Leaders at Colorado Springs School District 11 are “independently verifying” performance data as two school board candidates accuse them of misleading the community. Data suggests the district used two different metrics and drew comparisons against years-old numbers while touting this year’s academic gains.

The superintendent and several board members have on multiple occasions since August said D-11 improved nearly 80 spots in state rankings.

“We are now independently verifying the data. I stand by my statement that the district has shown significant gains both in achievement and enrollment based on several metrics,” board President Parth Melpakam told The Gazette in a written statement about the discrepancy.

While on the campaign trail, school board incumbent candidates Melpakam and Jason Jorgenson said the district “jumped halfway up the rankings list in just one year.” Whereas Melpakam referenced Colorado Measures of Academic Success data as his metric, Jorgenson made no distinction, stating more generally that the district “went from 158th in the state to 79th in the state.”

Melpakam sourced his conclusion about a 80-point jump in scores to a Gazette analysis of 2023 CMAS scores that placed D-11 at 79th in 2023 and to a 2020 Colorado Department of Education document that placed the district at 159th back in 2019, a different number from the 158 ranking candidates have shared.

“You’ll have to ask the Colorado Department of Education about those rankings. That’s where they came from. It was provided to us by CDE,” Melpakam said. “Although we still have a long way to go, it is encouraging to see that, for the first time in a long time, things are looking up for District 11.”

The CDE document formulated its rankings with a different metric than The Gazette, using instead the percentage of points earned under the 2019 performance framework. Performance frameworks are a state-level accountability system for schools and districts that assign points based on three performance indicators: achievement, growth and postsecondary workforce readiness.

Test scores are just one of many factors at play in performance frameworks. Comparing 2023 CMAS scores to 2019 performance framework scores does not offer an accurate picture of growth because those metrics are not the same. What’s more, there is a four-year difference between the two rankings, not one year.

Board candidates Rachel Paul and Kate Singh pointed out the data discrepancy during a candidate forum last week.

“I follow the data from CDE as well, watching our numbers fall right now, and I know that the current board is deliberately misleading this community with false data,” Singh said. “If we cannot be honest about what students in our district need, we will never be able to provide them the education they deserve.”

Paul, a CDE employee, highlighted year-over-year performance framework scores that show the district improved by 0.4 percentage points in 2023. When contextualized, however, that score offers a far different picture of district improvement.

CDE data shows that if districts were ranked purely by performance framework percentages, then D-11 would have fallen from 93rd to 130th this year.

If the district instead used The Gazette’s methodology from its 2023 CMAS data analysis, D-11 would have ranked 79th in 2023, 87th in 2022 and 78th in 2021. Data does not support an 80-district jump in rankings.

“We do play around a lot with the statistics, especially the current board, but what that tells me as a longtime educator is that other schools are doing a better job than District 11 in bouncing back from the pandemic,” Paul said at the forum last week. “Although the rhetoric is saying, ‘Wow, we’re doing fabulous,’ there is still a lot of work to do in the achievement field.”

CDE spokesperson Jeremy Meyer said CDE originally sent the 2020 ranking document to State Board of Education member Steve Durham, who requested the rankings. The document noted Durham should view the ranking data with caution because framework ratings “help direct attention on the highest and lowest performing districts; it does not provide as much fine-grained distinctions for the middle group.”

“While it is possible to sort schools and districts by the percent of points earned on the frameworks, they were not designed as a system to rank schools and school districts compared to each other,” the document reads.

Meyer said 2023 framework scores are not yet finalized and are subject to change should districts file a request to reconsider. Even so, he reiterated that CDE does not recommend ranking districts by those measures even once final.

In his statement to The Gazette, Melpakam celebrated several other achievements under the current board and superintendent. D-11 cut the number of struggling schools on the state’s accountability watch list nearly in half from 15 to 8, a number that had almost quadrupled the year prior from 4 to 15.

“Two years ago, when I became the president of the school board, D11 was in dire straits with plummeting student enrollment, school closures, staff layoffs, and cuts to educational programs,” he said. “This year … D11 saw ‘the biggest improvement in the region’ in (the average number of students who meet or exceed CMAS expectations in) English and math. And we are investing in our schools and staff through capital improvements and historic pay raises.”

Colorado Springs School District 11 school board President Parth Melpakam, left, and Superintendent Michael Gaal say district preliminary data suggests they will cut seven of 15 schools from the state’s low-performing accountability watch list. They spoke at a news conference Wednesday, Aug. 23, 2023.

Nick Sullivan, THe Gazette