Denver Public Schools Progress Report: Big Gains, Big Gaps, Big Ideas.

Read the report here: Denver Public Schools Progress Report
Click here to download the excel sheet: District Data Set, School-Level Data Set

 

DENVER, CO, 4/27/2016-- Education advocacy organization A+ Colorado (formerly A+ Denver) releases its most comprehensive report to date on the state of student achievement in Denver Public Schools. Big Gains, Big Gaps, Big Ideas explores progress in the state’s largest district against the achievement targets the Denver School Board and administration have set for themselves in the Denver Plan 2020, and finds relative performance on PARCC, AP pass rates, concurrent enrollment participation, and graduation rates are all moving in the right direction.

“Our latest report shows DPS is making progress, but it’s neither fast nor broad enough,” CEO Van Schoales says.

This is A+’s first report out on the district that includes PARCC data from its inaugural year as the state standardized assessment year. The report includes PARCC performance comparisons both to the rest of the state, and to other urban school districts across the country.

To help make sense of the new PARCC scores, A+ compared DPS’ relative performance on TCAP and PARCC tests, providing information about whether Denver is improving when compared to other districts in Colorado. A+ is releasing this unique data analysis, compiling how all schools and districts with publicly available data performed relative to the rest of the state.

Findings from Big Gains, Big Gaps, Big Ideas include:

  • Relative to the rest of the state, Denver has made big gains. DPS has jumped from the 16th percentile statewide to the 42nd percentile in elementary English Language Arts (ELA), from the 19th to 49th percentile in elementary math; from the 18th to the 51st percentile in middle school ELA; and from the 39th to the 65th percentile in middle school math (middle and high school comparisons for PARCC are more difficult due to new subject-specific math tests and higher opt-out rates in the upper grades).
  • On 3rd grade English Language Arts, Denver performed significantly better than several inner-city districts including Baltimore Public Schools and Newark Public Schools, and similar to Boston Public Schools, Chicago Public Schools, and Jersey City Public Schools.
  • Denver’s scores on the clearest college and career-ready litmus test, the ACT, show relative stagnation. Denver’s scores sit at or below large urban districts with similar populations of students receiving free or reduced lunch, and that also require students to take the ACT.
  • For DPS to be on track to reach its goal of a 90 percent four-year graduation rate for students that start with DPS in ninth grade, the graduation rate will need to increase 3.6 percentage points annually. Since 2010, the average annual increase has been 1.6 percentage points.
  • The most recent remediation rate (Denver graduates who have matriculated to a college and need to take remedial coursework) has been improving, dipping below 50 percent for the first time, even as more students are graduating.
  • The graduation rate for African American students dipped after its peak in 2013 to 62.4 percent in 2014 and rebounded to 64 percent in 2015. The Latino graduation rate inched upward to 60.7 percent in 2015. These are still well below the graduation rate of their white peers (74.3 percent).
  • There is a significant racial/ethnic gap in college enrollment: 69 percent of Asian graduates and 57 percent of white graduates enroll in college, while 50 percent of African American graduates, 36 percent of Latino graduates, and 35 percent of American Indian graduates enroll in college.

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The mission of A+ Colorado (A+) is to sharpen public education by building public will and advocating for the changes necessary to dramatically increase student achievement in schools and districts in Colorado.

We are an independent, 501(c)(3) organization working to ensure every student in Colorado receives an excellent public education. For more information, please visit aplusdenver.org