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Colorado News Miner 85

Denver schools; CMAS scores for math, language, and science; results by gender and 'race'/ethnicity; gender discrimination at a Mines program.

Denver Schools

Complete Colorado published my column, "Denver Public Schools celebrates lowering achievement bar." Here's a selection: "If we dig deeper in the CMAS [Colorado Measures of Academic Success] results for black and Hispanic students in Denver, the story goes from grim to horrifying. You can download the spreadsheet data from the CMAS results page."

CMAS Results

My articles about Denver schools and Colorado student performance draw heavily on results from the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) test. If you download the huge spreadsheet files, you can find extensive data for individual districts and schools.

Here I present select statewide data pertaining to gender and "race"/ethnicity. Importantly, in few categories do half or more of students meet or exceed expectations. Generally, boys outperform girls in math and science, while girls outperform boys in language. The huge disparities show up in "race"/ethnicity. Asian and white kids radically outperform Black, Hispanic, and Native kids across the board. As I've said repeatedly, the poor performance of many of those minority kids is a serious crisis, but one that hardly anyone seems to take seriously.

Below are six images, two each for math, English language arts, and science.

Colorado Measures of Academic Success results, 2023, math, showing that for all grades 35 percent of boys met or exceeded expectations, while 30.6 percent of girls did.

Colorado Measures of Academic Success results, 2023, math, showing that for all grades 55.9 percent of Asian students met or exceeded expectations, 44 percent of white students did, 16.8 percent of Black students did, and 16.1 percent of Hispanic students did.

Colorado Measures of Academic Success results, 2023, English, showing that for all grades 39.4 percent of boys met or exceeded expectations, while 48.3 percent of girls did.

Colorado Measures of Academic Success results, 2023, English, showing that for all grades 59 percent of Asians students met or exceeded expectations, 55.6 percent of white students did, 27.7 percent of Black students did, and 26 percent of Hispanic students did.

Colorado Measures of Academic Success results, 2023, science, showing that for all grades 35.6 percent of boys met or exceeded expectations, while 32 percent of girls did.

Colorado Measures of Academic Success results, 2023, science, showing that for all grades 45.3 percent of Asian students met or exceeded expectations, 46.4 percent of white students did, 15.6 percent of Black students did, and 16 percent of Hispanic students did.

Gender Discrimination in K–12 Program Associated with School of Mines

I was interested in signing up my son for a DecTech K–12 science program, but then I saw this line on the registration form: "During the school year, DECTech Sessions are only offered for Female or Gender Nonconforming individuals." I was surprised to see such blatant gender discrimination. (See screen captures showing the web pages in question.)

It's easy to see the motivation here; as of Fall of last year, the School of Mines student population was 68% male.

I'm all for encouraging girls to become interested in science. For example, I love Emily Calandrelli's work doing science shows and books for children. But "we" can and should encourage girls to become interested in science without discouraging—or in this case flatly excluding—boys.

As is evident from the CMAS data above, the huge disparities are not between boys and girls but between (Asian and white kids) and (Black, Hispanic, and Native kids). One thing the DecTech program is saying, implicitly, is that rich white girls are welcome, but disadvantaged Black, Hispanic, and Native (and white) boys are not welcome. In general, excluding boys is not the right way to include girls.

I asked the media rep with the School of Mines for a comment from the school, and I will update this post if I receive one.

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