Update: See DPS response at the bottom of this post.
Denver school board member Andrea Merida, in high dudgeon, has leaked on her blog the following letter from the Denver Public Schools administration to board members. It was supposed to be embargoed until next week.
Merida is deeply offended by the contents. I think a lot of it sounds progressive and promising – and not all that new. My concerns about DPS and charters have more to do with whether the district is becoming overly proscriptive vis a vis charters. Read on, and then comment away.
Dear Board Members,
On December 6 and 7, Denver Public Schools will be hosting leadership from the Gates Foundation and almost a dozen school districts throughout the country, including LA, New York, Nashville, and New Orleans, to announce a new initiative created to strengthen district-charter collaborations in the participating districts (please consider all of this information to be embargoed until Tuesday, Dec. 7).
DPS has been a national leader in establishing a core set of equity principles articulated in the Denver Plan that guide all of Denver’s public schools: equity of access, accountability, and opportunity:
· All students must have access to all schools.
· All schools must be held accountable to the same standards of performance.
· All schools must have the same opportunities to utilize district resources and facilities.The creation of a center-based program at Omar D. Blair charter school and an attendance area for West Denver Prep’s campuses in NW Denver are evidence of this commitment.
In the last few months, DPS, along with 8+ big-city districts, developed a district-charter collaboration compact that embodies these key principles and identifies future areas of partnership to guarantee all schools provide all students with access to a high quality education. Through this compact, DPS and Denver charter schools committed to the belief that all students can achieve and deserve the highest quality public schools. It is the collective responsibility of all public schools in Denver, district-led and charter schools to ensure all students have access to an excellent education that successfully prepares them for college and career.
Driven by these shared beliefs, this District-Charter Collaboration Compact represents an unprecedented commitment among district and charter leaders to improve the ways they work together for the benefit of all students in the city. Through its bold agenda to increase the number of high quality school choices, Denver has served as a national leader and model in this work, which is why it is fitting that the Gates Foundation would choose to launch its national initiative in Denver. Denver Public Schools has worked with the charter community to make real our core principles of equity of opportunity, equity of access and responsibility, and equity of accountability, as illustrated in the following recent measures:
· Charter schools, in aggregate, serve students populations that nearly mirror district averages in terms of free/reduced lunch status (73%), ethnic minority percentages (75%), English language learner status (30%), and special education status (11%).
· In 2010 Omar D. Blair became the first charter school in DPS to open a special education center program for students with multi-intensive needs in a charter school, and additional center programs are slated to open in charter schools this fall.
· Charter schools share equitably on the same pro rata basis as district run schools in funding the cost of center programs for severe needs students throughout the District. To ensure all students in DPS are afforded the highest quality education, Denver has committed to closing or restructuring the lowest performing schools, including the 6 lowest performing charter schools in the last 3 years.
· The District’s multi-measure School Performance Framework (SPF) treats district-run and charter schools equally; three of the top five performing schools in Denver Public Schools in the fall 2010 SPF are charter schools. Statewide, four of the top five schools demonstrating the most academic growth in the 2009-10 school years were DPS schools, of which three are charters.
· District and charter leaders serve on joint teams to ensure equity regarding special education and the enrollment practices and procedures.Further commitments Denver charter schools have agreed to in the Compact include:
· Locating new schools in the highest-need areas, aligned to district plans and connected to district feeder patterns. Demonstrate parent support for new school applications and participate in ongoing parent engagement.
· Providing access and high quality support services or programs for all student populations, including English language learners, high risk students, students with mild-moderate needs, and students transitioning out of alternative schools. Commit to providing access and high-quality support services for students with severe needs as appropriate, guided by an equitable allocation process of center-based programs and corresponding resources. Support the comparable representation of all student populations in charter schools
· Providing access and high-quality support services for mid-year entry students in accordance with the district administrative transfer process and agreed upon district-charter school enrollment policies. Ensure that mid-year entry students are provided equitable access to schools across the district.
· Partnering with Denver Public Schools to implement a common and coordinated choice enrollment system.
· Make available to district educators, where feasible and at cost, professional development opportunities.In recognition of Denver’s leadership, the Gates Foundation is hosting a breakfast especially for the Denver Public Schools Board of Education and DCTA representatives. This will provide you an opportunity to dialogue with Gates Foundation leaders, Vickie Phillips and Don Shalvey, about Gates’ on-going investment in Denver, including this district-charter initiative and Denver’s educator effectiveness grant. Breakfast will take place from 7 – 8 am on Tuesday, December 7th at the Westin Tabor Center. Please rsvp to (redacted by me).
Finally, the two-day Gates Foundation event will culminate on December 7th with a national press call and local press conference to launch its national district-charter initiative. Until then, all information regarding the District-Charter Compact and initiative is embargoed. Should you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact (redacted by Merida) and please do keep all information regarding this subject confidential until the official press release on Tuesday, December 7th.
We are encouraged by the district-charter commitments and confident future collaboration proposed will address students’ and parents’ demand for increased quality, access, and resources.
What are Merida’s objections? Here is a bit of what she wrote:
Since when does the Superintendent have the authority to enter into far-reaching agreements with any entity, in a move that could drastically change the makeup of our “portfolio of schools”? This potential sweeping change is a policy decision that only the Board of Education can authorize.
And then:
We have just received a very stern warning from the Colorado Department of Education about our ratings. According to the newly released data, the Denver Public Schools is categorized as “accredited with priority improvement.” This is the second-to-last rating from CDE, and we are the only large school district to get this rating. This means that we are to supply an improvement plan to the CDE by January 15, 2011. Why are we making backroom deals when we should be giving serious thought to improving these ratings instead?
