Fewer Denver schools earn top ratings after switch to tougher state tests

Fewer Denver schools earned the top two ratings this year on the school district’s color-coded scale than the last time it issued ratings in 2014, according to results released Thursday.

The results push Denver Public Schools further away from its ambitious goal for 80 percent of its students to attend a high-performing school by the year 2020.

About half of all schools are “blue” or “green” this year, the highest ratings on the five-color scale. That is a roughly 10 percent decrease from 2014, DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg said. The number of blue schools dropped from 27 in 2014 to 12 this year.

Schools were not rated in 2015 because of a switch in state tests. The scores from those tests count for a big part of a school’s rating.

Boasberg said the drops were due in large part to that switch. The new English and math tests, known as PARCC, are tougher. Students across the state, and in Denver, scored lower than on previous tests, which Boasberg said drove many ratings down.

In all, 40 percent of DPS schools dropped at least one color rating, according to a Chalkbeat analysis that didn’t include the district’s alternative schools or early education centers.

Six of the 10 highest ranked schools on this year’s ratings are charter schools, including four campuses of the homegrown DSST network, a KIPP school and a University Prep school. Four of the six serve a higher proportion of low-income students than the district average, data show.

The district-run schools that earned the highest rankings on the color-coded scale — Steck Elementary School, Slavens K-8 School and Cory Elementary School — predominantly enroll higher-income students and mostly students from within their neighborhood boundaries.

The district’s color-coded rating system is called the School Performance Framework, or SPF. Each school’s rating is based on several factors, including state test scores and academic growth, which measures how much students’ scores improved compared to their peers.

Schools are awarded points based on those factors — and the total number of points earned puts them in one of five color categories: blue, green, yellow, orange or red.

Research has shown families rely on the ratings to choose schools for their children. The ratings also impact teacher pay and whether struggling schools receive extra funding to help boost performance. DPS also uses the ratings to decide whether to close low-performing schools.

District officials confirmed to Chalkbeat that four schools face possible closure based on the latest ratings under a policy that will be put into practice this school year. (Read our story here).

At a press conference Wednesday in the library of Trevista at Horace Mann, a northwest Denver elementary school whose rating improved from orange to green, Boasberg said the district long expected many schools’ ratings to go in the opposite direction this year due to the rigor of the new state tests. He said officials were aware of that when they set their high-reaching goals.

“We knew the new assessments would be at a more challenging and complex level — and appropriately so,” Boasberg said. He added that “the results released today highlight that need for us to continue to work hard together and accelerate growth for our kids.”

The number of schools that dropped a color rating would have been slightly higher had the district not lowered the bar on one key measure last week in a last-minute decision. In response to concerns from school leaders, officials lowered the percentage of students who had to meet or exceed expectations on most PARCC tests for a school to be blue or green.

Not all school leaders favored the change. Chris Gibbons, the founder and CEO of charter school network STRIVE Preparatory Schools, wrote in a letter Thursday to his school community that he was disappointed the district lowered that bar.

“Our families, communities, and schools deserve a clear and consistent quality standard,” Gibbons wrote. “The perception and the reality that we are working toward a moving target erodes confidence in the measure and limits the capacity for a school community to clearly understand its data and work urgently on areas of improvement.”

Bill Kurtz, the CEO of the DSST charter school network, which is the district’s largest, echoed Gibbons. “We were disappointed that cut scores were lowered because it doesn’t recognize that we are trying to set the bar for our kids at a level they need to achieve,” he said.

By 2018, the district plans to increase the percentage of students who must meet or exceed expectations on state tests to 50 percent for schools to earn a blue or green rating.

“We believe very strongly in the importance of ensuring we have a high bar for our kids and working together as a community to achieve that higher bar,” Boasberg said.

For the first time this year, the DPS School Performance Framework includes an “equity indicator” that more explicitly measures how well schools are serving students of color, low-income students, special education students and English language learners. In part, it looks at gaps between students in those groups and students not in those groups — for example, the difference in the state test scores of white students and students of color.

A school’s equity rating won’t count this year toward its overall rating. But next year, Boasberg said, schools will have to score green or higher on equity to be rated blue or green overall.

“Our commitment is to make sure all of our kids succeed. It’s fundamentally a civil rights mission,” Boasberg said. Districtwide, state test results show students from disadvantaged backgrounds are progressing far slower than their more privileged peers. “It’s important we acknowledge we’re not making the progress we need to,” he added.

All of this year’s blue schools had equity ratings of green or higher. But several green schools did not, including Park Hill Elementary and Denver Discovery School, which were red on equity.

The district’s highest-rated school, DSST: College View High, was blue on equity. Kurtz, the DSST CEO, said serving a diverse population has always been a core goal.

“We believe that’s critical, not just for kids’ academic success, but in 2016, in the world we live in today, we think it’s one of the most critical things schooling can do for young people,” he said.

Search this year’s school ratings here: