Schools

Lakewood Schools Earn 'Continuous Improvement' on State Report Card

The district is downgraded a notch from last year's "excellent" mark, but school officials are focusing on the positive news.

If not for a couple of a sub-categories, the Lakewood City Schools would’ve maintained its “excellent” distinction that it earned last year.

Instead, the district was unable to meet all of its requirements in the adequate yearly progress category and was downgraded a notch to “continuous improvement.”

“Can you imagine if you received grades from a teacher and you received two ‘A plusses’ five ‘A’s’ and three ‘B plusses’ and you received a ‘C’ on your report card,” said Superintendent Jeff Patterson.

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“No Child Left Behind requires that you make adequately yearly progress in your sub-groups.”

The district missed just two.

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However, district officials are focusing on the good news: Seven of the district’s 10 schools met “excellent” or “excellent with distinction” status.

That’s up from four last year.

“There are a lot of other good things coming out of this data,” said Patterson.

Among the schools rated “excellent” or higher are both of the middle schools, as well as the high school.

“The longer the students stay in the system the better they do,” said Lakewood schools spokeswoman Christine Gordillo. “When they get to the middle school, we’re seeing excellent results.”

Here are some of the other highlights:

  • According to preliminary results — and shared in a press release — the district earned a 99.1 on its Performance Index Rating — a measure of student achievement on the tests — up from 97.9 last year.
  • In addition, the district met 23 of 26, or 88.5 percent of the state indicators.
  • The attendance rate has risen to 95.4, a “significant increase from last year,” Patterson said.
  • The high school graduation rate dropped by more than 10 percent — from 91.4 percent to 81.1 percent — however district officials noted that's partly to blame on a change in how the data is collected. “The graduation rate dropped across the state,” added Patterson. 
  • Performance Index Scores data wasn’t released, but district officials believe that the district will score a 99 percent, based on its independent calculations. If we get to 100 percent that will get us to a higher rating.
  • The district has a value-added score of “above,” which means that, overall, students in grades 3 to 8 learn more than expected in a year.

“There’s a lot of positive data here,” said Patterson. "It shows that our teachers and our principals are doing their jobs. We’ve just got to continue to keep it up.”

The data is only preliminary. The state released the information to the school district last week, and additional detailed data expected today.


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