As Summit School District winds down its final year of the three-year state Closing the Achievement Gap grant, officials are seeing reading improvements for Hispanic students compared to non-Hispanic students. But the data also show it's not poverty or ethnicity that result in a gap in student performance, as sometimes speculated. It's a language proficiency gap.

Jim Eck, with Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning (McREL) presented different cuts of data from 2006 to today to Summit School District board members last week.

He took a look at the scores according to how well the students knew English, which highly affects their ability to take a state assessment in English. Part of the CTAG effort is to help students learn the language.

“As students are being moved into (fluency), you're seeing improvements in their performance according to these measures,” Eck said.

However, poverty does have an effect, as often a weak vocabulary correlates to low-income families, who are often Hispanic in Summit County, he said.

Eck's data cover five years, minus 2011 Colorado State Assessment Program scores which haven't been released.

“It's a progress report until CSAP info comes back,” Eck said.

CTAG funding helps cover professional development, curriculum materials and intervention and enrichment strategies meant to bring up reading and math performance throughout the district.

Summit School District has opted to continue funding portions of the CTAG initiative, such as curriculum, as well as continuing to implement strategies learned along the way to improve scores into the future.

Eck's presentation shows that, beyond focusing on teaching English to second-language learners, focusing on interpreting data could translate to better student scores. Like at Upper Blue Elementary, which saw its Hispanic students performing 20 percent better in math after CTAG was implemented, and non-Hispanic students performing almost 6 percent better.

“Effective data use aids instruction,” Eck said. It's a work in progress for director of technology and instruction Bethany Massey, who seeks to make test results more accessible and meaningful for teachers.

By continuing to focus on initiatives that are working and celebrating successes, Eck said the gap can continue to close.

“I think you've seen gains and seen improvements that are going to continue with these efforts,” he said.

To see a complete breakdown of scores and comparisons from the most recent CTAG report, as well as specific strategies the district has implemented, stop by the Summit School District Central Administration Office in Frisco or call (970) 368-1000. Learn more about CTAG online at http://bit.ly/kLrkrZ.

Reading performance

Before Summit School District received the CTAG money, the gap between Hispanics and non-Hispanic students in reading performance for grades 3 through 10 was consistently about 47 percent. After measures were instituted in 2009, the gap closed to about 39 percent in 2009 and 2010.

For high school students in ninth and 10th grade, Hispanic students performed vastly better in reading once CTAG practices were instituted. The gap hovered at about 60 percent for three years, and in 2009, it dropped to 37 percent.

The second largest climb in Hispanic reading performance came in 2010 for sixth- through eighth-grade students, when the gap moved to 35 percent, compared to 49 percent in 2006 and 2007.

Performance among non-Hispanic students has remained relatively consistent throughout the five years, Eck said.

Math performance

Increases in performance in mathematics have been “very slight, though steady,” Eck said.

Across the district, math scores have improved among non-Hispanics from 66 percent proficient or advanced in 2006 to 69 percent in 2010. Performance among Hispanic students rose from 28 percent proficient or advanced in mathematics to 34 percent in 2010. The gap didn't improve much (it went from 38 percent in 2006 to 36 percent in 2010), but overall student performance did, Eck said.

Again, middle school numbers looked good, particularly compared to flat lines in both ethnicity categories in the elementary schools for mathematics.

“Give me this graph,” Summit School District board member Brad Piehl said, referring to the jump from 61 to 70 percent proficient or advanced in math by 2010 among non-Hispanic students and 20 to 27 percent percent of Hispanics in the same category for the same time frame.

“That's the conundrum of this exercise,” Piehl said. “It seems this is what we want, for all kids to do better.”

On the other hand, high school performance in math dropped for non-Hispanic students and didn't increase much among Hispanics.

“This same thing is not true in reading,” Summit School District board member J Kent McHose said. “You don't have that big fall-off. What are we missing?”

Despite McHose's disappointment about student performance in math on the state assessment, administrators offered some explanations.

“Although it's dismal, it's dismal statewide,” interim superintendent Karen Strakbein said, suggesting that perhaps the statewide trend shows the test isn't correlating to the material students are being taught according to state standards. She hopes that the district's and state's efforts to realign curriculum with what's being taught in the classroom and what's being tested can help improve the scores.

By 2010, 42 percent of non-Hispanic students were proficient or advanced in math, compared to 49 percent in 2006. Four percent of Hispanics proficient or advanced in math increased to 10 percent by 2010.