Special issue - follow-up to the to the marathon State Board of Education Accountability Hearing on April 14 on Adams 14
Lesson from the Adams 14 debacle: the state needs to act sooner
If we looked at the evidence in 2016 or 2017 and intervened then, we might have prevented this crisis
All who have followed the turmoil around the Adams 14 School District and
MGT Consulting “partnership” will agree: we must do everything we can to be
sure this never happens again.
What lessons can we learn from this disaster? I imagine the State Board
of Education and the Colorado Department of Education have started a list titled:
what not to repeat.
The lesson I draw speaks to time: when we see chronic low
performance, we must act sooner. No district or school should reach Year 9
on the accountability clock - period. “Ongoing progress monitoring,” once
we hit year 3, and then 4, 5, 6, 7, … It is too little, too late. If we are
serious about school and district accountability, we cannot allow so many years
to pass before taking decisive steps.
Regarding Adams 14, the distress signals were clear years ago. (Wasn’t Aurora
City High’s UIP in 2015 a cry for help? See page 7.) Couldn’t we have found a
way to respond to all the red flags much sooner?
As a nation we are getting better at creating effective Early Warning
Systems (EWS)[1]
in anticipation of natural disasters. They save lives. I believe we need some
kind of EWS for districts or schools that demonstrate chronic low achievement.
It, too, might save lives. An exaggeration? Do you think that a child’s life is
not harmed by spending 8, and then 9, and now 10 years in schools that fail to
provide the education they deserve? As I have written before, we should be
ashamed. We must do better.
Listen to the Commissioner of Education and State Board members acknowledge how much time has passed since we began to see the alarming student outcomes in Adams 14. All bold mine
From the Colorado State Board of Education meeting on Jan. 28, 2022.
1. Commissioner of Education Katy Anthes – explaining to those in the Adams 14 community who wonder why the State Board and CDE have been so involved in their district.
“When
schools have challenges and aren’t ensuring access [to a quality, thorough,
uniform, well-rounded education] for all of the students, the law directs us to
step in and help. We have been working alongside many of your amazing staff for
years, but unfortunately we have not been able to create, and the district
has not been able to create, a sustainable leadership needed to create that
world-class education system. Despite all the state and federal supports
provided and individual principals, educators, and students working hard day in
and day out, this district been among the lowest in the state for many years.
Supports that have helped many other districts improve have not been able to
take hold in this district due to the constant churn of leaders, even despite
CDE and the State Board allocating more than $5.3 million in extra money … in helping
their turnaround efforts.”
2. State Board Vice-Chairperson Steve Durham presented some of the history behind the current crisis, provided as “context” for how we need to evaluate Adams 14 in 2022. He gave the results on the Colorado School Performance Framework from 2010 to 2019. (He pointed out the accountability pause in 2015 and the fact that, given the impact of COVID, we have had no ratings since 2019.)
Colorado School Performance Framework (SPF) Ratings for Adams 14
|
2009-10 |
2010-11 |
2011-12 |
2012-13 |
2013-14 |
2015-16 |
2016-17 |
2017-18 |
2018-19 |
|
TR |
TR |
TR |
PI |
PI |
TR |
PI |
PI |
PI |
Durham also listed the number of schools in Adams 14 (in a
district of 11 schools) receiving one of these lowest ratings – roughly half
of the schools each year over
that 10-year period. He concluded:
“I think it’s impossible for anybody who has
been on the board, whether it’s for six months, or a year, or seven years, or
even longer, as is the case of Dr. Schroeder, to ignore what is in the public
record and what is history …”
From the Colorado State Board of Education meeting on April 14, 2022.
3. Although Dr. Karla Esser is one of the newest board members, her own timeline with Adams 14 goes back over two decades. As a professor at Regis University with a focus on bilingualism and multilingualism, Esser began her involvement with the district, as she put it, “either doing professional development or working with your bilingual education group,” in 1998. To her,
“… the question becomes, how do we heal the
community so that we are able to create the best possible schooling we can for
these kids? This has been going
on since I got here in 1998 - every
two years - it’s not water under the bridge, it’s the bridge under water - it
just keeps rolling and we need to do something now. What is going to change
now?”
