TO:
All those running to serve on the Board of Education for Aurora Public Schools
FROM: Peter
Huidekoper, Jr. – Oct. 10, 2017
ASSIGNMENT – In a
letter of 2,000 words or less, what would you want to tell prospective
candidates for the Board of Education of Aurora Public Schools?
First, THANK YOU for your willingness
to take on such a tremendous responsibility, especially as you will be paid so
handsomely (NOT!) for carrying such a burden.
So many many hours—are you sure
you’re ready for this? – to do the job well. We must, sincerely, thank you
for choosing to make such a commitment.
Second, it was encouraging to
read in your answers to the Chalkbeat
Colorado survey comments like: “When I am
elected, I won’t be afraid to ask tough
questions”; “… changing the current environment will require board members
with the fortitude and courage to ask
questions”; “The Board’s role in transformative change is to ask important questions, keep
expectations high, hold people accountable….”
How great if you can bring that
spirit to the board. I trust it will mean you can see through articles in the press
that jar with reality. As in recent stories suggesting Aurora Public Schools is on
the upswing: “Upward
movement”; “excited about our momentum”; “making a comeback.” (Details
in Addendum A—remember, under 2,000
words!)
“Overall, state officials in
August raised the APS accountability rating to ‘Improvement,’ up from the
bottom two categories of performance.”[i]
“Improvements to Aurora’s state test
scores and its high school graduation rate helped move
the district’s rating up.”[ii]
(Later I will look at
the seeming contradiction of being a school on Performance, but having unsatisfactory academic achievement, and will
raise questions about the “higher” graduation rates.)
This, it must be said, is also true (bold mine):
… among the state’s ten largest school districts, Aurora
continued to post the lowest scores. For example, only 25
percent of fourth graders in the
41,000-student district met the state’s expectations on the English test. (Chalkbeat Colorado’s article on the release of PARCC scores.[iii])
And, I would add, less than 13 percent
of the district’s middle school students
met the state’s expectations on the Math
test.
Perhaps your most difficult task
I trust new board members will be
skeptical of overstatement and spin and lack of detail about student
performance when district personnel provide updates. I examine here – as a useful example – the presentation
by the district’s Office of Autonomous Schools at a recent board meeting.
My hope is that you will understand
the district and staff, as conscientious as they might be in presenting
their reports, do not always convey the full story. It may not be deliberate; I simply say,
having visited at least two board meetings each year since 2012, the tendency
is to stress the positive. As a result, I have seen board members caught off
guard when the Colorado Department of Education or external reports present
them with unwelcome facts.[iv]
It will be your responsibility, in my view—perhaps your most difficult task—to ask
the hard questions to ensure that you and your fellow board members, and the public,
obtain essential information.
APS Board of Education Meeting - Sept. 19,
2017
Elementary Schools
Staff presented a 16-17 Performance Summary of the five
schools in the Innovation Zone, one of the district’s key initiatives. It
highlighted in green the Growth scores of 50
or above on the English test; but the slide also revealed that Growth
scores in Math declined at the three schools serving grades 3-5 and fell under
50 at all five Innovation Schools.[v] As I am sure you know, when achievement scores
are exceptionally low—as is the case for these schools—growth must exceed 60 to
see meaningful progress.
Staff then gave 10 more power
point slides listing the “innovative initiatives,” telling us—three times no
less, “All Year 1 Initiatives have been
accomplished.” But not one word about achievement results at the five
schools. “Specific School Updates” stated:
- ACHS - Revised Leadership Structure
- Boston P-8 - Received $10,000 worth of Kindles from Amazon
- Crawford Elementary - Has completed more than 80 teacher observations so far
I hope new board members will put
a stop to this fluff and ask: How well
are the students doing?
Superintendent Rico Munn’s
summary of the meetings spoke of “a presentation about the program
implementation and assessment data from the five schools that are part of the
Zone.”[vi] I see no “assessment data,” nothing to indicate
this effort has produced significant improvement in achievement. I offer some 2017 PARCC results in Addendum B.
The new board should insist on more useful information.
