“The alarming state of the American student in 2022.” - The Brookings Institute

“Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions.” - The Washington Post

“The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up?” - The Brookings Institute

“Students still struggle with math and reading despite the end of the pandemic era, study shows.” - CNN

“Massive learning setbacks show COVID’s sweeping toll on kids.” - AP News

A quick scan of the headlines regarding education and the performance of schools post-pandemic paint an ugly picture of the current state of education. The headlines hammer the message that students are struggling to make up for lost learning, that students have significant mental health needs, and that teachers and schools are struggling to manage these needs along with the challenges of staffing shortages, budget cuts, declining enrollment, and the mental health needs of teachers and staff.

I am proud to write that Nederland Elementary is bucking this trend. At our mountain school students are performing higher than pre-pandemic levels, we continue to prioritize social emotional learning for students, and we are implementing innovative opportunities for our students including mountain biking, skiing/snowboarding, and systematic outdoor education. The data coming in from the 2022-2023 school year shows that these efforts are producing exceptional results.

Every year the state of Colorado releases School Performance Frameworks for every school. The School Performance Framework, or SPF for short, is essentially the school’s report card. The SPF uses data from the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) to determine how the school is performing in a variety of ways. It looks at overall performance, year to year academic growth, and how sub groups of students, such as students from poverty, are performing. This information is then boiled down to a number out of 100. Our score on the SPF for the 2022-2023 school year was 72.5 out of 100. This is a 15.3 improvement from the pre-pandemic 2019 SPF! Additionally this is the highest score on the SPF since 2017! Nederland Elementary is on the right track.

Looking at the data a little more closely also shows positive trends for our students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch. The percentage of students who qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL) who met or exceeded expectations on the English Language Arts test increased 12% from 2022. The percentage of students who qualify for FRL who met or exceeded on the math test increased by 23% compared to 2022. On the English Language Arts assessment, the gap between our students who qualify for FRL and those that do not decreased from 31% in 2022 to 16% in 2023. And on the math test the gap between our students who qualify for FRL and those that do not decreased from 37% in 2022 to 24% in 2023. We are effectively closing achievement gaps and changing outcomes for students.

While there is a lot to celebrate we still have a lot of work to do. We need to continue to improve our grade level standards-based instruction focusing on English Language Arts. With this in mind we are one of nine schools in BVSD that are early adopters of the new curriculum and this adoption aligns perfectly with the area where we need to focus our efforts. We also know we need to improve our data driven instruction practices to ensure we meet the needs of all of our students.

I am incredibly proud of our teachers, staff, students, and parents. It takes all of us to give our students every opportunity to succeed. As I look to the years ahead I am confident that we can fulfill my personal vision of being the highest performing and most innovative elementary school along the Front Range.