SWPR Group

Measuring the success of a new district-wide initiative can be daunting. To avoid having to rely on anecdotal and qualitative results that amplify successes while masking challenges, leaders must ensure the tools for gathering and analyzing comprehensive are set up from the start.

Because Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, put in the hard work up front, the district was able to show results like these from the first year of its Journey to Success implementation:
▪️80% of fifth-graders met “Ready” or “Excelling” criteria for demonstrating their next steps to achieve future goals.
▪️82% of eighth-graders were “Ready” or “Excelling” in their ability to reflect on how their learning journey helped them develop knowledge of content and standards.
▪️Among seniors, those numbers were 92% and 91%, respectively.
▪️In addition, 85% of seniors were able to analyze how their skills can be applied personally and academically.

In their piece for DATIA K12, Elisabeth Read and Dr. DeNay Speaks describe the JCPS Journey to Success initiative and explain how the district’s partnership with Otus brought together assessments, data, and progress monitoring from 150 schools into one centralized platform where measurable outcomes were defined. https://www.datiak12.io/student-success/article/15821514/how-accessible-data-and-greater-student-agency-helped-one-district-pave-a-journey-to-success-for-every-child

How Accessible Data and Greater Student Agency Helped One District Pave a Journey to Success for Every Child A new competency-based developmental framework is having a transformational impact in Jefferson County Public Schools.

This is a challenging time in higher education. But hope and enthusiasm rippled throughout the room when OPB hosted a Think Out Loud broadcast from the Linfield University campus in Oregon. https://www.opb.org/article/2026/04/29/think-out-loud-liberal-arts-education-student-debt-unemployment/

Students and professors from Lewis & Clark College and Linfield joined the conversation with OPB’s Dave Miller, Linfield President Dr. Mark Blegen, and Lewis & Clark Executive Director of Community Partnerships Sarah Warren.

SWPR CEO Sarah Williamson was thrilled to be able to join this lively and thought-provoking discussion in person.

Is a liberal arts education worth it? Student debt in the U.S. has risen dramatically in the last few decades, while recent college graduates are having a harder time finding work. We sit down with students, faculty and administrators from Linfield University and Lewis & Clark College to ask whether a liberal arts degree is still worth....

If you were ever a permit driver, you can relate to the stress of testing day, when you had to navigate the unfamiliar streets around the motor vehicles office while a total stranger rated your every move. Wouldn’t you have been a more effective test-taker if you had been able to practice on those streets beforehand and correct the situations in which you struggled?

Now extend this analogy to elementary students. Wouldn’t they be more effective on tests like the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress if they had been able to navigate a similar set of questions ahead of time and address the challenges? Principal Rudy Sandoval of Montera Elementary School says yes — and he has the data to back it up:

“In one year, our 6th graders’ math scores on the CASPP increased by 8.5 percentage points while their English language arts scores rose by 14 percentage points. In addition, for the first time, 70% of these 6th grade students performed proficient or better in the Smarter Balanced Assessments for English language arts/literacy.”

Read more about how learning the reasons behind Montera students’ struggles set them up for testing success in this piece from K-12 Dive. https://www.k12dive.com/news/learning-the-reason-behind-student-struggles-sets-them-up-for-testing-succe/812621/

Thank you to our partners at Classtime for connecting us with Principal Sandoval and helping spotlight these students’ achievements!

Learning the reason behind students’ struggles sets them up for testing success A California principal writes that digging into the “why” behind student confusion and frustration helped fuel significant achievement gains at his school.