**
District
staff also showed a graph: Accountability
Clock Summary. It listed 11 schools that,
in 2017, “have moved off the Accountability Clock (according to preliminary
ratings only). Good news, sort of. (More on that list in a moment.) Two slides on CORE Progress Update, all
upbeat: “Significant Improvement…”; Schools
coming “off the clock”; “Revised Calendar providing more
instructional time and teacher & leader training.”
However, APS says it begins
2017-18 with 14 schools on Priority
Improvement or Turnaround, in
part because, as one graph showed, six new schools went “on the clock in
2017.” I count 13 (APS Online School’s rating is
uncertain, “Pending AEC Framework”) and list them in Addendum C. The new board will want to ask about their progress.
Yes,
fewer schools on the clock, but let’s not miss the key point here: NO
DISTRICT IN COLORADO HAS MORE schools on Priority
Improvement or Turnaround than
Aurora (excludes Alternative
Education Campuses). APS: 13; Denver: 12. Please note: DPS had close to 200 schools last
year compared to 70 or so in Aurora. (See
Addendum D for a list of districts
with five or more schools “on the clock.”)
The state now gives schools a PERFORMANCE
rating when achievement is unsatisfactory
The
state’s preliminary ratings find it possible to place schools that had been on Priority Improvement the year before, Aurora
schools like Sable, Wheeling, Sixth, and Laredo Elementary, on Performance. I trust new board members see the paradox –
or worse – when they go to the district’s new website. We can click on each school
and get a snapshot of its data. For these four schools, we see:
Achievement – Does Not Meet
Growth – Meets
Current Status - Performance
|
Yes,
Does Not Meet. I trust a new school board will be skeptical
of just how appropriate it is that the district has come off the accountability
clock. Not that APS is to blame; the
fault lies in the state’s accountability algorithm that gives growth (60%) much
more weight than achievement (40%).[vii] And
yet district leaders and school board members will be blamed, quite rightly, if they fail to see what being on Performance does not reveal. I provide the
troubling PARCC data at these four schools in Addendum E.
Middle Schools
I trust future board members will not overlook (as I do in this letter)
the struggles of so many of the district’s middle schools. I offer here a simple check on their performance
in Addendum F. If the K-8 system cannot raise overall
performance, the district’s high schools will continue to face the huge
challenge of meeting the needs of 9th graders who arrive well below
grade level.
High Schools
At the board meeting staff put up
a chart showing Aurora Central High School (ACHS) had improved its growth score
in English by 29 points. A close look
also showed that the 2016 growth score for Aurora Central was 28. That 28 in growth was the lowest score on growth in ELA (along with South Middle) out of all
70 schools in the district that year.
I trust the new board will give
growth its proper due, but that you will always be sure to ask about
achievement. For even with such
“improvement,” a closer look at the results for 9th graders at ACHS
shows how few are meeting expectations.
ACHS –
ELA – 9th grade – improvement from 2016, but …
|
|
% meeting
or exceeding expectations
|
|
|
|
2016
|
2017
|
ACHS
|
6.6%
|
11.8%
|
District
|
22.8%
|
22.5%
|
State
|
37.2%
|
36.2%
|
Given
the school’s performance the previous year, then, the growth in in 2016-17 is
underwhelming. Board members might
observe the impressive growth scores at several SMALLER high schools in
2017—better scores to start 2016-17,
and even better by the end.
Growth Percentile – ELA – 9th
grade - 2016 to 2017
William
Smith High School
|
89
|
Aurora
West
|
87
|
Vanguard
Classical
|
82
|
Lotus
Schools of Excellence
|
74
|
And in asking about achievement, you will surely want to ask what is
happening at our three troubled BIG high schools. Some would like to say ACHS
is unique in its struggles, but Gateway and Hinkley—with good reason—are now the
accountability clock too. Addendum G shows how the BIG THREE are
doing, in contrast to the much higher performance at three SMALLER high schools.
