No. 1 named outperforming district

by Cat Urbigkit

Sublette County School District No. 1 has been named one of the top five school districts of 46 Wyoming districts evaluated by Standard & Poor’s.

The district was dubbed an “outperforming” district in last week’s launch on www.schoolmatters.com. The analysis indicated that No. 1 outperformed demographically similar districts in reading and math proficiency scores for the 2001-02 and 200-03 school years.

Standard & Poor’s used three criteria to assess districts:

• School districts must achieve higher levels of student proficiency than peers. Outperformers must report higher percentages of students that score at or above state standards on reading and math tests than other school districts that serve similar proportions of economically disadvantaged students.

• School districts must perform at a level that significantly exceeds statistical expectation. Outperformers must achieve proficiency levels that fall above the threshold for the expected performance zone, as simply beating peers is not sufficient.

• School districts must outperform consistently. Outperformers must repeat this performance for at least two consecutive years.

Sublette County School District No. 1 was found to have 20.7 percent economically disadvantaged student enrollment and a 56.1 percent reading and math proficiency score.

The School Matters site includes information about student performance on reading and math tests; spending, revenue and taxes; school environment; and community demographics.

For comparison, Sublette County School District No. 9 had a 27.8 percent economically disadvantaged student enrollment, compared to No. 1’s 20.7 percent. No. 1 had an enrollment of 671 with 13.4 students per teacher, compared to No. 9’s 571 students with 10.7 students per teacher.

Joining No. 1 on the outperforming list are Goshen County No. 1, Park County No. 1, Sheridan County No. 1 and Sheridan County No. 2.