AURORA | Fewer than 10% of Aurora Public School’s Black and Hispanic sixth-grade students are meeting grade-level expectations on standardized tests, according to recent data from the school district.
The APS Board of Education was presented with alarming data during a March 5 board meeting. The data is based on assessments that students take at the beginning of the school year, middle of the year and end of the year.
According to the district, approximately 14% of sixth-grade Black and Hispanic students met grade level expectations in English Language Arts. Approximately 9% met expectations in math.
Overall, 8% of the district’s Black and Hispanic sixth-grade students are meeting expectations. This is an improvement, however, from the beginning of the year, when only 4% of students were meeting expectations.
Board members were informed during the meeting that students are unlikely to meet the district’s end-of-the-year goal of 12%. Students would need to score four percentage points higher to meet the district’s goal. However, the growth is more than what the district has seen in previous years, and “there is not yet a track record of making this level of improvement,” officials said in the report to the school board.
The window for students to take the mid-year assessments was Nov. 20 – Dec. 12, district spokesperson Corey Christiansen told the Sentinel after the school board meeting.
The district does not have data on how many immigrant students took the assessment. The English Language Arts assessment is only given in English, while the math assessment is given in English and Spanish. During the 2023-2024 school year, the district enrolled hundreds of new students from other countries, including Venezuela and Mexico.
For the past two school years, student test scores improved by approximately two percentage points from the mid-year assessment to the assessment at the end of the year.
Board member Anne Keke, who has been vocal at past board meetings about wanting to see more improvement in student test scores, asked if the district could take a more aggressive approach.
“Right now, the team really feels like those are the highest yield strategies,” APS Superintendent Michael Giles told board members. “I’m in a place right now where I’m trusting them.”
He said it takes time to implement and “embrace” a curriculum, as well as to provide teachers with professional development.
The district’s next steps include, but are not limited to:
- Supporting Tier 1 Instruction, “Grade Level, Standards Based, For All students”
- Engaging in “learning walks,” classroom visits and provided feedback to school administrators
- Providing professional development to teachers and district leaders to facilitate instructional strategies
The school board regularly reviews assessment scores and practices across the district, but the next assessment was not announced.
Are only black and Hispanic being tested?
No, but they make up about 80-85% of the district now–about 70% Hispanic and 15% black, give or take a few percentage points. Most of the white families moved down to Douglas County or Centennial starting about 25 years ago, and the ones that are left probably aren’t doing much better than the black or Hispanic kids.
Are you saying aps does not have white students? Is it true all whites left Aurora?
Woof, that strawman you burned got so hot that Buckley’s satellites picked up the heat signature.
The demographics aren’t hard to find, you playing dumb notwithstanding.
No we have 4 results (early literacy, middle school equity in cms middle school equity in psat and, high school graduation rate) and we monitor each every month this month was middle school cmas
We deserve better performance than this. Whether or not you have children in the school system, whether you rent or “own” your residence, you pay property taxes. In my mil levy district, 76.75 percent of my property tax goes to APS. And Arapahoe County is considering a 2024 ballot initiative to raise further revenue to support APS further, via either a propery tax TABOR holdback or a sales tax increase. APS is taking in a load of money, is very top-heavy in non-classroom teacher certified personnel, and is in dire need of reform and reorganization. Cut the nonclassified administration budget and get more of those certified teachers out of the admin offices and back in the school rooms, for starters.
Same comment I have already made. “Grade level” is a meaningless, completely artificial number made up by “experts” who are clueless about the actual lives of students and the workings of schools. With your “scare” stories you just perpetrate the myths that are destroying public education.
Now you will say that I have posted the same comment before. Physician heal thyself and quit running the same misleading articles.
““Grade level” is a meaningless, completely artificial number made up by “experts” who are clueless about the actual lives of students and the workings of schools.”
LOL, yeah, that’s why 40-70% of incoming college freshmen have needed remedial classes just to get up to spec.
There’s nothing “arbitary” or “artifical” about it, especially when the claim is coming from a rad-left Californian who naturally hates anything that might actually show legitimate ability and achievement.
“Now you will say that I have posted the same comment before. Physician heal thyself and quit running the same misleading articles.”
Please. Colleges that abandoned the SAT are now having to go back to it for admissions because they found out over the last three years that higher SAT scores correlates to a better chance to actually get through college. Democratizing college by letting everyone and their brother in, regardless of their ability to do the work, is a big reason those remedial scores are so high.
Does someone have to say it out loud? This is revolting. One in ten! Get it back to the basics. There is no future with these kinds of statistics. Am I missing something here? One in ten. Unbelievable. Testing three times a year makes this statistic not a one time fluke. Someone better wake up for your children, parents.
That’s why you have to follow school board meetings. Thanks
Calming hurt feelings and promoting overtly sexual discussions in Kindergarten are far more important to APS than is actual knowledge and competency.
What is it in DPS or CCSD? What are non Black and Hispanic students in APS at? Without those vital comparisons, kinda difficult to know how to respond.