4.
State
Board Chairperson Angelika Schroeder:
“I feel that for me there is not quite enough of a sense of urgency… but the kids (in the Adams 14 School District) who started kindergarten in 2010 [when the district was first placed on the accountability clock], they’re now juniors [in high school]. That spooks me. And so I don’t want to be slow ... You all ought to have that super sense of urgency.”
I believe all four state leaders were saying that the harm being done has
gone on way too long. The implication, as I read it: we had good reason
to be bolder five or six years ago.
I would not claim that Another View has always been right in its
efforts to highlight low-performing schools. I am aware how incomplete my
understanding has been, and is, of the complexities and challenges facing such
schools. But I will admit to being disappointed that my “warnings” over many
years made so little difference. Going forward, can’t we put in place a policy
and structures so that such warnings come from those at the state level,
with the authority to act swiftly, to help the students and to
intervene on their behalf, much much sooner?
The Addendum indicates where Another
View raised concerns over from 2009-2017 about a number of our
lowest-performing schools. By 2017, we had plenty of data on Adams 14, and in
particular on Adams City High School. Like the district, ACHS has also been on Priority
Improvement or Turnaround since 2010. Nothing conclusive here, but I
believe had we been paying closer attention—had an EWS flashed red—we could
have acted sooner. Surely we could have prevented the current unholy mess.
Addendum – Excerpts from 10 newsletters,
2009-2017, on Adams 14, ACHS, and accountability
AV#59 – Aug. 2009
– Could high
schools be part of the high school dropout problem?
But here is a
list of schools that graduate less than two-thirds of their students. We agree, don’t we, this should change. Which means—doesn’t it? —that these schools
need some fundamental change.
District 2008 graduate rate (from CDE web
site)
Sheridan High School Sheridan 61.7
Westminster High School Westminster 50 60.5
Montbello High School DPS 59.2
Adams
City High School Adams 14 58.9
Another list …
includes entire districts with graduation rates below 66% (2008 rate - from CDE
website):
Adams County 14 41.1
Denver Public Schools 48.6
Mapleton 1 59.4
AV#79 – June 2011 - Graduation Rates in Colorado for Hispanic Students
52%? 57.8%? 55.5%? – Not good enough
2009- OLD FORMULA 2010 – NEW “ON
TIME” FORMULA
|
GRADUATION
RATES |
2009 ALL
students |
2009 Hispanic
students |
|
2010* ALL
students |
Hispanic
Final Graduation Base |
Hispanic Graduates |
2010* Hispanic
students |
|
COLORADO |
74.6 |
57.8 |
|
72.4 |
16,001 |
8,881 |
55.5 |
|
Adams
14 |
51.9 |
49.2 |
|
57 |
412 |
220 |
53.4 |
AV#88 – Sept. 2012 – Aurora Central High - The Case for State Intervention
Colorado Public High School Graduates Assigned to Remediation in Colorado Public Higher Education, FY 2010-11 (Fall 2010 Enrollment)
|
High School |
District |
Remediation rates- 2011 |
# in remediation
classes / # of students from
this high school attending a Colorado college |
|
1. West |
DPS |
89.6% |
43/48 |
|
2. Montbello |
DPS |
80.0% |
76/95 |
|
3. Abraham Lincoln |
DPS |
78.3% |
72/92 |
|
4. Harrison |
Harrison 2 |
75.5% |
40/53 |
|
5. Aurora Central |
Aurora |
73.8% |
59/80 |
|
6. North |
DPS |
72.6% |
45/62 |
|
7. Adams City |
Adams 14 |
71.8% |
51/71 |
|
8. Sierra |
Harrison 2 |
67.6% |
48/71 |
High Poverty High Schools and Low ACT Composite Scores –
|
High
School |
District |
Poverty Rate- fall 2011 |
ACT Composite 2012 |
ACT Reading
2012 |
|
Bruce Randolph |
DPS |
97.6% |
16 |
14.9 |
|
Abraham Lincoln |
|
93% |
15.5 |
15 |
|
Manual |
|
92.5% |
16.1 |
15.3 |
|
West |
|
87.3% |
14.9 |
14.6 |
|
Montbello |
|
85.7% |
15 |
14.3 |
|
North |
|
84.3% |
15.2 |
15.2 |
|
Adams
City |
Adams
14 |
80.8% |
15.6 |
15 |
|
STATE of COLORADO |
|
41% |
19.4 |
20.1 |
|
ACT score considered “college-ready” |
21 |
|||
Growth and
“Catching up”
It is good to see Aurora Central did not have growth
percentiles under 40% in reading as we see in high schools like Sheridan High
(39%) and Adams City
High (36.5%).
