The Assistant Principal Who Stopped Waiting for Students to Show Up

A Denver High School Rebuilt SAT 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 (DPS) 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 a district partnership with Khan Academy. As Lisa Garcia Simms, an assistant principal at John F. Kennedy High School, describes it, she 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 with Khan Academy 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 prep program for the SAT^® Suite of Assessments. 

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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 and partnership. 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 entered the year on a Priority Improvement Plan as 2025 SAT, PSAT™ 10 and PSAT™ 8/9 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. Instructional Leadership Team (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. 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.

• Set aside intentional time in school. 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.
• SAT prep for all. 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 ILT, and ILT members were given access to the Khan Academy administrator dashboard so they could support their own departments to incorporate SAT Prep into all subjects.
• Pull the report every Friday. Simms runs the data report Friday, compares week over week, and writes next steps for buy-in and engagement for 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%. The staff narrowed the math focus to Algebra and Advanced Math, which together account for roughly 70% of math questions on the SAT Suite of Assessments. Students in grades 9-11 work at medium and advanced only; Foundations is framed as a pit stop, not a destination.

• Use  data to direct practice. The district identified "cusp students," those students who were close to meeting benchmarks or were at risk of sliding down. Simms built a self-guided deck showing teachers exactly how she coaches those students: read the section scores, find the yellow, send them to an appropriateSAT Prep unit in Khan Academy.

"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 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: not productively engaged), 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 presentation addressed 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.
• Mean scores increased 24 points for SAT Reading and Writing and 17 for SAT Math.
• The percentage of students meeting the college and careers readiness benchmark in SAT Reading and Writing increased 12%.
• Mean scores increased 35 points for Reading and Writing and 26 for Math on the PSAT 10.
• Sixty percent of 10th graders met or exceeded the Reading and Writing benchmark, up 20% from the prior year.
• PSAT 8/9 scores held steady.

‍John F. Kennedy High School successfully transformed its SAT Prep program by moving to a structured, data-informed coaching cycle. Developing a consistent weekly data analysis and clear skill-based expectations drove schoolwide improvements in ELA and math proficiency. 

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