ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The 2026-27 school year may have just started for USD 480 students, but district leadership is still thinking about goals from the 2025-26 school year.
Assistant Superintendent of Academics Dr. Maria Gomez-Rocque said results recently came in from the CAP state assessment.
“The CAP state assessment ‘grades’ students to one of four levels – Level 1 students show a limited ability to demonstrate their knowledge of skills at their grade level, Level 2 students show a basic ability to demonstrate their knowledge of skills at their grade level, Level 3 students show a proficient ability to demonstrate their knowledge of skills at their grade level, and Level 4 students show an advanced ability to demonstrate their knowledge of skills at their grade level,” Gomez-Rocque said. “When we created the targets in 2025, they were approved by the USD 480 school board in April 2025. In 2024, once we received the information, our targets for that year were ELA at 48 percent, math at 49 percent, and science at 44 percent. In 2025, our targets were ELA at 51 percent, math at 52 percent, and science at 48 percent. The goal is, by 2029 or 2030, to be at 65 percent in all content areas.”
Gomez-Rocque said there is positive news seen from the data, which is comprised of students in 3rd through 10th grade.
“The data from the 2024-25 school year shows the targets were surpassed in ELA, where the students ended up at 52 percent, which is really good to see,” Gomez-Rocque said. “For math, that goal was also surpassed and the students ended up at 51 percent there. With science, we didn’t receive those scores from the state, there wasn’t a span of science they could set the baseline scores, so we’ve gone two years without having that data. There was a group pulled this summer to help review the outcomes, and we’re still waiting to hear what the USD 480 outcomes were for science. This past year, students surpassed the ELA goal and ended up at 55 percent, and the students also surpassed the math goal and ended up at 54 percent. It’s really exciting to know we’re trending in the right direction, and we’re looking forward to meeting or surpassing our new targets. And as we look at the data, we want to keep growing from the actual data. While the target for this year was set at 54 percent for ELA, we’ve already surpassed that, so we’re looking at continuing to grow there and with the math and science targets.”
Gomez-Rocque said there was a lot of data to look at.
“We’ve been looking at data from the past three years, and 2025 is the baseline we’re going by,” Gomez-Rocque said. “With ELA, in looking at 2026 and comparing the district numbers and state numbers, we had 45 percent of students at Level 1 while the state had 27 percent – if you look at the 2025 numbers, we decreased that gap between the district and the state, and we’re trending the right direction. We’re seeing a decrease in the number of students at Level 1, which is the direction we want to go. At Level 2, the district had 31 percent of students while the state had 27 percent, and if you compare 2026 to 2025, we did see an increase, which is also a positive trend. With Level 3, the district was at 21 percent while the state was at 36 percent, and we did show growth compared to 2025 by going from 19 percent to 21 percent. With Level 4, the district had 3 percent while the state had 10 percent, and we did see a little growth there for the district.”
The math results were also positive, Gomez-Rocque said.
“With math, the district had 46 percent of students at Level 1 and the state had 27 percent, so that’s almost the same as the ELA, but we did see a decrease there, which is what we always want to see,” Gomez-Rocque said. “With Level 2, the district was at 35 percent and the state was at 32 percent, and we did see some gains there, which is great. With Level 3, we ended up at 15 percent while the state was at 29 percent, and we also saw some gains there. With Level 4, the district was at 3 percent while the state was at 12 percent, and we remained at the same numbers as last year.”
Another issue to tackle among the board’s goals was absenteeism.
“Helping improve the chronic absenteeism was another goal set in April 2025, and the goal is, by 2030, to have USD 480 reducing chronic absenteeism while staying at or below the state rate,” Gomez-Rocque said. “The district’s rate in 2024 was 20.1 and the state rate was 19.77, so that was our baseline. If you look at the last school year, USD 480 ended the year with 19.78 percent chronic absenteeism, and the state was at 17.16 percent. In 2025, we were slightly off the goal then as well, the district was at 20.54 percent while the state was at 19.56 percent. We did see a decrease, but there’s obviously still work to do.”