High Schools Receiving School Improvement Grants
… among 100 schools identified in need of dramatic change
According to the report, “School Turnarounds in Colorado - Untangling a Web of Supports for Struggling Schools,” by Julie Kowal and Joe Ableidinger of Public Impact, at CDE’s web site:
“Between 2009 and 2010, the state identified nearly 100 schools for dramatic intervention, including 19 schools under the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) Program and 82 schools under the state Education Accountability Act (EAA).”
The state identified five large high schools, listed below. Low achievement for these schools has been noted earlier in this report. From Appendix of the “Schools Turnaround in Colorado” report:
Schools
Identified for Intervention under the 2009 SIG Program and Colorado’s EAA in
2010.)
|
High School |
District |
|
Adams
City High School |
Adams
14 |
|
Alameda High School |
Jefferson County |
|
Central High |
Pueblo City 60 |
|
Montbello High |
Denver Public Schools |
|
North High |
Denver
Public Schools |
AV#92 – Jan. 2013 – Regional economic development works.
Why not a regional recovery school district?
SB 163 – The clock is ticking towards some kind of dramatic intervention. Why wait?
State law adds urgency to such a look: SB 163, the 2009
Educational Accountability Act, means many schools now face a deadline. CDE’s 2012 School Performance Framework puts over
30 Colorado high schools in the two lowest accreditation categories, Priority
Improvement or Turnaround. In
the metro area, Adams City High, Aurora Central High, and Westminster
High have been so ranked for three
straight years.
|
District |
School |
Final
Accreditation Category |
Final %
Points Earned |
Entering
Year on Priority Improvement or Turnaround |
||
|
|
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
2012 |
|
|
|
Adams County 14 |
Adams City High School |
Turnaround Plan |
Priority
Improvement Plan |
Priority
Improvement Plan |
35.9 |
Year 3 |
ColoradoSchoolGrades.com – High Schools in Metro Denver scoring D or below
|
District |
School |
Overall grade |
Ranking (out of 327 high schools) |
Overall Academic Proficiency |
Academic Proficiency in: |
Overall Academic Growth |
Grad rate |
% low income |
|||
|
Reading |
Math |
English |
Science |
||||||||
|
Adams County 14 |
Adams City H. S. |
F |
324 |
F |
F |
D- |
F |
F |
F |
63% |
81% |
AV#117 – Aug. 2014 – Denialism
On-time (4-year)
graduation rate
|
2012-13 |
Graduation rate |
|
COLORADO -
TOTAL |
76.9% |
|
5 metro area districts |
|
|
Denver |
61.3% |
|
Adams 14 |
59.4% |
|
Aurora |
52.6% |
|
Mapleton |
47.8% |
|
Sheridan |
40.2% |
AV#136 – Sept. 2015 - “Local control” not enough; the state still has a key role in accountability
High
schools in low-performing districts need help
Though “only one test,” ACT results reminds
us why we should not wait until 2016-17 to act
I offer a look here at five urban
districts that, like Sheridan, have entered year 5 on Priority Improvement or Turnaround
(Adams 14,
Pueblo 60, Sheridan, and Westminster 50) on the District Performance Framework or,
as with Aurora Public Schools, is in year 4. Within these five districts we
find—to no one’s surprise—a number of our lowest-performing high schools. Any news on their progress?
