By Amy Bounds
Camera Staff Writer

Editor's note: This is the final installment in an occasional series on two Boulder County schools — one struggling to meet state standards and another with test scores that make it one of the top-rated schools in the state.

Both Sanchez and Superior elementary schools celebrated the latest results of the Colorado Student Assessment Program third-grade reading tests.

The scores show improvement for both schools, although the gap between the two also widened slightly.

Sanchez, in Lafayette, is still the lowest-scoring school in the district on the test. Superior, in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is in the top five.

Sanchez improved by three percentage points from last year, with 44 percent of students scoring proficient or advanced on this year's CSAP. Superior had a jump of six percentage points, with 94 percent of students scoring proficient or advanced.

Digging deeper into the statistics explains why both schools are proud of their scores.

The percentage of low-income and second-language third-graders at Sanchez increased this year. Typically, when students have more needs, test scores drop — but Sanchez' scores still improved.

About 35 percent of Sanchez third-graders don't speak English as their native language, and about 62 percent are from low-income families and qualify for federally subsidized lunches.

At Superior, no students qualify for subsidized lunches and 2 percent aren't native English speakers.

"I was pleased that we made an overall gain," said Sanchez Principal Nancy Miller. "We were working with a more challenging group of students this year."

Among the school's successes is that 68 percent of the second- and third-grade students given extra support in reading through a state Read to Achieve grant are now at grade level on district reading assessments.

Another is the significant gains made by the school's kindergarten students. In the fall, 22 percent came in meeting literacy targets. By January, 67 percent were meeting those targets.

Miller said she expects CSAP test scores to improve steadily — and she has a detailed school improvement plan to make it happen.

This school year, the plan included training teachers in the district's new reading program, developing an intervention program to test and help students who enroll in Sanchez after the first of the year, and analyzing achievement data by grade, teacher, student, gender and ethnicity.

"The biggest change is a very clear focus on reading instruction," Miller said. "Without reading, our kids aren't going to make it anywhere."

At Superior, where all but a handful of students have mastered reading, next year's goal is improving writing achievement. The school this summer will get results for CSAP writing tests taken by students in third through fifth grades.

"Reading has been the primary focus," said Principal Holly Hultgren. "We really want to push the other subjects up to the front burner."

Once reading scores have hit the 90-percent-proficient range, she said, the school has essentially topped out. Then, the challenge is to maintain those high scores every year with different groups of students.

Hultgren credited stability as one reason her 6-year-old school's test scores improved. When the school first opened, a flood of families were moving in during the school year. Now, the neighborhood is more settled and most of the school's third-graders have been there since kindergarten.

"The kids know the system, and we know the kids," Hultgren said.

Contrast that with Sanchez, where about 70 of the school's 355 students left during the school year, while 86 others enrolled. Of the students who took the third-grade CSAP, 13 percent had been in the school district less than six months and 18 percent had been in the school less than six months.

"We have to look at students who were here for the last six months, not the kids who recently enrolled," Miller said. "Otherwise, it's not a good measure of the school's effectiveness."

She said the reason most of the families gave for leaving was economics — they left to find a better-paying job or because they couldn't afford housing in Boulder County.

"My real focus for next year is going to be poverty and how to support families and kids," Miller said. "That's really what we're dealing with here."

Teachers at both schools said test score improvements were a schoolwide effort.

Superior third-grade teacher Sue Brighton said she sent a thank-you note to the literacy teachers after she got the test scores. The school used a new program for struggling readers this year.

"We saw results," Brighton said.

Superior's two literacy teachers, paid for through a Read to Achieve grant, gave the students who weren't at grade level extra help for 45 minutes a day in small groups. A reading program called SOAR is used for the upper elementary grades at both Sanchez and Superior.

"It was developed for kids who just need a little nudge," said Superior literacy teacher Libby Johnson.

Students learn to use the strategies that come naturally to fluent readers, such as re-reading a sentence if a word doesn't make sense. The goal is to improve their ability "to recall and retell what they've read."

Sanchez Elementary has seven literacy teachers, two literacy tutors and a full-time literacy coach.

The coach, Cindy Kusuno, coordinates literacy training for teachers, works with them on the best teaching strategies and observes them in the classroom. She also analyzes the school's test score data and helps teachers with strategies for English-as-a-second-language students.

"You're there to help teachers problem-solve," Kusuno said.

Though the state now judges schools based on test results, teachers said there's much more to a school's success than what's measured on tests.

Goals at both schools include reducing disruptive behavior and bullying. Students study a word each month, such as sharing. They're also learning to resolve conflicts by talking them out at the "peace place."

"I want children to value diversity in their lives, to get along with others, to see themselves as competent, important people, to feel like they should give something back," said Superior's Brighton. "We have to be real careful that they don't become too competitive, that they're not just here to see how high they can score."

The two schools started a sister school program this year because of their connection through Sanchez's principal, Miller, who was the assistant principal at Superior last year. The partnership gives Superior's students a chance to experience the diversity that's not a part of their school.

"We're trying to raise the level of sensitivity about respecting other people," Superior's Hultgren said.

The two schools collaborated on Earth Day activities, murals and a leadership program that included a joint mountain retreat for fifth-grade students from both schools. Fifth-graders also worked together on a toy drive for Lafayette families.

Plus, teachers visited each other's schools — Sanchez teachers to see how Superior was teaching a new district reading program and Superior's teachers to see how Sanchez incorporates strategies to teach students whose first language isn't English.

When CSAP testing ended earlier this year, teachers had a chance to focus more on science and social studies lessons.

Brighton, for example, had time to teach students typing skills by having students paint their fingernails different colors to help them learn the "home" keys. Fingernail painting is one way she tried to infuse a sense of fun into her lessons. In another example, she encouraged students to turn numbers for a math problem into faces.

A poster on her wall sums up her teaching philosophy: "What we learn with pleasure, we never forget."

Throughout the school year, teachers at both schools also used social studies and science lessons to teach the reading, writing and math skills measured by the CSAP.

Sanchez third-grade teacher Amy Montenaro Chavez incorporated writing skills into a yearlong study of peacemakers, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oscar Arias, the former president of Costa Rica.

After studying Arias, students wrote letters to President George Bush on how they would use the country's resources in a positive way "rather than on war and weapons." Sanchez literacy teacher Lora Vivas said students were "just on fire" about the project.

"It was a great inspiration to them to perfect letter-writing and a great lesson for them on how to be an active member of the community," she said.

The letters urged the president to "stop the war" in Afghanistan, to "spend money on people who are poor or don't have homes" and to "help children that have no clothes to be warm."

"It was important to us to try to help change the world," said student Thomas Capuchio.

At both schools, third-graders also wrote letters to introduce themselves to their fourth-grade teachers. The letters will go with a comprehensive file containing detailed information on reading and writing achievement, as well as individual plans for students not reading at grade level.

"It helps the teachers get to know what you're like, so the year is exciting for you and you learn a lot," Chavez told her students before they wrote about their strengths and weaknesses.

"I like art because it shows the soul inside," wrote Sanchez student Isabel Torres-Best. She admitted to her future teacher that "you might see me reading when I'm not supposed to."

Among the letters, students wrote that they are looking forward to more science experiments, reading more books and "being better at things."

Many of the students at both schools also wrote about their love of learning — which is just what their teachers wanted to instill in them during third grade.

Contact Amy Bounds at boundsa@thedailycamera.com or (303) 473-1341.

June 2, 2002

E-mail this story to a friend | Printer-friendly version