Poudre School District
administrator tapped for Student Achievement position
Priscilla Huston, the director of curriculum and instruction
for the Poudre School District in Fort Collins, has been
nominated to become the new Director of Student Achievement
in Durango School District 9-R.
The Board of Education is expected to approve her appointment
at its April 10 meeting.
Huston succeeds
Donna Deeds, who resigned this month to pursue work
in Mexico. Deeds’ last day was
March 28. Huston will join the district this summer.
She will
be responsible for supervising all school principals
and several other programs. Read more . . .
District nominates Seattle-area
administrator as next DHS principal
An assistant
principal and former award-winning science teacher
who served as the project director to transform
a large high
school in Edmonds, Wash., into five smaller “schools-within-a-school” programs
is expected to become the next principal at Durango High
School.
Diane Lashinsky, assistant principal and small schools
facilitator at Mountlake Terrace High School in the Edmonds
School District, was the top candidate to emerge from a
pool of 23 applicants. She will succeed Greg Spradling,
who resigned this spring after six years with the district.
Spradling will end the school year at Durango High School.
A committee of 21 district and community representatives
selected Lashinsky. Her appointment is expected to be confirmed
by the Board of Education at its regular meeting on May
8. Read more . . .
Former special ed administrator
and resource teacher to head Sunnyside
Longtime Durango resident Lauri Kloepfer, who served
as the Aztec School District's director of exceptional
programs
and who now works as a resource teacher at Riverview
Elementary, will join Sunnyside Elementary School as its
new principal.
Kloepfer's appointment is expected to be approved by the
Durango School District 9-R Board of Education on May 8.
She succeeds Victor Figueroa, who will become the district's
Director of Student Support Services in July. Read more
. . .
District, state third-grade CSAP reading scores remain
stable;
advanced scores improve by 55 percent
Durango School
District 9-R third-graders continued to score higher
on the CSAP reading test than their peers
statewide for the seventh year in a row, according
to test
scores released today by the Colorado Department of
Education. Of the 319 Durango third-graders who took
the test last
February, 84 percent scored proficient or advanced.
Only 71 percent of third-graders statewide scored that
high.
In addition, only 17 district students scored unsatisfactory – about
5 percent of the total third-grade population and well
below the statewide average of 10 percent unsatisfactory.
Both district and state scores overall have remained
relatively stable during the past seven years.
CSAP tests
are administered to students in third through 10th
grades. The third-grade reading test measures only
one standard and is administered nearly a month earlier
than all other CSAP tests. Test scores are released in
spring to give schools an opportunity to plan for the
next school year. While 2007 test scores are from a different
group of students than those tested in 2006, year-to-year
comparisons give the school district an indication of
its
instructional programs’ effectiveness. The district
also uses individual student test scores as part of a “body
of evidence” to address individual student learning
needs the following year.
Among this
year’s bright spots are improvements
among advanced students, Native American students,
and Fort Lewis Mesa Elementary students. The percentage
of
students scoring advanced jumped from 9 percent in
2006 to 14 percent in 2007. The percentage of students
scoring
unsatisfactory or partially proficient remained the
same at 15 percent, indicating that teachers were able
to move
more students from proficient to advanced over the
previous year.
Read the analysis here . . .
See test scores here . . .
CDE commends school district
on closing achievement gap
The Colorado
Department of Education commended Durango School
District 9-R on its progress toward closing the achievement
gap “as demonstrated with the highest weighted index
scores to date for writing and math” in its annual accreditation
report approved by the Board of Education on Tuesday. The accreditation
report was based on 2005-06 student achievement data.
“Focusing on closing the achievement gap . . . has
served the district well,” wrote reviewer Judy Check,
the CDE’s Southwest Regional Coordinator. The district
closed the achievement gap between Hispanic and Anglo students
from 2005 to 2006 by 6 weighted index points on the CSAP
reading test, 3 weighted index points in writing, and 6 weighted
index points in math. The CDE calculates weighted index points
in a complex formula that results in one numerical value
for the performance of all students on the CSAP reading,
writing, math, and science tests. The CDE also calculates
weighted index points for specific groups of students based
on gender, ethnicity, income status, or special education
status. The weighted index points provide a method of comparing
district performance from year to year. Read more . . .
See accreditation report here . . .
|