ACT scores – 2012-2015 - high schools in 5 districts on year 4 or 5 of accountability “clock”
|
|
2012 |
2013 |
2014 |
2015 |
2014-15 |
|
STATE |
20.0 |
20.14 |
20.31 |
20.1 |
down |
|
ADAMS COUNTY 14 |
15.31 |
15.9 |
15.99 |
15.6 |
down |
|
Adams City High School |
15.55 |
16.15 |
16.12 |
15.9 |
down – 2nd straight year |
When I listen to the words of leaders from our lowest-performing school districts “on the clock,” I only grow more doubtful that “local control,” in their hands, makes sense. Unkind of me, and perhaps unfair. But I hope community members in these districts are listening to “goals” like these:
Adams
14 - March 2014: “Our goal is to improve from ‘priority improvement’
to ‘distinction,’ said Kathy Steel, assistant superintendent for Adams 14,
referencing the state’s accreditation rating.
“People are talking about going from worst to first. Our people
are determined.”
Members
of the state board applauded the district’s efforts but wondered if the
district, which self-admittedly has much more room to improve, would beat the
clock.
“We’ll be sliding in sideways,” said (superintendent Pat) Sanchez, who has been a vocal critic of (the) state’s accountability clock.
A year later … on their way to
distinction?
Two words
apply: GET REAL!
AV#142—Jan.
2016 - Brief for the new Commissioner – SIG and the bottom 5%
Welcome Mr. Crandall.... We are grateful you want to take on
this tremendous responsibility to strengthen public education in our state, and
we wish you the best… I thought you’d
appreciate a quick look at recent turnaround efforts in the “bottom 5%” of
Colorado schools, serving close to 50,000 kids.
You know of the federal School Improvement Grant (SIG)–roughly $7 billion committed (Education Week, Jan 6, 2016)—to improve the country’s lowest-performing schools.…
How has this initiative
gone in Colorado? I present a list of external reviews—mostly articles,
newsletters, and reports—on the $70 million in SIG funds directed to Colorado
for this turnaround work, written between 2011 and 2015…. You will get the
message. Our efforts, overall, have fared badly.…
I wish you, the State Board of Education, and CDE well as you
explore what lessons Colorado can take from the past few years—and what we can
do better in 2016 and beyond.
AV#150 – July
2016 - Adams 14 School District – Year 5 on
clock, new superintendent, “right there”
“What
did the superintendent know and when did he know it?”
So why worry that this new
superintendent will be as stunned as previous leaders who come in and open the
books and find the district is “in the red” in so many ways it’s hard to know
where to begin?
Reason 1: from “Who will
land perhaps one of the toughest superintendent jobs in Colorado?” – Chalkbeat Colorado (7/12/16)
Finding a superintendent with successful experience improving student
learning has been paramount in the search, said David Rolla, the Adams 14
school board president.
“We want somebody who has been involved in turnaround before so hopefully we don’t have to give up any of our schools,” Rolla said. “Many of our schools are right there. They just need someone to get them over the hump where we need them to be.”
“Right there”? “Over the hump”? See overview of Adams 14 [on following page. It showed that five schools in the district were on the accountability clock.]
Adams 14’s
Colorado’s Unified Improvement Plan for Districts for 2015-16
(All quotes from UIP; all phrases highlighted in bold by me.)
How are students performing? Where will the
district focus attention?
We have
yet to meet local or state expectations in any content in achievement or
growth across our district.
We have
yet to meet local or state expectations for English Language Acquisition in
achievement or growth across our district.
We have yet to consistently meet local or state expectations in postsecondary and workforce readiness and student engagement.
Why is the education system continuing to
have these challenges?
Standard 1 – Standards and Instructional
Planning: The district has not
consistently implemented a curriculum that is aligned to Colorado Academic
Standards or consistently ensures rigorous, effective instructional planning.
Standard 2 – Best First Instruction:
Instructional staff members do not
consistently provide aligned, integrated, and research-based instruction
that engages students cognitively and ensures that students learn to mastery.
Standard 6 – Culture and Climate: The
district does not consistently function
as an effective learning community and does not fully support a climate
conducive to performance excellence for students and staff.
“Taken together, Adams 14 continues to
perform distressingly below the state expectation in all content areas.”
District UIP
Review
of Current Performance (identify challenges and their magnitude):
The academic proficiency cut points at the
15%ile range for reading, math, writing, and science were not met at any of the grade spans in 2014. Extensive and
comprehensive work remains to bring proficiency levels to state expectations at
the 50th percentile band.