I trust future school board
members are willing to ask a basic question as: does school size matter? Especially in our community—with so many
immigrants, so much mobility, where it can matter all that much more to have
schools become community where each student is known well by the adults in the
building? The next board should realize
that questions about the “right” size of a school is not the same as asking:
how many students can this building hold?[viii] It appears that this has prevented ACHS from
exploring a more fundamental restructuring. Many of us believe we give
educators and students a much greater chance of success, of building good
relationships and a strong community, in a smaller setting.
Graduating – but not college ready
A final point related to the woeful
performance of the district’s big three high schools. Yes, the district’s graduation rate improved
from 59% in 2015 to 65% in 2016, but let’s be clear: as Chalkbeat Colorado’s report showed, of the 10 largest districts
in Colorado, APS had the lowest graduation rate.
You would be correct to say: wait, we
don’t care about comparisons with Boulder and Cherry Creek. What
about comparisons with districts enrolling a similarly high percentage of
students qualifying for Free and Reduced Lunch? I offer that here - Addendum H.
It should raise the question: So
is 65% good news? (I also present the graduation rates at the six high
schools referred to above—big and small.)
What is more, a responsible board will
find graduation rates suspect when they see the alarming percentage of recent
APS graduates who found they were not ready to take college level classes. For Aurora Central graduates in 2015, 70.3%
required remedial classes upon entering college or universities in-state – 52 out of 74 students. For Gateway, 61.8% - 47 out of 76. Among Colorado districts with over 200
students graduating and going, Aurora’s remediation rate was the 4th
highest.
Remediation
rate[ix]
2015 high school graduates
Pueblo 60
|
54.9
|
Brighton
|
54
|
Greeley 6
|
53.1
|
Aurora
|
48.7
|
Pueblo 60
|
48.6
|
Falcon
|
47
|
Denver
|
45.4
|
STATE of COLORADO
|
36.1
|
I trust such data will encourage the
new board to ask about the value of a high school degree when so many recent
graduates find they are compelled to take remedial classes. What, exactly, does
that diploma from an Aurora high school mean?
To all who win and serve on the board,
it’s just one more essential question you will want to ask!
My best wishes to you.
(1,865 words.)
ADDENDA
Addendum A - “our momentum,” “right
direction,” “making a comeback”
1. Aurora
Public Schools improves enough to dodge state action, mixed results elsewhere
in new preliminary state ratings - Chalkbeat
Colorado, Yesenia Robles, Aug. 30, 2017
Aurora Public Schools
has improved enough to pull itself off the state’s watchlist for persistent low
performance, according to preliminary state ratings made public Wednesday. The district of about 40,000
students was staring at state intervention if it didn’t move the needle enough.
…. The district saved itself by earning a state rating of “improvement,” no
longer in the bottom two categories of performance.
“We’re excited about our momentum,” Superintendent Rico Munn said.
“We are moving in the right direction.”
2. “Aurora Public Schools is making a comeback of
sorts - and this pilot school is leading the charge” - Aurora school hatching ideas that brighten students’ futures. The Denver Post, Monte Whaley, Sept. 27, 2017.[x]
William
Smith’s approach is earning it national praise and academic success in Aurora
Public Schools, a 39,000-student district that has been targeted by the state
for persistently low test scores and that was considered for academic
intervention.
But the district may be launching
a comeback of sorts. APS did well enough in the latest round of state
tests to leave the state’s watch list of consistently troubled districts.
Leading the rally was William Smith, which had the state’s
fourth-highest median growth percentile on the statewide English test. In other
words, William Smith students, on average, showed greater improvements than 89
percent of Colorado students who scored similarly to them the previous year.
Principal David Roll said he’s
proud of his students’ performance — and he knows the school is being watched
closely by district and state officials.
They want to see whether William
Smith’s methods can be used at larger, more conventional high schools. William
Smith has an enrollment of about 320 students. A majority of the student body —
about 75 percent — qualifies for free or reduced-price lunches. That compares
with about 68 percent of students districtwide.
**
APS Superintendent
Rico Munn said he is happy with the upward movement, but a lot of work still
needs to be done. “This is merely a mile marker in a marathon,” he said, “and
we will continue to build on our momentum.”
Addendum B
NOTE: In APS, where average scores in grades
3-5 are 20 percentage points behind the
state average, Crawford’s scores
are 10-15 percentage points even lower
than the district average.
