All 7 D49 POWER Zone Schools Advance on Marzano Framework — What It Means for Families

Every school in District 49's POWER Zone moved up this year — and that kind of across-the-board progress doesn't happen by accident.

All seven schools in D49's POWER Zone advanced one full level on the Marzano High Reliability Schools (HRS) framework during the 2025–2026 school year. The achievement was recognized at the Fantastic 49 presentation on September 10, where D49 honored school leaders and two Colorado-based partner firms that supported the work.

What the POWER Zone Is

The POWER Zone is a cluster of seven schools in the northwest part of District 49, serving students from kindergarten through 12th grade. The zone includes:

• Vista Ridge High School
• Skyview Middle School
• Inspiration View Elementary School
• Falcon Homeschool Program
• Ridgeview Elementary School
• ALLIES
• Odyssey Elementary School

Zone Superintendent Theresa Ritz leads the group. The POWER Zone model groups schools together to enable shared professional development, aligned curriculum planning, and coordinated improvement work across grade levels.

What the Marzano Framework Measures

The Marzano High Reliability Schools framework is a research-based system for evaluating how consistently schools deliver high-quality instruction and learning experiences. It is organized into five levels, each measuring a different dimension of school quality — from safety and collaboration at the foundational levels to guaranteed and viable curriculum, effective teaching, and ultimately, student achievement at the higher levels.

Advancing on the framework is not automatic. Schools must document improvement in both processes and outcomes, and that documentation is reviewed before a school is certified at a new level. For all seven schools in a zone to advance in the same year is an uncommon result.

What It Means for Families

For parents with students in D49's northwest schools, the advancement is a meaningful signal about the direction the zone is headed. The Marzano framework specifically measures the consistency and reliability of instruction — not just average test scores, but whether high-quality teaching is happening in every classroom, for every student, every day.

Families who chose POWER Zone schools based on their educational approaches now have independent evidence that those schools are implementing those approaches at a higher level of reliability than they were a year ago.

What's Next

The recognition at Fantastic 49 marks the end of the 2025–2026 measurement cycle. POWER Zone schools will continue working toward the next level of the Marzano framework in the 2026–2027 school year. Families can learn more about the POWER Zone and individual school progress by contacting D49 directly or visiting the district's website.