District 11 presents mixed CMAS results; board presses for faster interventions and regular reporting

Colorado Springs School District 11 leaders on Sept. 10 told the board that statewide CMAS results returned a mixed picture: some pilot classrooms and middle grades showed gains, but overall district performance remains below the levels officials say the community expects.

"Our bottom line upfront, we did not perform at the level that I hope that the district would perform," Superintendent Gault said as he opened the work session and set an urgent tone for the briefing and follow-up work.

District staff and academic leaders framed the results using the state School Performance Framework (SPF), explaining that elementary and middle SPF scores are calculated roughly as a 60% weight on growth and 40% on achievement. "The school performance framework ... is basically a 60 40 split between 60% is growth, 40% is achievement," Dr. Kolicky told the board, and he cautioned that growth measures can lag and small schools can show volatile results when subgroup counts fall below the statistical-suppression threshold.

The data included some concrete gains: presenters said middle-school math rose about 4% districtwide, while sixth-grade math posted a 6% increase and eighth-grade math rose about 5%. District analysts also reported an early quasi-experimental finding that teachers who completed an Instructional Empowerment (IE) "badging" process outperformed matched peers, showing roughly a 6% bump in percent passing in ELA and a 4-point advantage in median growth percentile in early samples.

Those pockets of success have prompted a scaling strategy that leans on model classrooms, tighter coaching cycles and faster interventions. Administrators described several operational changes: daily exit tickets, weekly topic checks and automatic "win time" reteach groups the next day when students score below mastery thresholds. "We're decreasing the amount of time before we intervene," one academic leader said, describing a move away from waiting for midyear data to trigger supports.

The board pressed district leaders on consequences for persistently low performance. "If we have teachers that aren't doing anything to do for kids, we have to either support them or we have to ask them to go somewhere else," Dr. Jevonsen said, arguing the district cannot wait indefinitely for improvement. Presenters responded that the district is deploying targeted coaching and that teachers identified with MGPs below threshold are being assigned supports under area superintendents and academic directors, but they also signaled that the system will escalate when supports do not produce improvement.

Administrators flagged equity concerns: free-and-reduced-lunch (FRL), minority, ELL and special-education groups remain under targets in many schools. Chief Shear and others said the district is increasing push-in supports, individualized education facilitators and coaches to close subgroup gaps.

Board members also questioned program evaluation methods. On Summer Bridge, presenters said the available cohort analysis shows trends similar to the general population and that the program likely slowed declines for participating students, but admitted they did not run a fully matched control and therefore could not claim a causal effect.

The board set clear follow-up expectations. Director Carey asked the superintendent to ensure reliable use of common formative assessments across core subjects and to provide more frequent accountability updates. Carey proposed two tasks: wider adoption of common formative assessments for consistent comparison and a quarterly update on strategy and academic progress, including barriers to implementation. The board also was told middle-school accountability recommendations will return in October and that school improvement plans will be reviewed and later adopted in public sessions.

Superintendent Gault and his leadership team emphasized implementation fidelity, asking board members to visit model classrooms and measure practices in action. "We have the classroom-level data now — help us help the system to ensure that every child in that classroom gets access to high quality instruction," Gault said.

Next steps: district staff said they will share more disaggregated and district-level files with the board, return with middle-school accountability recommendations in October, publish the requested assessment and data files for board review, and provide regular implementation updates.