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Re-2 maintains academic levels despite high growth and teacher turnover

John GardnerGlenwood Springs, CO Colorado

RIFLE – Colorado School Accountability Reports (CSARs) were released in the first week of December, and Garfield School District Re-2 director of assessment Julie Knowles is pleased with the district’s results. However, she said that even with the positive gains at some schools, the district needs to continue work on increasing every school’s academic performance.”In the face of changing and growing demographics, along with teacher turnover in the district, we are pleased to be able to maintain the level of academic achievement that we are at,” Knowles said. “We aren’t satisfied. We know that we have areas that still need improvement and we are continually looking for the tools to get better in those areas.”Districtwide, Re-2 has three high-achieving schools, five that are average, and two that dropped to low on the 2006-07 CSARs. Both Roy Moore Elementary and Kathryn Senor maintained their high-achieving status for a fifth straight year.Highland and Wamsley Elementary schools were the only schools in the district with low ratings. Highland received the low mark for the 2006-07 school year even with showing an improvement in the area of academic student growth over the previous year.However, both schools since have implemented new core reading programs designed to improve overall academic performance. Wamsley’s new Open Court reading program began in January, and Highland implemented a different reading program, Success For All, in September.Those reading programs didn’t have a complete year to prove their effectiveness and weren’t reflected in the ’06-07 CSARs. But Knowles said she “anticipates student achievement to increase” in the following years due to the success the programs have had at both Kathryn Senor and Roy Moore Elementary.All four elementary schools within Re-2 also have implemented a new Everyday Math program that is expected to accompany the success of the reading programs and elevate the overall performance of academic growth.Contact John Gardner: 384-9114jgardner@postindependent.comPost Independent, Glenwood Springs, Colorado CO


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