement on third-grade Colorado Measures of Academic Success evaluations at Dolores Elementary School has improved considerably since 2015, when only 22 percent of third-graders “met or exceeded” expectations on the mathematics test.
In 2018, the proportion of third-graders who met or exceeded expectations on the math test jumped to 45 percent, on par with the statewide average. The elementary school experienced similar growth in language arts testing, as well.
“What this is showing you is our K-2 program is crazy strong,” Principal Gary Livick told The Journal.
Livick said that although strong teaching at all grade levels is important, early education – primarily from preschool to second grade – is vital to preparing students for the future. Experts say third-grade reading outcomes predict major life events such as college enrollment and incarceration.
“If (students) are not reading at grade level by third grade, there’s a whole lot of negative factors that could happen that they’re at an increased risk of,” Livick said in an interview with The Journal.
Livick pointed to improved growth in literacy among Dolores kindergartners as an indicator of the early education program’s strength.
Since the 2015-2016 school year, test scores have shown that Dolores kindergarten students are learning reading comprehension faster each year than the kindergartners from years prior.
According to Livick, this upward trend is partially attributable to an early childhood literacy grant that the school started receiving in 2016. He also says that the veteran kindergarten teaching staff is “amazing.”
“They’re super-dedicated, super-hardworking,” Livick told The Journal in an interview.
While static measures of achievement per grade level have improved, individual students in Dolores are also showing growth. The elementary school jumped from the bottom 25 percent in growth measures last year to the median this year.
As previously reported by The Journal, Livick attributed the severe drop in test scores in 2017 to a high percentage of students who opted out of testing and a student body that was affected by a student’s suicide.
The dramatic one-year improvement put the elementary school back in the category for the highest-performing schools in the state. The year before, it had been in the “turnaround” category, among the lowest-performing schools.
“We can see that the early grades are showing high academic growth levels, and that will carry over into the higher grades,” Livick said. “It means that we are positioned to build on our success and have quality instructors. Retaining our great staff is a key component to our success.”
cpape@the-journal.com
Achievement versus growth
A measure of “achievement” looks at how well a group of students performs on a particular test. Measuring achievement is akin to calculating a letter grade for a whole group of students. Achievement can be used to compare different cohorts of students with one another to measure how well a school is teaching over time.
By contrast, a measure of “growth” indicates how effectively a group of students learns over time. Measuring growth is akin to comparing how much a student knows in first grade compared with how much that student knows in fifth grade. Growth can be used to compare how well a school district is teaching its students compared with other districts in the state.
