In my role leading Edgewater Collective, I wake up each morning thinking about this education ecosystem and how we can help ALL kids in our area succeed from cradle to career. My role is to connect the dots between communities, organizations, families and schools.

A piece of this work is looking at data, asking questions and moving the collective will to address concerns and gaps.

The Class of 2018 entered Jefferson High School as freshmen last week with hopes, dreams and even fears.

It is interesting to take a look at how these students have progressed through elementary school, middle school and now into high school at Jefferson.

When these students took the TCAP test in 2009 as 4th grade students, 47.2% were proficient in math.

Then last spring, they took TCAP as 8th grade students at Wheat Ridge 5-8 and 21.76% were proficient in math.

Now when we look at the Class of 2018 as freshmen, 77.65% of these students are starting high school behind in math.

The true reality of the Class of 2018 is probably worse than this. From anecdotal data, most students who succeed at Wheat Ridge 5-8 open enroll at Wheat Ridge High School instead of Jefferson High School. The reasons are endless, but the fact remains that Jefferson High does not attract our best students from the neighborhood.

This data brings up a lot of questions.

What accounts for the slide in math proficiency from 4th grade to 8th grade? (This is not unique to our area)

How do we change the narrative that Jefferson High is a failing school and attract top students to their neighborhood high school?

How do we help these freshmen catch up in math?

These are systematic roadblocks to success that we cannot expect one school to fix. It will take our whole community working together to help all these students succeed into a career.