CSAP Gap Explained

Some people, myself included, have hypothesized that the gap between school districts in Colorado on the state's standardized CSAP test have to do with things like poverty in low performing areas. But, I've discovered an important new factor in the gap from the every informative free Denver Daily News (Feb. 10. 2006 edition).

In the course of reporting on Lynn Hefley's House Bill 1150 which seeks to impose a uniform statewide calander on public schools, they quote Phil Fox, a lobbiest for Colorado's school executives. He states, in opposition to the bill:

There are districts in Colorado that have days off for kids to harvest the sugar beans, there are kids in districts, in the western slope that get weekends off in the hunting season. . . .

Ah ha! No wonder those rural kids do so well on the CSAPs! They don't weekends off until sugar bean or hunting season (by the way, what they hell is a sugar bean?). Meanwhile, slackers in Districts like the Denver Public Schools, which my children attend, get Saturday and Sunday off every week, giving them ample time to forget their lessons by the time Monday comes around. Mystery solved.