Colorado's Growth Model Just Released

Today the Department of Education released data related to the new Colorado Growth Model. The Growth Model will be included in future Accreditation data reviews and provides a more holistic understanding of how a district, and individual students, are performing academically by comparing students and groups to their academic peers.

Colorado’s Growth Model provides students, parents, teachers, principals, administrators, policy makers and the public with an easily understood yet
rigorous means by which to understand student progress over time. Colorado’s
Growth Model:

* Quantifies year-to-year growth
* Defines what constitutes “typical growth” (or “one-year’s growth in one-year’s time”)
* Defines what constitutes “adequate growth” to reach proficient and advanced
performance within one, two, or three years.

In August, school districts will receive more information when the 2008 CSAP results are made public.

District and school level growth plots are available for review based on prior CSAP data. All of the state's charter schools can be compared on one growth plot. Each bubble represents a charter school and a block pops up that cites the school's enrollment, median growth percentile and CSAP proficiency rate. Top performing schools are in the upper right quadrant and the lowest performing schools are in the lower left quadrant.

Using the growth plot parents can easily compare schools within a district or charter schools with each other. The visual representation of school performance makes it easy to get a quick snapshot of performance before conducting further research into each type of school.

From a quick review of the growth plots, it seems as though very few high schools are in the top performer quadrant when using the Math CSAP. On the charter-only growth plot, Ridgeview Classical, Denver School of Science and Technology and Peak to Peak are the only high schools.

Everyone associated with a charter school should take the time to find their charter school and look at the bubbles in order to understand how their school compares to other schools.