The Park City School District established five long-term goals in 2023 to ensure its students are meeting learning benchmarks by 2028.
The district has already met one of these goals: to have 75% of 11th-grade students meet English and reading benchmarks on the ACT, a standardized test used for college admissions.
Superintendent Lyndsay Huntsman said during the 2024-2025 school year, 78% of eleventh graders met the benchmarks. In Utah, an average of 70% of students meet the standards.
“It indicates that a student will have great success in a freshman-level college course if they meet that college and career readiness benchmark,” she said on KPCW's “Local News Hour” Thursday, Oct. 16.
The district is also close to meeting two of its other goals. One is to have a 100% graduation rate. Numbers for the Class of 2025 haven’t been released yet as students can complete coursework up until Oct. 1 and still be counted in the class.
However, the Class of 2024 had a 97% graduation rate. That’s compared to the state average of 89%.
Another goal the district has nearly achieved is having 90% of third graders at or above benchmarks in reading by 2028. The percentage has been inching up since 2023, when 79% of third graders were proficient in reading, to 87% meeting standards in 2025.
The district has long been above the state average, which hovers around 71%.
The district also aims to have 90% of eighth graders reach proficiency in math, but there’s more work to be done. While eighth-grade math scores have steadily increased since 2023, only 60% met math benchmarks during the 2024-2025 school year.
Still, they significantly surpassed the state average of 42%.
“The state revises the standards every five to seven years, and we know math is in that process,” Huntsman said. “We expect the new standards to be adopted in January, and then we'll revisit whether or not we need to go through a curriculum adoption to align better to the new and approved standards.”
The district’s final strategic goal is to have 80% of multilingual learners — those whose first language isn’t English — reach language proficiency by 2028.
However, Huntsman said she and her team have altered the goal as it’s unclear why an 80% goal was set when only 17% of students reached proficiency in 2025. Around 11% of multilingual students achieved English fluency statewide in 2025.
Instead, the goal is to have 80% of multilingual learners meet their individual growth targets each school year. This way they are more likely to become proficient in English.
“This year, we're increasing support for our MLL students by expanding targeted interventions, investing in professional learning for our teachers and building stronger partnerships with families,” she said.
Overall, 48% of Park City students met their growth targets in 2025.
All benchmarks are measured using standardized tests.
