New student assessment data paints a mixed picture of Colorado’s schools, showing incremental and inconsistent academic improvement across the state, including the Denver metro area, and demonstrating the haunting reverberations of learning loss as schools struggle to escape the clutches of the pandemic.

Educators say the “stair step” improvement means pre-pandemic levels are within reach, while advocates fear what’s missing is the acknowledgement that the latest test scores still mean a lot of students have been left behind.

“We experienced a lot of the same issues, but it’s scale,” said Anthony Smith, chief of Equity and Engagement for Denver Public Schools. “We have a larger number of students with the largest school district in the state.”

Smith added, “I would love to say, ‘We’re back,’ but we have a lot of work to do.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by educators across the Denver metro area, even among those districts that showed a strong performance.

On Thursday, the state board of education released the results for the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS, an annual measure of student success.

CMAS results 2023: Look up your Colorado school or district

Each spring, the state administers the CMAS test for reading and math for third through eighth graders. And, to a lesser extent, students are also tested in science and social studies.

High schoolers take the SAT and PSAT, which is administered by the College Board, to measure a student’s readiness for college.

CMAS testing was not conducted in the 2019-2020 academic year.

This year’s stair-step improvements – state and local leaders say – indicate Colorado students continue to make strides to regain the learning lost when schools closed or adopted remote learning during the first stages of the global pandemic.

The test scores for some schools show educators are closing the learning loss gap.

“We’re obviously where we were pre-pandemic,” said Douglas County School District Superintendent Erin Kane.

Kane added, “I think we’re one of the only districts over our pre-pandemic levels.”

Educators now consider 2019 scores a benchmark year.

“This is probably our new normal,” Joyce Zurkowski, Colorado’s chief assessment officer said.

With state math and English scores this year roughly within 1 percentage point of the last academic year, Zurkowski called it “good news.” But she also tempered her comments, noting not all students and not every school saw progress.

‘We haven’t closed the gaps for anybody’

Despite the modest gains, English learners, students with disabilities and those on free and reduced lunch struggled to make meaningful gains.

Some of the state’s highlights:

? The 2022 scores appear to demonstrate students have had a stronger rebound in math than in English with a higher percentage of students – in every grade – meeting or exceeding expectations.

? A stubborn and significant performance disparity persists among students eligible for free or reduced lunch, which many regard as a proxy for poverty status. Ineligible students are more than twice as likely as those eligible for free or reduced lunch to meet or exceed academic expectations.

? English language learners face significant challenges meeting academic standards, as well. For example, 13.3% of migrant students met or exceeded expectations in English and 8.8% in math. Non-migrant students did substantially better with scores of 43.8% and 32.9% in English and math, respectively. 

The state has not created a metric to rank district or school academic performances. To better understand – and compare – these CMAS scores, The Denver Gazette created a ranking by calculating “a grand total” by averaging math and literacy results.

Of the 166 school districts with sufficient enough data to rank, two in the Denver metro area were among the state’s top 10: Douglas County School District (No. 7) and Littleton Public Schools (No. 10).

Conversely, Adams County 14 School District – which has struggled for more than a decade with low academic performance – holds the unenviable distinction of being in the state’s bottom 10. Adams 14 is ranked No. 164.

Diego Romero, an Adams 14 spokesperson, did not respond to an email and phone call seeking comment.

Nicholas Martinez, executive director and co-founder of Transform Education Now (TEN), has long raised worries about the quality of education Adams 14 students are receiving.

His organization helps to daily shuttle about 20 Adams 14 transfer students into Denver.

“It’s abysmal and I think it’s an improvement,” Martinez said. “In that projection, kids are going to continue to struggle, kids are going to continue to get left behind.”

With just 8.5% of students meeting or exceeding expectations in math and 14.1% in English, Martinez said he fears incremental improvements are grossly inadequate.

What’s needed – Martinez argued – is exceptional growth.

And he worries the emphasis on returning to pre-pandemic test levels fails to acknowledge the academic hole many students were in before COVID-19 wreaked havoc on student learning.

“The conversation through the pandemic was about getting back to normal, even though normal meant the majority of kids were being left behind,” Martinez said. “It’s going to take a monumental effort to reverse those trends.”

Martinez added, “In reality we haven’t closed the gaps for anybody.”

‘We’re not teaching to the test’

Test scores for school districts across the region show many of the statewide trends are also present in the Denver metro area as academic gains were uneven.

Among the takeaways:

? With a grand total score averaging math and English results of 56.15%, an 8.8% increase since 2019, the Douglas County School District showed the greatest academic improvement.

