2014 Results and Characteristics of High Growth Implementations, Post 1 of 2

By Tim Johnson, Director of Denver Math Fellows

Sharing our 2014 results for the first year of our district wide expansion in about 40 schools. Some bright spots and definitely areas to expand impact. I’ll start with the highlights and follow up with a second post on our adjustments and areas of growth.

See below for grade level growth and achievement (This data represents results for 1,231 4^th graders, 1,074 6^th graders and 1,193 8^th graders).

1. Huge growth for 6^th graders participating in the program. 64 median growth percentile (MGP) for cohort of students in program compared to 49 MGP the previous year for the same cohort of students (+15).

2. Large increase in percent of students scoring proficient or advanced at 4^th grade with an increase of 9 percentage points for the same cohort of students from 2013 to 2014.

We also saw substantial movement of at least one proficiency level–for the most part the movement was from the lowest achievement band to partially proficient:

Percent of students moving up at least one proficiency band	4^th Grade	24%
	6^th Grade	19%
	8^th Grade	13%

School level highlights, high growth implementations (65 MGP or above is considered high growth):

School Name	Number of Students Served	MGP of Students Served
Skinner MS	59	82
Place Bridge Academy K8	128	76.5
Hamilton MS	99	76
Merrill MS	99	75
Howell MS – 6^th Grade	60	74
Greenlee ES	49	73
Columbian ES	37	72
Smith ES	53	72
Kepner MS – 6^th Grade	148	71
Florida Pitt Waller K8	120	69.5
Beach Court ES	50	69
Columbine ES	23	69
Henry MS	83	68
Swansea ES	73	67
Hill MS – 6^th Grade	76	65
Lake MS – 6^th Grade	57	65
MLK 6-12 – 8^th Grade	175	65

Some common characteristics of high growth implementations:

Fellows were incorporated into school team and math teachers were encouraged to collaborate with fellows to meet the needs of shared students
Fellow coordinators built mission aligned teams, provided opportunities for choice and fellow leadership within program parameters
Instruction: Provided targeted support based on student need and intentional support of grade level content
Culture: Sense of urgency, high expectations for all students, intentional pacing

Stay tuned for second post on areas we are working to improve and our expand impact…