Like. A. Boss.

Jamestown, Randolph, Carlin Springs, and Claremont. At these four APS elementary schools, something really interesting is happening: for two years in a row, these schools have produced double-digit growth in reading.*

APS uses a tool called DIBELS to measure the development of early literacy and early reading skills at the beginning, middle and end of the school year. I got curious about this question: what percentage of K-5 students are in the DIBELS “green zone” of proficiency in September, and how many more (or fewer) are testing at that level by the end of the year?

In eight of our 25 elementary schools, the number of students at or above proficiency increased by at least 10%. And at Jamestown, Randolph, Carlin Springs and Claremont, that happened two years in a row.

These schools had quite different journeys: one of them started with just 28% of its students in the green zone in September 2021, while another was at 73%. One of them is a Spanish immersion school while another is a neighborhood school. One is part of the  International Baccalaureate program and another operates with a community school model. At one school 72% of the students are Latino, and at another they comprise only 8% of the student population.

So what do these schools have in common—is there a “secret sauce” that’s driving this growth? In APS as in other districts, school and division leaders look at a number of contributing factors, including what kinds of curricula and instructional practices teachers are using; having a highly skilled and high-performing school staff; access to resources that meet the unique needs of that school’s population; and more. It’s not always be easy to identify with absolute certainty what’s working, but it’s really important to try to do so, so that those factors can be sustained and potentially spread to other schools.

Some other things I noticed in the DIBELS reading data:

1.  We have a few schools that experienced significantly more growth in 2022-23 than they did the previous year. What changed? (These schools are Ashlawn, Drew, and Escuela Key. Nice work!)

2.  We have a few schools that showed impressive gains for students with disabilities, while at other schools the percentage of that population in the green zone stayed flat or even decreased.**  This makes me wonder three things:

• whether there are staffing challenges at certain schools (nationwide, school districts are having trouble recruiting and retaining special education teachers)
• how to navigate the nuance in special education reading data (for example, some students receive special education services and are also English learners. One student could have an IEP, be an English learner and be identified as gifted.) and
• how to factor in the fact that some families can afford supplemental private services.

3.  Ten schools showed double-digit growth in the number of Latino students reading proficiently last year, led by impressive 15% growth at Drew. The year before, the growth in proficiency for Latino students at Drew was just 4%. IMO, we should be congratulating the Drew community and asking,”How did you do that?”

4.  Ditto for English learners at Drew: an impressive 16% growth in proficiency over last school year.

5.  Ditto for the 12% growth in the number of Black students proficient in reading at Drew. Oakridge was a close second with 11% growth.


Some of you will take issue with my focus on growth measures. A hypothetical example: 20% growth in a single year may mean that just 10% of students in School XYZ were reading proficiently in September, and by June only 30% are doing so. 30% is still not where we want to be.

I appreciate this concern and wholeheartedly agree that our work isn’t done until 100% of our students at every school are reading proficiently. But for a variety of reasons, some of them not directly under a school’s control, that journey is longer for some school communities than others. (Consider, for example, that at some sites about 30% of kindergarteners start school with entry-level proficiency on DIBELS, while at other schools more than 70% do so.)

This is why school- and student-level growth measures are so important. They honor the hard work that is happening in certain schools even if they’re further from the finish line. Our commitment should be to support and accelerate that growth as much as possible.



*More precisely: APS uses a research-based tool called DIBELS to measure the development of early literacy and early reading skills. DIBELS yields really important data about individual students’ skills, but it can also show us what’s happening at the school level: for example, in this dashboard showing the percentage of students performing at different levels. For simplicity’s sake, the stoplight colors are useful: green generally equates to “proficient” and “above proficient.” Yellow and red are more concerning.


**Note: I am not a statistician but I do understand the general idea of statistical validity. My nod to this concept is: I did not analyze subpopulations that comprised less than 10% of the overall school population.