The Assistant Principal Who Stopped Waiting for Students to Show Up

A Denver High School Rebuilt PSAT Prep Around One Weekly Data Report

Denver Public Schools already used Khan Academy everywhere. What John F. Kennedy High School needed was visibility. Once the data arrived weekly, an entire coaching system grew around it.

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Background

Denver Public Schools was already heavily using Khan Academy before it ever became a partner. Teachers used it. Schools used it. What the district could not do was see it.

That gap is what pushed DPS to partner. As Lisa Garcia Simms, an assistant principal at John F. Kennedy High School, describes it, an assistant principal at one of the district's major high schools wanted more than the free version offered—specifically data reporting  and visibility into whether the content was working.

"Ultimately we want to set our students up for success and opportunities, whether they're going to college or they're not. We really believe that supporting students with test prep is going to benefit them in both college and career." - Lisa Garcia Simms

Simms inherited that partnership five weeks into her own tenure. Hired on October 1, 2025, she has a portfolio that covers attendance, MTSS, gifted and talented, a long list of operational responsibilities, and the school's PSAT/SAT prep program. JFK enters the year on a Priority Improvement Plan, with fall 2025 PSAT scores trailing the district at every grade level. Eleventh graders averaged 440 in Reading and Writing against a district average of 492 and a College Board benchmark of 480. They averaged 419 in math against a district average of 473 and a benchmark of 530. In partnership with TNTP, JFK set a target of moving from a 425 scale score to a 459 in Reading and Writing, and from a 405 to a 440  in math, by the end of the 2025-26 school year.

Her first professional learning session with staff was October 31. Everything that followed was built in public, in front of teachers, one refinement at a time.

Challenges

1. Usage without visibility. Khan Academy was widely used across DPS, but without partner-level reporting, the district could not monitor participation, minutes, or skills growth week over week or adjust when any of them slipped.

"We wanted to be able to do more than the free option—and that would be the data reporting. That's something we're using weekly here so that we know what we need to change to increase participation, minutes, and skills growth." — Lisa Garcia Simms, EdD, Assistant Principal, John F. Kennedy High School

2. Scores below district average at every grade level. JFK's fall 2025 PSAT averages trailed DPS in both sections across grades 9, 10, and 11. 

3. Getting data into teachers' hands and then into students' hands. Simms names this as the single biggest challenge. Distributing PSAT data to teachers was one problem; teachers sitting down with students to interpret it was another.

4. Incentives did not move students. Thursday office hours drew almost no one.  Students had obligations to other teachers during that block. Monday hallway check-ins with snacks fared only slightly better.

5. Minutes and skills tell contradictory stories. Some students logged 45 minutes and leveled up one skill; others logged five minutes and leveled up 15 skills. Neither number alone told teachers what was happening.

6. Teacher capacity was already spent. ILT members became platform administrators to support their teams, but they had little time to do the work, leaving Simms to do much of the coaching herself.

Solutions

• Set two numbers everyone can hold in their head. Thirty minutes a week in SAT Reading and Writing and 30 minutes in SAT Math, plus two to three Reading and Writing skills and one to two math skills to Proficient. Proficiency is defined concretely: 80% correct in a practice session or unit test. Guidance to students frames the relationship as skills should justify minutes—roughly 10 to 15 minutes per Reading and Writing skill, 15 to 20 minutes per math skill.
• Put the time on the master schedule. Every English and math teacher picks one "Commander day" each week and dedicates 30 minutes of class to Khan Academy. Prep is not homework and not optional.
• Name who owns it. Simms built a tiered document that defined primary users (English and math teachers), secondary users (social studies, science, and during sub days or when students finish early), tertiary users, and staff exempt for specific reasons. Khan Academy trained the Instructional Leadership Team, and ILT members were made administrators so they could support their own departments.
• Pull the report every Friday. Simms runs the data report Friday, compares week over week across the weekend, and writes next steps for buy-in and engagement before Monday.

"DPS made the decision to pay so schools could utilize data reporting. We valued the ability to pull data so we could monitor progress." - Lisa Garcia Simms

• Point students at the 70%. February 5 PD narrowed the math focus to Algebra and Advanced Math, which together account for roughly 70% of PSAT math questions. Students in grades 9-11 work at medium and advanced only; Foundations is framed as a pit stop, not a destination.
• Use PSAT data to direct practice. The district identified "cusp students,"  those students who were close to moving up an achievement level or were at risk of sliding down, and JFK highlighted them in pink on every teacher's data tab. Simms built a self-guided deck showing teachers exactly how she coaches those students: read the section subscores, find the yellow, send them to that Khan unit.

"That's what I find myself doing in a lot of my one-on-ones: helping students understand their data from the last test and then [showing them] how to be strategic about where they're working in Khan Academy." - Lisa Garcia Simms

• Go to the students. When office hours and snack incentives failed, Simms started walking into classrooms on Khan Academy days and sat side by side with priority students, working through their own PSAT data with them.

If they're not going to come to me, I'm going to go to them." - Lisa Garcia Simms

• Give teachers a way to read the usage data. A simple three-row frame: the Ghost (30+ minutes, zero skills: tab left open), the Sprinter (5 minutes, 10+ skills: AI or answer hunting), and the Learner (20-40 minutes, 3-8 skills: the sweet spot). Rewards go to the third row only.
• Answer the questions students actually ask. A student-facing deck addresses the four most common questions: Do I have to watch every video? (No.) How long should a skill take? (10-15 minutes.) What if my minutes are low but my skills are high? (You're using unit tests efficiently; keep going.) What if my minutes are high but my skills are low? (You're stuck in the video trap or the level is too hard.)

District-Reported Results

• The school moved from Orange to Green on the School Performance Framework. Spring 2026 growth lifted JFK a full band on Denver's SPF rating, with 10th grade driving much of the gain.
• Schoolwide ELA growth rose nine points. Median Growth Percentile went from 41.0 in 2024-25 to 50.0 in 2025-26. Tenth grade jumped from 38.5 to 57 (+18.5); 11th grade held flat at 41.5.
• Math growth rose schoolwide, led by 11th grade. MGP moved from 33 to 35 (+2.0) across the school. Eleventh grade climbed from 35 to 49 (+14) and 9th grade climbed from 24 to 28.5 (+4.5); 10th grade slipped from 38.5 to 36 (-2.5).
• Mean scale scores rose in every reported group, 2025 to 2026. Eleventh grade EBRW went from 447 to 462.9 (+15.9), and 11th grade math went from 421 to 435.5 (+14.5). Ninth and 10th grade EBRW went from 401 to 423.5 (+22.5) and 374 to 395.5 (+20.5) respectively.
• Math participation jumped five times in a single week. Weekly math participation went from 33 students (week of 1/19) to 166 (week of 1/26) against a target of 335—a direct response to the January 7 expectations reset.
• Math practice time nearly tripled over the same two weeks, from an average of 5.8 minutes to 15 minutes per participating student, and average skills leveled to Proficient rose from 1 to 2.3.
• Teacher roles moved from ambiguous to assigned. Every staff member now falls into a defined tier of responsibility for SAT prep, and ILT members hold administrator access.
• A weekly data cycle now exists. Friday pull, weekend analysis, Monday next steps: the reporting capability that motivated the partnership is in active use.

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