By Deb Risden
In early September, the Colorado Department of Education released its preliminary District Performance Frameworks report. School and school district ratings are based on academic achievement and growth levels on state assessments; and postsecondary readiness, which looks at graduation and dropout rates, average scores on the SAT and matriculation into a college or career certificate program.
El Paso County School District 49 scored 49.7% on the preliminary report for the 2024-25 school year, which results in an accreditation rating of “improvement.” The CDE has six levels of accreditation for districts, from high to low: distinction, performance, improvement, priority improvement, turnaround and insufficient data. Districts accredited with distinction are the highest performers. Individual schools are assigned one of five levels with the highest level accredited.
Peter Hilts, D 49 superintendent, said the preliminary ratings incorporate unadjusted AEC (alternative education campus) data. D 49 has one AEC – GOAL High School. GOAL is a statewide high school sponsored by D 49 with an enrollment of about 7,000 students.
“The CDE has a good system to recognize what it means to be an alternative education campus and the impact that has on school level data,” Hilts said. “That system is that alternative campuses like GOAL are scored on a more customized set of measures. For example, because alternative schools often serve students for whom attendance has been a challenge or have previously dropped out, a measure that makes sense for an alternative school is daily attendance rates.”
Hilts said once the preliminary report is published, districts can submit a Request to Reconsider to the CDE. He said there are criteria that have to be met for the CDE to reconsider the district’s score.
One criterion is that the AEC has to score in the performance level. “We already know that GOAL is in the performance band (level) because they scored just over 66 points,” he said. “They are actually a high performing AEC campus.”
Another CDE criterion is that extracting the GOAL data has to be impactful enough to change the district’s rating. “Once they extract the GOAL data and sequester it, our rating jumps up into the 60s and we will be at the performance level,” Hilts said.
The district has requested a recalculation, as they have done in previous years, anticipating that the final scores will be released in October.
Hilts said D 49 takes a big hit in reputation and morale because of the incomplete information published in the preliminary CDE performance reports. He said it also impacts the city of Colorado Springs. “We know from the mayor’s office and the Chamber of Commerce that reporting of the raw data has discouraged prospective business owners from relocating or launching in Colorado Springs,” Hilts said.
GOAL’s nearly 7,000 student body comes from every county in Colorado. “The reason that is important is that we don’t just have one district’s worth of challenged students,” Hilts said. “We have data from the entire state that gets concentrated into D 49; and, therefore, gets concentrated into the Colorado Springs metro or Pikes Peak region. And the challenging data gets lifted off of the other schools and districts where the GOAL students live.” He said the city has acknowledged the impact of this unique AEC.
“Even with all that being true, we are proud to authorize GOAL. We believe in the mission of GOAL, we think Colorado needs GOAL and the students that attend there absolutely need GOAL,” Hilts said. “We will continue to authorize GOAL even if the CDE doesn’t give us consideration because we think that doing the right thing is more important than chasing a distorted score.”