Boston and Paris did not have enough students taking the test in some grades
to allow for public reporting, but what scores are available are as troubling
as Crawford’s scores.
%
meeting or exceeding expectations - ELA
|
|||
Boston
|
District
|
State
|
|
Grade 3
|
10.4
|
20.4
|
40.1
|
Grade 4
|
*
|
25.1
|
44.1
|
Grade 5
|
*
|
26.0
|
46.3
|
%
meeting or exceeding expectations - MATH
|
|||
Grade 3
|
16.3
|
20.9
|
40.0
|
Grade 4
|
*
|
15.6
|
34.0
|
Grade 5
|
*
|
15.0
|
33.6
|
2017
– PARCC/CMAS - PARIS
% meeting or exceeding expectations - ELA
|
|||
Paris
|
District
|
State
|
|
Grade 3
|
10.7
|
20.4
|
40.1
|
Grade 4
|
11.3
|
25.1
|
44.1
|
Grade 5
|
9.7
|
26.0
|
46.3
|
% meeting or exceeding expectations -
MATH
|
|||
Grade 3
|
7.1
|
20.9
|
40.0
|
Grade 4
|
*
|
15.6
|
34.0
|
Grade 5
|
*
|
15.0
|
33.6
|
Addendum C
APS
schools on Priority Improvement or Turnaround. From the state’s Preliminary
School Performance Framework—2017.
2017
Rating
|
2017
Total
% pts earned
|
|
Jewell Elementary
|
Priority Improvement
|
40.7
|
North Middle
|
40.6
|
|
Mrachek Middle
|
40.0
|
|
Paris Elementary
|
40.0
|
|
Crawford Elementary
|
39.4
|
|
Aurora Hills Middle
|
38.7
|
|
Aurora Central High
|
34.8
|
|
Gateway High
|
34.8
|
|
Virginia Court Elementary
|
34.4
|
|
Century Elementary
|
Turnaround
|
33.5
|
Lynn Knoll Elementary
|
Turnaround
|
33.1
|
Lansing Elementary
|
Turnaround
|
33.2
|
Kenton Elementary
|
Turnaround
|
32.5
|
Addendum D
Districts
with high number of schools on Priority Improvement or Turnaround (Preliminary
Ratings)
On
PI/T*
|
Enrollment
– 2016-17
|
|
Aurora
Public Schools
|
13
|
41,797
|
Denver
Public Schools
|
12
|
91,132
|
Pueblo
City 60
|
11
|
17,299
|
Colorado
Springs 11
|
11
|
27,911
|
Adams
14
|
7
|
7,467
|
Westminster
|
6
|
9,638
|
Mesa
County
|
5
|
22,105rr
|
*unofficial – my tally from
studying CDE’s preliminary 2017 ratings[xi]
Addendum E
PARCC scores at 4 elementary schools – rated on Performance
% of students meeting
expectations - ELA
|
|||
3
|
4
|
5
|
|
State
|
40.1
|
44.1
|
46.3
|
District
|
20.4
|
25.1
|
26.0
|
Sable
|
18
|
17.2
|
8.2
|
Wheeling
|
24.7
|
17.5
|
13.2
|
Sixth
|
11.0
|
20.5
|
16.0
|
Laredo
|
18.5
|
12.6
|
26.3
|
% of students
meeting expectations - MATH
|
|||
3
|
4
|
5
|
|
State
|
40.0
|
34.0
|
33.6
|
District
|
20.9
|
15.6
|
15.0
|
Sable
|
17.9
|
9.1
|
5.8
|
Wheeling
|
17.9
|
9.8
|
*
|
Sixth
|
9.6
|
10.8
|
6.2
|
Laredo
|
17.8
|
4.5
|
7.9
|
*means there were too few students to allow for the release of the data.