… The elementary and high schools did not achieve AGP [Adequate Growth
Percentile] in any content area, except the elementary level achieved AGP
in English language proficiency.
**
Courage, imagination, and – maybe above all – honesty
What a challenge for a superintendent: to come in new and try to fundamentally transform a low-performing school district – of over 70,000 students, as DPS was in 2005 when [Michael] Bennet came on board, or over 7,000 in Adams 14 today… My purpose here is to help Dr. Abrego and Adams 14 be honest.
This overview presents enough evidence, I hope, to assert: Adams 14, it is not clear you have made real progress of late, you are not “right there,” and you must face the harsh facts if you’re ever going to “get there.”
AV#158 – Feb. 2017 - Attendance & Absences – if 90% of life is showing up …
PRESS RELEASE – Civil
Rights Data Collection (CRDC)
Washington, D.C., June 7, 2016
NEW OCR* BRIEF
SHOWS U.S. SCHOOLS FACING CRISIS IN STUDENT ATTENDANCE
The release of the first-ever national compilation of data on how many public school students are missing so much school they are academically at risk shows the country is facing a crisis of chronic absence that’s keeping millions of kids from learning. (*Office of Civil Rights-U.S. Department of Education)
|
School District |
No. Students Chronically Absent |
% Students Chronically Absent |
% Pop. in Poverty Age 5-17 |
% Minority Students |
|
Pueblo City – District
60 |
5,682 |
31.46 |
29.00 |
73.80 |
|
Adams County – 14 |
2,315 |
30.40 |
29.40 |
86.80 |
It is startling, is it not—the notion that 3 in 10 students miss that much school in Pueblo and Adams 14?
AV#159 – March 2017 – When “on the clock,” Innovation Status to the rescue! – On what basis?
Three districts line up around Innovation Zone or Innovation Plans
It is troubling when you see a district in trouble try a “reform” without evidence it has proven effective elsewhere … followed by a second district, also in dire straits, try the same “reform”… and then you hear that a third—might step down this blind alley…. As of 2015, here was their 5-year SPF rating.
Colorado School Performance Framework (SPF) Rating
|
|
2009-10 |
2010-11 |
2011-12 |
2012-13 |
2013-14 |
|
Pueblo City Schools |
Priority Improvement year 1 |
Turnaround year 2 |
Priority Improvement year 3 |
Priority Improvement year 4 |
Priority Improvement year 5 |
|
Aurora Public Schools |
Improvement |
Priority Improvement year 1 |
Priority Improvement year 2 |
Priority Improvement year 3 |
Priority Improvement year 4 |
|
Adams 14 |
Turnaround year 1 |
Turnaround
year 2 |
Turnaround year 3 |
Priority Improvement – year 4 |
Priority Improvement – year 5 |
Adams 14 School District
Later last fall [2016], the state
education department “rejected Adams County School District 14’s attempt to avoid
state sanctions for continued poor academic performance” (from article,
here). But innovation plans—according to
press reports—were still on.
Adams 14 will retain low
rating, setting district up for state sanctions
By Yesenia Robles, Chalkbeat
Colorado, Dec. 13, 2016
The decision is a significant blow for Adams 14 because the district is one of five in the state that are facing state sanctions for earning low ratings on the state’s evaluations for five years. The state has a small number of options to deal with the low-performing districts, including closing schools, merging districts or turning over management to a third party.
I attended the Adams 14 school board meeting on Feb. 14 and learned then that the district would only seek innovation status for its high school.… A few days later Dr. Abrego and district leaders gave me reasons for the change in thinking…. But we must ask: can we find an equally low-performing high school that has made dramatic improvement by gaining Innovation Status?
[1] Early warning systems (EWS) are key elements of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, and aim to avoid or reduce the damages caused from hazards. To be effective, early warning systems need to actively involve the people and communities at risk from a range of hazards, … disseminate messages and warnings efficiently and ensure that there is a constant state of preparedness and that early action is enabled. The significance of an effective early warning system lies in the recognition of its benefits by local people. https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/metadata/adaptation-options/establishment-of-early-warning-systems
