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Hayden elementary at top

Middle school, high school receive 'average' scores

Melinda Mawdsley
Kathy Deepe, a third-grade teacher at Hayden Valley Elementary School, works with students on math Tuesday. The elementary school received a "high" rating on School Accountability Reports.
Tyler Arroyo

— Hayden Valley Elementary School teachers received a “pat on the back” Tuesday.

The school was rated “high” on the School Accountability Reports released Tuesday by the Colorado Department of Education, much to the pleasure of building administrator Rhonda Sweetser.

“We were really hoping for the ‘high’ rating after we had the high CSAP scores,” Sweetser said. “It’s always exciting to see it come out and it be high. Our teachers and students are doing really well. It’s another pat on the back.”



School Accountability Reports, which are given to every public school in the state, rate a school on its academic performance and improvement. Those ratings are based primarily on Colorado Student Assessment Program test scores. CSAP tests are administered to all public school students in grades three through 12.

Hayden Middle School and Hayden High School received “average” ratings on their School Accountability Reports.



The elementary school’s “high” rating was a marked improvement from last year’s “low” rating. However, school and district officials say the “low” rating was attributable to administrative errors in CSAP test scoring.

The Department of Education assigns School Accountability Report ratings according to the following breakdown: the top 8 percent of elementary schools receive an excellent rating; the next 25 percent receive a high rating; the next 40 percent receive an average rating; the next 25 percent receive a low rating, and the bottom 2 percent receive an unsatisfactory rating.

The same formula is used for middle schools and high schools.

“In the next couple weeks, we’ll be getting copies (of the School Accountability Reports), and they are then sent home to parents,” Hayden Superintendent Mike Luppes said. “I think the information that the parents get out of it is very, very good.”

Luppes said programs have been implemented at the middle school and high school in an effort to improve school ratings and student academic progress. No one is satisfied with an average rating or stable yearly academic growth, he said.

The improving coordination among staff members and the Professional Learning Communities in place are two positive steps in the right direction, Luppes said.

“They will begin to pay results,” he said. “It’s a slow process. It’s not an overnight quick fix.”

No Routt County school was rated low or unsatisfactory.


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