The first report cards will be issued in the fall of 2001. An improvement score will be part of the report card beginning in the fall of 2002. Scores in the Denver Public Schools were well below the state average, with 12 percent of the students passing the math test and 19 percent the science test. Now it's up to us to put more emphasis in this area of teaching. We've been bearing down on improving literacy skills, which are key building blocks for students in all areas of learning, including math and science.
Spanish tests are available only in grades three and four in reading and writing.
About 20 percent of the district's students are in English as a Second Language or English Language Acquisition programs. At Horizons Alternative School in Boulder, where every student passed the science test, students from various grades are mixed in one class and the school doesn't give letter grades or report cards. The math and science CSAPs were not all multiple-choice questions. They also include questions that require students to think through how to conduct an experiment, how to draw a graph and to show how they arrived at answers. As in the CSAP's other tests, the percentage of minority students that passed both tests was lower than that of whites.