Windsor Charter Academy students score perfect on CSAP tests

Windsor Charter Academy third-graders are the talk of the school.

The class scored 100 percent proficient or advanced in the reading section of the 2008 Colorado Student Assessment Program tests. The results were released Thursday.

Windsor Charter is one of five schools in the state of Colorado to score perfect in that category.

And there is one very happy principal in Windsor.

"We are so excited," said charter principal Tracy Stanford, in her first year as principal at the school. "This is something all the kids worked hard on, but also it's a community effort, and it has to come from within the whole school."

"I jumped up and down, and then I started to cry," Stanford added. "I knew a week ago, and it was hard to keep a secret."

The charter academy wasn't the only Windsor third-grade classroom with bragging rights.

Other third-grade classrooms around the Windsor-Severance Re-4 School District scored above the state average (70 percent) in the proficient or advanced areas. Skyview Elementary School went up a percentage point from last year, scoring an 89 percent; Grandview Elementary School scored an 82 and Mountain View Elementary School scored a 77.

There are two third-grade classrooms at the charter academy (50 students), three third-grade classrooms each in Grandview (68 students) and Skyview (65 students) and six third-grade classrooms at Mountain View (130 students).

The charter academy went from 25 students in the third-grade in the 2006-07 school year to 50 students this year. Last year, the charter academy scored 96 percent in proficient or advanced and had 1 percent in the partially proficient category.

Findley said the charter academy has worked hard using the Core Knowledge Curriculum, and the scores are a reflection of hard work from everyone involved.

"If you look at the third-grade reading scores as a whole, we have so many students who are in the partially proficient range and just ready to move up to proficient," said Jeanne Findley, Re-4 director of instruction. "We are well above the state average, but we want to keep working because you never want to be at the state average."