Tracking Ridgway Schools Growth

RIDGWAY – Ridgway schools are ahead of the curve in individual student assessments, with a new state growth model bolstering what schools here are already doing.

The Ridgway School Board discussed the new state program briefly at this week’s monthly meeting.

School superintendent Cheryl Gomez said after the meeting that the new model, used for the first time this year in Ridgway schools, will do a lot to help the school track individual students.

Although Gomez called the Colorado Growth Model “just another tool,” she said it ties in with what is already happening at Ridgway’s public schools.

Other growth models are measured by cohort, she said, meaning that the model looks at an entire grade over time, for example, tracking the class of 2018 all the way through school.

But when it comes to helping a student get to the next level successfully, individual tracking works. What’s great about the new state model is that it ties into the student-oriented model that Ridgway Schools have used for a long time, Gomez said.

“For us, it (the state model) greatly applies to our student learning plan we’ve had in place for years, custom-designing and looking at individual results,” she said. “The cohort model is important in big picture stuff and looking at the curriculum.”

Parents will learn about the new growth model at parent-teacher conferences Wednesday and Thursday of this week, Gomez said.

Gomez picked up one student’s report in math to give an example of how information from testing can be useful from an individual standpoint.

“This particular student has moved from partly proficient in the sixth grade, and last year as a tenth grader he was proficient, and how awesome is that?” she said.

But it’s not all good news. The student is barely proficient in math and reading and borderline in writing, which means he needs to do better to reach a higher level.

“If I was his teacher, I would be saying he could slip because he is just barely proficient,” Gomez said.

According to Gomez, such information is useful to parents because it might prompt them to get a tutor for their child or discover an underlying cause of why the boy was struggling.

“Maybe that’s the year Dad and Mom separated,” she said. “Parents will know.”

Parents can learn more about the Colorado Growth Model by logging onto HYPERLINK "http://www.schoolview.org" www.schoolview.org, Gomez said.

“They can get a ton of stuff including things about your district, the Colorado Growth Model, school performance and community connections,” she said. “We have a bunch of information for parents to pull up, and it’s a nice tool in terms of looking at individual student data.”

Ouray County Watch Staff