? Adams 14, an already struggling district, saw a 6% decline – across all categories – since 2019, with just 11.3% of students proficient in reading and math.

? Westminster Public Schools students struggled to meet state standards, with fewer than 25% of students proficient in literacy and math.

? Test scores for students at Cherry Creek Jefferson County school districts showed relative stability with incremental changes since 2019.

? Most schools scored higher in English with a few aberrations, including Ralston Elementary School in Jefferson County, where 83.5% of students met or exceeded expectations in math and 76.5% in English.

? And some schools showed extreme disparities in math and literacy scores. For example, 54.7% of Denver Montessori Junior/Senior High School students were proficient in English and just 17.2% in math.

While state testing is common (Nebraska is the only state without a mandate), an anti-test sentiment that resists “teaching to the test” has been simmering for the past decade. 

Some education advocates assert that “teaching to test” drains the professionalism out of teaching and the joy from learning, while others argue that an assessment, broadly speaking, is the one objective metric that can measure whether children are, indeed, learning and the schools are doing their job to educate students.     

“We’re not teaching to the test,” said Alex Magaña, who served as executive principal and executive director of the Beacon Network Schools. “It’s more about engaging students and keeping them learning so when they do take the test, they do well.”

In a split vote in April, the DPS Board of Education revoked Beacon’s iZone status, citing low test scores and organizational health concerns.

The latest results showed that Kepner Beacon and Grant Beacon middle schools – formerly part of the Beacon iZone – both saw year-over-year academic improvement in math and English.

In a state appeal in June, the Colorado State Board of Education encouraged DPS to hold off on the revocation until new state test scores were released, saying the Beacon should “have more time before the innovation zone status with alternative governance is revoked.”

Innovation schools enjoy autonomous structures under state law similar to charter schools, giving them flexibilities not available to traditional schools.

An innovation zone, or iZone, is a collection of schools under a separate governing board.

“We believe every child can grow and should grow, and that’s what we measure,” Magaña said.

‘We’re seeing a lot of growth’

Having recently received the CMAS scores, school leaders across the region are digesting the results and scanning the data for outliers that can be replicated.

Take Marshdale Elementary School in the Jefferson County School District.

Marshdale showed significant improvement from 2019 to 2023, with math scores increasing 11.2% and English 8%.

“We’re seeing a lot of growth, which means our students are out performing what the predicted performance would be,” said Jefferson County Superintendent Kym LeBlanc-Esparza.

LeBlanc-Esparza is pleased but not satisfied.

The questions asked of the data – officials said – should inform educators on how best to identify strategies that are working.

“There’s a lot of stories to be told in this data,” said LeBlanc-Esparza. “How do we make sure we replicate the best practices to get the best outcomes for kids?”

Smith, at DPS, agreed.

“We’re seeing some bright spots,” Smith said. “It’s just not at the level that we’d like to see things improve.”

For example, DPS has two of the highest performing schools in the state: Polaris, ranked No. 1, and Slavens elementary school, ranked No. 10.

The incremental performance increases common among school districts, though, can be discouraging.

Smith called the work frustrating.

DPS saw proficiency gains in literacy and math with a 0.9% and 1.5% increases, respectively. And yet, DPS is still playing catchup because these improvements lag behind pre-pandemic levels. English scores are down 2.5% and math 2.4%, compared to 2019.

“It’s not for a lack of trying,” Smith said. “What this tells us is the impact the pandemic has had.”

Given the steep learning losses, the lingering effects are not surprising.

“I think it’s still impacting families and students,” Pat Donovan, managing partner at RootED, said of the pandemic.

RootED provides funding and strategy support with the aim of creating a more “equitable” school system.

While educators and leaders said the CMAS scores are critical for gauging student success, they also lamented the absence of other yardsticks.

“I just think it’s important to look at the other contextualized elements around a school and neighborhood,” Donovan said.

The way Brenda Dickhoner sees it, CMAS scores are important, but not the sole indicator of academic success.

Dickhoner is president and CEO of Ready Colorado, which was founded in 2015 as an education advocacy group.

“We haven’t been doing well for a long time in education and certainly the pandemic shed light on that and exacerbated the problem,” Dickhoner said.

Smith is optimistic next year’s scores will further tighten gap.

“I’m confident that we’ll get back to pre-pandemic levels and exceed pre-pandemic levels,” Smith said.

Smith added, “We know we’ve got to do better. Kids deserve better.”

Gazette contributor Evan Wyloge provided the data analysis of Colorado Measures of Academic Success test scores.