Poverty, School Size and Charter Designation as Predictors of Student Achievement on a Statewide High-Stakes Testing Program

Over the past five years the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) has used the results of the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) to rate public school performance on the School Accountability Report (SAR). The public often considers the school ratings as indicative of the school's quality. There appears to be a lack of quantitative research that examines the relationship between poverty, school size, and charter designation and Colorado middle school (CSAP) achievement. The first purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between poverty, school size, and charter designation on Colorado middle school (N=357) CSAP achievement in both 2001 and 2004. A second purpose was to investigate whether there was a change in middle school CSAP achievement between 2001 and 2004. Finally, the study investigated whether changes from 2001 to 2004 in individual school's CSAP performance could be predicted from poverty, school size, and charter designation. The researcher used existing data on the percent of students on free and reduced meals, school size, and charter designation collected by the Colorado Department of Education in 2001 and 2004; thus, the study can be described as ex-post-facto. After four years of implementation of the CSAP, this study found that the scores have not improved significantly and the correlation with poverty was very large and negative in both years. The use of the CSAP in Colorado to mandate school improvement seems to be missing the mark. The use of testing data in Colorado and across the country should help inform educators and the public about the challenges faced in raising student achievement, and guide best practices to overcome the obstacles of student achievement. (Contains 1 table.)