The State of Education in PUSD - The "Rest of the Story"
Written for the Prescott Chamber of Commerce Newsletter
By Kevin Kapp, Superintendent of Schools, Prescott Unified School District
At the Prescott Chamber of Commerce Annual Luncheon on January 30, 2008, Bob King, the CEO of the Arizona Community Foundation gave a brief presentation with regard to the report, "Educating Arizona – Assessing Our Education System (Birth – Grade 12)." Mr. King’s presentation was not uplifting – in fact, it was very discouraging in comparing public education in Arizona with the rest of the United States. Unfortunately, there was no time for questions and dialogue between the audience and Mr. King at the luncheon so as the superintendent of the local school district, I wasn’t able to point out to everyone present that Prescott Unified School District (PUSD) is very much “above and beyond” the dismal statistics shared by Mr. King. The Prescott Chamber of Commerce has graciously allowed me to share some data in this article which will give everyone a much better perspective on your local school district.
First, one of the primary comparison tools utilized in the report was the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test. This is a test administered to randomly selected schools across the United States and Prescott Unified School District is occasionally selected to participate. Importantly, PUSD has not participated in the NAEP testing program in recent years and thus it is impossible to compare PUSD with the rest of Arizona or the country using the NAEP test. Three PUSD schools are taking the NAEP test this year.
The best way to compare PUSD with the rest of Arizona is data from the AIMS Test and other data sources such as graduation rates, school labels, etc. With respect to the AIMS Test, PUSD outperforms Yavapai County and the State of Arizona at every grade level in all three areas tested – Reading, Math and Writing. And by the way, this is nothing new. PUSD has outperformed Yavapai County and Arizona since the AIMS Test was introduced many years ago. The graphs below clearly show how well PUSD schools do on the AIMS test and we are very proud of this accomplishment.
The Arizona Community Foundation report also stated that only about 70% of Arizona’ high school students graduate from high school. Prescott High School’s graduation rate in 2006 as reported by the State was 93%. The State has not published our graduation rate for 2007, but it was again in the 90-95% range according to our data. According to the report, only about 4 of 7 high school graduates in Arizona continue their education after high school. Prescott High School surveys its graduates and last year 91% of our Seniors indicated they were going on to a university, college, tech school or the military.
Arizona initiated a School Labeling program several years ago where schools receive labels (Excelling, Highly Performing, Performing Plus, Performing or Underperforming) based primarily on AIMS scores and for high schools, graduation rates, attendance rates, etc. For this 2007-08 school year, Prescott Unified School District received the best overall school labels of any school district in northern Arizona! Out of our eight schools that received labels, five our of schools received Excelling labels, two of our schools received Highly Performing labels and one school received a Performing Plus label. When comparing PUSD to the rest of Arizona, PUSD ranks 9th from the top and there are over 200 school districts in Arizona. It should be noted that most of the school districts above PUSD have much higher socio-economic demographics than PUSD and include school districts such as Cave Creek and Fountain Hills in the Phoenix area and Catalina Foothills and Tanque Verde in the Tucson area. PUSD is “in the middle” as far as socio-economic demographics so our school labels are all the more impressive.
The “bottom line” is that Prescott Unified School District works very hard to assist every student to achieve at his/her maximum capability and the data shows this reality. PUSD is an excellent public school district and the “broad brush” of the Arizona Community Foundation report paints over PUSD’s excellence and academic achievement levels. Generalized data is useful, but it’s always a good idea to take a look at data at the local level. When the local data is examined closer, Prescott Unified School District is no doubt “The Smart Choice” for our local students and families.