Longs Peak Middle School will adopt a turnaround unified improvement plan as required by the state, the St. Vrain Valley School District Board of Education announced during its regular meeting Wednesday evening.
Under the Colorado Department of Education’s accountability ratings, the school is the only one in the district that’s not in the top two performance categories. The middle school’s rating dropped from performance to the lowest rating — turnaround.
Dr. Richard Martyr, school board treasurer, said the school’s leaders, staff and the district were proactive in their approach to the rating.
“I think this is an extraordinary indication of a system working well in response to an emerging challenge, before it becomes an emergency,” he said during Wednesday’s meeting.
The Colorado Department of Education’s website states that unified improvement planning “was developed to streamline state and federal improvement planning requirements, as well as create a single plan that meaningfully engages stakeholders.”
Schools can “improve student learning and system effectiveness by engaging in a cycle of continuous improvement to manage their performance,” the website reads. “To support this purpose, each Colorado district and school creates or updates an improvement plan routinely for public posting.”
The posting for Longs Peak Middle School includes an improvement plan for academic achievement in math, English language arts and for students with disabilities. The root causes for the math growth and achievement in the school are identified as instruction, student agency and intervention. For English language arts, the root causes are reading culture, writing and informational text, according to the executive summary.
“In general, students experienced growth in reading, and less growth in math,” the posting read. “While 51% of 5th graders made typical reading growth, only 38% of those same students made typical growth in math. In 6th grade, 49% of students made typical reading growth, while only 22% made typical math growth. In 7th and 8th grade, 41 and 42% of students made typical reading growth respectively, but only 25% of 7th graders and 36% of 8th graders made typical growth in math.”
English language learners and students with disabilities met requirements for academic growth, but “their achievement still fell below the benchmark,” the posting read.
Improvement strategies are also listed in the summary:
- Math — achievement and growth: Building student agency with rigorous coursework across all grade levels; Math-instruction-improved universal strategies and supporting interventions.
- English language arts: Build aligned reading and writing culture across all grade levels.
- Academic achievement for students with disabilities: Math instruction-improved universal strategies and supporting interventions.
“Longs Peak is a Title I school with approximately 73% of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch,” the executive summary reads. “Student demographics are about 68% Hispanic/Latino, 20% have Individualized Education Plans, and 32% are English Language Learners.”
In an interview with the Leader in December, Supt. Don Haddad expressed frustration with the state’s accountability framework.
“We believe the accreditation program was set up to create winners and losers,” he said. “If you live in poverty, if you have a disability, if you are a student of color, if you happen to attend a small school in a small school district, then the data shows … you will score lower on the test.”
Parents look at the statewide assessments of schools to determine where they should enroll their children, and if a school is rated lower, it will be harder for that school to hire teachers, Haddad said.
Under Colorado’s Education Accountability Act of 2009, school boards must adopt unified improvement plans for any schools rated as priority improvement or turnaround. The deadline for adoption is Tuesday.
Meosha Brooks, St. Vrain Valley School District board member, applauded Longs Peak Middle School Principal Sandy Heiser for developing a comprehensive plan to ignite change.
“Listening to the plan, and how you plan to not only involve your leadership — but the teachers, the students — to be advocates for their education, as well as the community, that shows that we are trying to make this system be a whole thing and not just lay that on one person, so I commend you on that,” Brooks told Heiser during the school board meeting.
“I look forward to all the successes that are going to happen … in another couple months or year, what you present to us, and I know it’s going to be great,” Brooks said.
