The Woodland Park School District was ranked as “accredited” in the 2023 Preliminary District Performance Framework, while all the schools but one were put on performance plans, according to data released by the Colorado Department of Education.

The data was presented at the monthly school board meeting, which was held on Sept. 13.

The only grade higher than the district’s accredited status would be accredited with distinction. The performance plan status achieved by the individual schools covers schools with scores from 53%-100%.

Only one school in the district was placed on an improvement plan. Merit Academy, which scored well in all academic categories, was dinged for lack of participation in testing. Merit’s participation rates of 92.5 in English language arts and 94.2 in math both fell below the state threshold of 95%.

“The parents always have an option to opt out of CMAS testing,” said Chief Academic Officer Kim Moore, who conducted the briefing. “If you have too many students who opt out of testing, can harm the rating of the school.”

Woodland Park School District Superintendent Ken Witt was critical of the lowering of school ratings due to lack of participation.

“It is Coloradans statutory right for parents to opt their students out of state assessments,” he said. “While it is unfortunate for us that schools are penalized for low participation rates, it’s not appropriate for the state to penalize parents for exercising their statutory rights.

“We respect the rights of parents to opt out of assessments. We encourage them to participate but they are the owners of their children’s education.”

While critical of the participation requirement, Moore and the board were in agreement over the value that testing provides.

“We’re constantly assessing students,” Moore said. “If you don’t look at data, you don’t know where the students are and what adjustments need to be made in the classroom.”

In the CMAS reading scores WPSD third, fifth, seventh and eighth graders all scored above the state averages, while the fourth and sixth graders were just below the state.

Moore pointed out that 202324 is only the third year of implementation of the reading program “Into Reading.” Since scores are based on testing from last spring, only two years of the new reading program were represented.

“We’re hopeful will continue to said. those scores increase,” she

In math, Woodland Park seventh and eighth graders exceeded the state norms while grades 3-6 fell below. While the grade schoolers were below the state averages, Moore said that most had improved their scored from what they had done in their previous grade. Moore pointed out that a new math program had been implemented for the 202122 school year.

“That’s helping fill the gaps,” Moore said. “We’ve also added a new intervention program that targets students’ individual deficiencies.”

In science, WPSD scored 32.5% as having met or exceeded state standards, which came in just below the state average on 33.9%. Woodland Park middle and high schoolers were well above the state norms, however, with the middle schoolers at 10.4% above the state and high schoolers at 21.6% above the state.

Merit Academy middle school received special recognition at the meeting as the only school to meet or exceed state averages in both math and English language arts.

While please with the progress, Witt cautioned that there’s still work to do.

“It’s awesome to say that we are less behind this year than we were last year,” Witt said. “But what we’d prefer to say is that we’re at grade level.”