Salt Lake test scores rising

Test scores are on the rise, and the achievement gap between the most- and least-advantaged students is closing, according to a new report in the Salt Lake City School District.

Patrick Galvin, a University of Utah professor in the College of Education, has spent the past six months going over six years of data.

"There's something good going on here, something worth talking about," Galvin told the Board of Education Tuesday.

The purpose of Galvin's report is to show whether the Eccles/Annenberg challenge to improve public education has worked.

At stake is $4 million the Annenberg Foundation donated toward the effort. The George S. and Dolores Dore Eccles Foundation kicked in another $2.5 million, and the R. Harold Burton Foundation also donated $600,000. Another $1 million came from private donations, while the Salt Lake City School District ponied up $4.7 million to fund Eccles/Annenberg programs.

Salt Lake City was one of 18 sites around the country chosen to receive a grant from the Annenberg Foundation. That money helped Salt Lake City first identify its strengths and weaknesses, then to figure out how to make improvements.

To that end, the district has worked on helping teachers become better at their jobs, board president Charles Higbee said in an interview. One focus has been getting more teachers trained to teach students with limited English-speaking abilities.

"We are closing the gap between those that are traditionally lower-scoring groups," Higbee said.

Those lower-scoring groups might come from the following demographic statistics in the Salt Lake City School District:

• 82 different "primary" languages are spoken among students.

• 37 percent of students have "limited English language proficiency."

• 47 percent are non-Caucasian.

• 57 percent are in low-income families.

• 40 percent are in single-parent or "nontraditional" households.

• 33 percent of students don't start and finish the school year in the same school.

The efforts of schools in Salt Lake City over the past five years, Higbee said, have helped students in those groups to perform better on tests in reading and math.

Galvin said that improvements have been made to help less-advantaged students while not compromising education programs for their more-advantaged counterparts.

Despite "significant" changes in demographics of students over time in the Salt Lake City School District, student performance overall has improved or been maintained, according to Galvin. For example, over the past six years, the percentage of limited-English-proficiency students has increased by 11.6 percent, but math test scores have remained constant.

Galvin's report, however, did not show the results from Annenberg reforms "some may have hoped for."

Board members are expected to bring Galvin back for a public meeting in November to more closely examine the report.

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E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com