You need to listen to school board meetings to know they discuss all of that every months
A tax payer supported babysitting service. Personally, I don’t mind paying for it, since I have good idea of what I am paying for. The idea that this is a recent phenomenon seems naive. More than 50 years ago, I “graduated” from an APS high school without the basic skills to read or understand mathematics at even a 6th grade level. My own indifference and laziness were about 60% of the problem. I imagine that hasn’t changed much either.
Fixing stupid is difficult.
Maybe impossible.
When I went to APS in the 90s, the kids who generally did well were either mostly from stable, middle class families, or were military brats whose parents worked at the nearby bases, and thus had more discipline and strong expectations instilled in them. Most everyone else was clearly just killing time until they could get shoved out the door with a diploma.
A good education starts at home. The lack of parental involvement is largely at the root of these failures. This is also an indirect consequence of illegal immigration. Uneducated, illiterate illegals are simply not equipped to help their children succeed in school due to a lack of language skills.
“Old Resident” and “Factory Working Orphan” have got it right.
The key to “Fixing Stupid” is parents. Yes, I’m sure APS has classroom issues, but until demands are made on parents by APS to encourage their children, nothing changes.
After thinking about this matter all day, I believe the APS principals should carry-out direct action with those parents who seldom or never attend parent-teacher meetings.
Start ringing door bells.
Those principals should make a strong 💪 pitch to the parent / parents of the downside of their student continuing poor school performance. For instance, too early pregnancies, gang-banging, death by violence, drug overdoses & death, virtually no legal job opportunities or perhaps drop out of school all together.
None of that leads to a productive life for the student. 🧑🎓 Sell the idea the parents actions or inaction determine their child’s outcome.
Some parents will listen, when they can’t avoid a tough confrontation, as I have described. Certainly it will take many months to see all the parents who have “underperforming” students. So what, principals hiding in their offices is not creating acceptable results.
” Some parents will listen.”
No, they won’t.
Your idea that the kid is involved in gang banging, early pregnancies, drugs and death by violence, I believe is to a great extent incorrect. They are many times as dumb as a box of rocks, and just as physically inactive.
Not only the parents could care less, but the kid himself is already sunk into a hole of laziness and indifference.
What will actually happen to the kid is nothing. They will get some sort of marginal job at Walmart or Amazon and collect Snap cards for the rest of their lives.
That’s a tall order to expect a cello shaped edu-crat PhD to put in some legwork.
These numbers are appalling, but not surprising. Parents are not getting involved with their kids’ education. I’ve brought this up in another response to an opinion article about cracking down on shoplifting, and I’ll repeat it here because it applies:
“….Let’s get back to allowing schools to rightly discipline unruly students.
Let’s get parents to invest in their kids education instead of using the school system as a glorified baby-sitting service.
Let’s stop whining and moaning about how unfair life is for the have-nots.
Take ownership and responsibility of yourself and your family, and the cycle can be broken.
It doesn’t happen overnight, but we’ve become an instant gratification society. Good luck!
The start is in the home, but its certainly not the end.”
As a firm supporter of education, I’m happy to see my taxpayer dollars used for it, but if parents are not going to take the education of their children seriously, then we’re wasting our money. I live in the APS district, and have put two of my children through middle school. When an opportunity arose to open enroll my kids into CCSD for high school, I jumped on it. They offered better support for my older son, who has a learning disability. CCSD offered a much more rigorous curriculum for my younger son, who is significantly ahead of his peers at his grade level. Ever since he was in Kindergarten, he was board stiff in his APS school because the teachers didn’t do anything to challenge him. I get that the teachers need to be able to support the masses of students, but I think too much effort was spent on trying to keep the students at the average grade level and not enough is done for the students who are at the top or beyond their grade level. As parents recognizing the potential loss of a valuable education to meet our son’s needs, the only option to was to move him to another district.
All that being said, I believe a study should be done on what is going right for the 10% or so of students who are meeting or exceeding their grade level education and use that as a baseline to bring up the rest. Frankly, the goal of 12% to meet their grade level expectations by the end of the school year is pathetic. The goal should be 90%+, but Aurora parents and APS can be satisfied with mediocrity. The good news here is these students likely won’t be having to deal with college debt!
In the interests of D.E.I., APS will summarily lower the standards for all students to make these results across the norm to hide the failures.
All of these comments (thank you to all that have written) collectively point to the many reasons for APS’s abysmal test results. The problems are wide and deep and so entrenched that improvement in basic skills will be a very long time in coming.
If I had young children, I would do everything in my power to move into a better school district. Your children (ALL children!) deserves much better than what APS offers and your children simply cannot waste their precious young years in ineffective APS classrooms.
You can only “offer” so much to someone (of any age) that isn’t very bright. Many children are just too stupid to live in the 21st century. The assumption that all kids can learn even basic math or reading skills simply isn’t true. An alternative is to offer the opportunity to learn a real trade (The math and reading skills will follow) I often think about my path if such an opportunity had presented itself. But, in reality, I was too lazy and indifferent to even make it as a plumber or a carpenter. About 60% to 80% of the issue is with the kid himself. Many parents have the mistaken impression that little Johnny or Jill aren’t the plodders that they really are, or they simply don’t care. What is really precious is learning how to earn an honest living.