Posted February 19, 2022
Dear McMeen families:
We will begin the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) assessments on April 6, 2021. These assessments focus on the knowledge and skills our kids need for success in our global economy, including skills such as analytical thinking and the ability to solve complex problems. The CMAS assessments focus on three different content areas depending upon the grade your child is in:
We want to help parents and families with information to support student success during this time. These assessments will give our teachers critical information to help our students be on track for college and career readiness and help us understand whether our students have the necessary skills to succeed after high school.
Calendar: The calendar below was created to communicate to you when the CMAS assessments are occurring. We ask parents and families to ensure their children get plenty of sleep and a healthy breakfast every day, but especially on assessment days. In addition, if there are doctor’s appointments or other appointments that need to be made, we hope this calendar will help you to make those appointments on non-assessment days.
Volunteers: Please also note the days in which we cannot allow volunteers in certain areas of our building. This is to adhere to the ethics and other policies set forth by DPS and the State of Colorado to maintain a secure testing environment.
Attendance: We also want to communicate that all students should be in school on-time, all day and every day, regardless of whether assessments are occurring or not. Important teaching and learning happens in between testing, so it is imperative that students are here. Our expectations remain around vacations and we expect parents to continue to plan vacations around the DPS calendar.
Make-Ups: Students do best when they are in their classroom environment for testing. In the event that your child has to miss a test session, they will have to make up the test another time and will be pulled during their instructional time to do so. In addition, due to our teachers needing to teach during all non-testing days, our paraprofessionals are used to give make-ups, which pulls them from supporting the classroom. To prevent disruption to your child’s and other student’s day, please make sure that your child is at school every day and limit their absences to only when they are sick.
We appreciate your support during this time. Assessments, including CMAS as well as those taken throughout the year, are vital tools for teachers to support student success. There are online resources to help parents and families support their student during CMAS testing, located at https://coassessments.com/practice-resources/. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Thank you, and go [MASCOTS]!
Lauren Bartsch
Assistant Principal
McMeen Elementary
Denver Public Schools
