craigdailypress.com

Results from student testing released Monday indicate the Moffat County School District's efforts to improve the math curriculum are paying off, but officials still face some interesting challenges.

Specifically catching officials' notice is the significant differences in Colorado Student Assessment Program scores are the gaps between different populations of the student body.

The most glaring, Assistant Superintendent Joel Sheridan said, is that girls are getting higher scores in writing than boys.

"We really have to address that," he said.

Fifty-two percent of third-grade girls scored proficient in reading as compared with 34 percent of boys. At the fourth-grade level, the difference was 11 percentage points, growing to 23 percentage points among fifth-grade students.

Math and writing scores are fairly balanced between girls and boys, Sheridan said, so officials know it's not an issue of intelligence, but perhaps practice or curriculum.

Compiling data kept district officials busy last year as results of third- through 10th-grade writing, fourth- through 10th-grade reading, fifth- through 10th-grade math and eighth-grade science scores came in.

"As far as our scores and our first look, we noticed that we significantly closed the gap on math scores between the state average and ours," Sheridan said.

Both numbers are low, he said, but targeting math curriculum improvements seem to be helping students better grasp concepts.

Last year, 9 percent of Moffat County's 10th graders scored proficient in math, compared with 27 percent statewide. This year, 27 percent of Moffat County's 10th graders were proficient while the state's average decreased to 23 percent.

"You always want to look beyond one year, but there's enough data to indicate that we're doing well," Sheridan said. "We've either stayed the same or closed the gap significantly."

Last year was the first year since the 1997 inception of the CSAP tests that the testing areas in every grade level mirrored the year before, so districts can compare the advancement of each group of students, not just last year's third graders to this year's.

Christina M. Currie can be reached 824-7031, Ext. 210 or at ccurrie@craigdailypress.com.