Addendum F – APS
Middle Schools
PARCC Results*
Average
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
State
|
40.6
|
44.2
|
43.4
|
APS
|
21.0
|
24.2
|
30.2
|
Meeting expectations on PARCC -
MATH
Average
|
6
|
7
|
8
|
State
|
30.9
|
25.8
|
21.0
|
APS
|
12.2
|
12.6
|
12.5
|
Addendum G – Three big vs. three small Aurora
high schools
The state’s -Preliminary School Performance Framework, 2016-17:
Size of freshmen class at these six schools
– and PARCC results (English)
APS high schools with between 1,700
and 2,200 students in grades 9-12, fall 2016:
#
of 9-12
Students*
|
#
of 9th graders*
|
9th
grade - % meeting or exceeding expectations – English**
|
|
State
|
-
|
-
|
36.2%
|
District
|
-
|
-
|
22.5%
|
Hinkley
|
2,184
|
531
|
15.3%
|
Gateway
|
1,718
|
396
|
14.8%
|
Aurora Central
|
2,209
|
550
|
11.8%
|
High schools with under 400
students in grades 9-12:
2016-17
|
#
of 9-12
Students*
|
#
of 9th graders*
|
9th
grade - % meeting or exceeding expectations – English**
|
Lotus
|
232
|
71
|
44.0%
|
William Smith
|
319
|
77
|
42.3%
|
Aurora West
|
382
|
104
|
41.2%
|
State
|
-
|
-
|
36.2%
|
District
|
-
|
-
|
22.5%
|
Addendum H
– Graduation rates - 2016
10 districts with FRL over 65%*
10 Colorado districts with FRL -> 65%
|
Graduation
Rate*
|
%
FRL students
|
Harrison 2
|
79.7%
|
69%
|
Greeley 6
|
77.1%
|
66%
|
Weld County RE-8
|
74.1%
|
73.6%
|
Pueblo City 60
|
73.9%
|
68.5%
|
Sheridan
|
69.1%
|
90.1%
|
Denver Public Schools
|
67.2%
|
69.1%
|
Adams 14
|
65.8%
|
85.4%
|
Aurora Public Schools
|
65.0%
|
66%
|
Mapleton
|
64.6%
|
70%
|
Westminster
|
56.3%
|
83.2%
|
State of Colorado
|
78.9%
|
42.2%
|
Graduation - Three big vs. three small
Aurora high schools
2016
Graduation
Rate*
|
|
Aurora Central
|
48.1%
|
Gateway
|
56.5%
|
Hinkley
|
71.3%
|
William Smith
|
73.5%
|
Aurora West
|
77.9%
|
Lotus
|
82.2%
|
APS - District
|
65.0%
|
State of Colorado
|
78.9%
|
[iv]
From AV#129 - Evidence of success from the charter world
– smaller high schools:
At the February [2015] school board meeting, an informative
presentation by CDE’s Turnaround Office stated what could be severe
consequences if current trends continue.
The news appeared to startle some board members: “I think this is a lot to take in,” said board president JulieMarie
Shepherd (http://co.chalkbeat.org/2015/02/18/aurora-chief-will-propose-changes-for-struggling-central-high-school/#.VRw-s_nF9qU). Mary Lewis—a member of the school
board since 2007, and former board president—grew defensive, as well she might. “It’s — scary
isn’t the right word — I’m still looking for the partnership piece,” she said,
eyeing the state officials. “I’m looking for [you to say] we’re here to help.”
[vii]
In North Carolina, in contrast, grading of elementary and middle
schools “is calculated 80 percent
from student test scores and 20 percent from student growth,” http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/education/article177812261.html
[viii] In March of 2015, as the district and
board explored options for turnaround efforts at ACHS, Munn advocated for
innovation status and said it “would open structural options, including schools
within a school, smaller learning communities, or a mix of some autonomous or
charter schools.” http://boe.aurorak12.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2015/04/final03_17_15boeminutes1.pdf. But it had 2,100 students
then. Last year ACHS enrolled even more
students: 2,209.
[ix]The most recent publication by the Colorado Department
of Higher Education. “LEGISLATIVE REPORT ON DEVELOPMENTAL EDUCATION FOR THE
HIGH SCHOOL CLASS OF 2015 (published May 2017) - http://highered.colorado.gov/Publications/Reports/Remedial/FY2016/2016_Remedial_relMay2017.pdf.
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