-(1).jpg;w=960)
In 2010, 76.5% of students graduated from the St. Vrain Valley School District. Last year, 90.3% of students graduated.
During the school board’s Wednesday study session, board members and district staff agreed that while a number of metrics should be used to look at student achievement, graduation rates are one of the most important.
Another part of student success emphasized throughout the meeting was equity and ensuring that underrepresented students are seeing achievements improve. With 30% of the district identifying as Hispanic, most statistics also isolated the numbers for that population to see the comparison.
While just 55.9% of Hispanic students graduated in 2010, 84% graduated last year. The board expressed pleasure with seeing that gap close between Hispanic students and the district overall and hoped that soon those graph lines would meet.
To start off the presentation, Superintendent Don Haddad explained that the state’s measure of school success tends to focus pretty narrowly on test scores, which he felt doesn’t accurately capture achievement overall. The presentation looked at a myriad of other factors to help capture a broader look at success.
Staff explained that improving those rates starts from preschool with support offered to students throughout their time in the district. At the preschool and kindergarten levels, this begins with ensuring programming is accessible to all families so that students are ready to begin first grade.
To help with that, one new strategy implemented by the school district this year has been to expand Project Launch — a summer session to increase reading and math skills — to incoming kindergarten students along with the Achievement Acceleration Academy for after school programming focused on math and reading.
At the elementary level, Colorado Measurements of Academic Success give an idea of math and reading proficiency with students seeing higher overall scores than the state average.
Eighth grader participation in Algebra 1, a high school level class, is also a marker of overall student achievement, with 6% more students participating compared to three years ago and a consistently high course pass rate.
Project Launch served nearly 4,000 elementary and middle school students last summer, and the Achievement Acceleration Academy is also serving another 1,600 at those levels. These programs target students who might need some extra help to get their reading and math skills to grade level.
With the programming St. Vrain has added, the district has increased instruction by 20% for students who need additional grade level content.
Another highlight was the district's work to improve early literacy. By state law, all teachers in kindergarten through third grade must complete professional development in this area by Aug. 1. St. Vrain was able to develop their own training, which was accepted by the Colorado Department of Education, thanks in part to the work the district had already put in to address early literacy.
At the high school level, achievement is measured in part by post-secondary readiness. Across Advanced Placement, advanced coursework and concurrent enrollment, St. Vrain is seeing more and more student involvement. Concurrent enrollment especially has seen major growth with a roughly 400% increase in the number of courses taken over seven years.
Staff said some next steps to continue this achievement improvement is to expand Project Launch to 25% of the K-8 student population. In general, the district wants to keep going with these successful endeavors with a continued focus on underrepresented populations.
The board was pleased with the update and the upward trajectory of the many student success metrics, which they agreed was the product of the intentional systems the district has implemented over the years.