Finally:
This development is flat-out deplorable, and it’s a further indication of how much we’re failing our students. Instead of making these deals, we should be thinking very hard about how much we’ve veered away from the promise of the Denver Plan.
So, whaddaya think?
UPDATE: Here is a response sent by DPS chief of staff Amy Friedman to the school board Wednesday night:
Dear Board Members:
Several questions have been raised about if and when the Board will discuss and vote on the district-charter compact. We have this topic scheduled for the December meeting and look forward to the Board discussing whether or not they want the district-charter compact or any portion thereof to be codified in policy. As indicated in the previous email, the Denver Plan, which was unanimously approved by the Board in the Spring of 2010, clearly articulates the equity principles included in Denver’s district-charter compact:We will ensure that all of our schools—whether district-run, charter, contract, or innovation—have a level playing field of opportunity, of access and responsibility, and of accountability.
- Opportunity: All our schools should have access to district facilities (including co-locations in our larger buildings) and equitable per-student funding.
- Access and Responsibility: All our schools must offer equitable access for all our students, regardless of socio-economic, disability, or language status; all our schools must contribute financially on the same basis to use district facilities and for district obligations, such as pension obligations and district-wide special education fudning needs.
- Accountability: All new schools are subject to the same accountability framework (the School Performance Framework), including the potential for school closurei nthe event of a failure to demonstrate student achievement growth.
(Denver Plan 2010, p. 29)
Furthermore, your actions over the past 12-18 months have been consistent with the vision articulated in the Denver Plan whether it was the recently approved enrollment zone in FNE that includes consistent enrollment practives for district-led and charter schools, the condition in Odyssey’s renewal to ensure equitable services for English langauge learners, WDP taking an enrollment boundary in NW, or placing a special education center program at Omar D. Blair.
Finally, in addition to the breakfast with Gates the morning of December 7th, we’d like to also invite you to a cocktail hour on December 6th from 5:30-6:30 at the Westin Tabor Center (1672 Lawrence Street). In addition to mingling with the leadership team from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, you will have the opportunity to meet district and charter leaders from the other cities participating in this work.
If you have any questions, please let me know.
Thanks,
Amy
Popularity: 4% [?]
I think the public should have a better understanding of the superintendent’s employment contract than I do at this moment. If the parameters of Mr. Boasberg’s duties encompass this sort of thing, I’d agree with his approach. Otherwise, on its face, I’d agree the establishment of public policy is exclusively within the scope of the BOE and either way, the announcement comes across as a little tacky.
What’s most interesting is the extent to which public policy decisions can be “hired out” to superintendents and the extent of Board control over those appointees’ hypothetical acts. The issue wasn’t addressed except in the state constitution, which provided for a paid, elected County superintendent of schools as a counterpart to volunteer Boards. Gee, what a coincidence. It’s almost as though somebody thought about this potential collision beforehand.
I just don’t get the embargo thing. Really? A national foundation is coming to Denver to announce an initiative–why, exactly, is that a secret.
When I think of Gates, I think first of Manual HIgh School and the Gates “experimentation” with their agenda of “small schools.” I think of the “collateral damage” to students when the Gates “experimentation” failed. Denver Public Schools has never hesitated to allow its students to be the subject of experimentation in the name of so-called “reform.” I think this is why Gates loves Denver so.
The demographics of the Charter School population should be compared to the demographics of the entire DPS student population for a realistic appraisal.
I also would like to echo Kathy Hanson’s question about the scope of Boasberg’s authority. He treats the elected Board as if they were an advisory committee and not his superiors, in my opinion. I asked the question and it was never answered as to why Boasberg was not reprimanded when he referred to an elected board member as “disgruntled.”
While I would certainly agree both that Gates has a poor record on school reform and that the Manual small schools initiative was unsuccessful, it’s a curious point of view that the status quo of a school that had high dropout rates, single-digit proficiency, and was failing to education the vast majority of its students to meet their general needs is viewed not as “collateral damage” but as a natural result. Perhaps we are so hardened to the continued failure and lasting damage of K-12 education for high-poverty populations that our outrage is reserved for that which is both not local and new.
I am no DPS apologist, they are dammed if they don’t intervene in underperforming schools, and also dammed when they do. Given the choice and the completely unacceptable results at Manual and similar before the various attempts to fix it, I’d prefer DPS in a purgatory where they kept trying to make schools better, instead of accepting its fate. I just wish they were better at it.
I worked at Manual both before and after the Gates funded break up.
Before Gates, we had an administratively initiated reform process with pretty deep buy in from the faculty. I arrived in 1999 and the people who were not interested in Nancy Sutton’s plans had mostly found other places to work. We spent a great deal of time meeting in teams, planning both pedagogy and overall reform strategies. We studied, we went to Coalition of Essential Schools Forums, and we crafted and started to execute what I still consider some pretty good stuff.
I experienced a widely shared sense of collegial focus on student outcomes that I have not really had since. And were were documenting 1.5 years of growth for each year students spent with us.
Against that backdrop, bring in the $1,000,000 in Gates money which substantially redirected our efforts without reference to what most of us thought. At first it seemed to me like it would (or at least could) fund the ongoing work that we were doing but that is not what they had in mind. I left before the BoE pulled the plug but I do have direct knowledge of how things went for many of Manual’s students after closure.
So to respond to Alex’s question, I think it is entirely appropriate to consider the displaced kids as collateral damage. But to also describe the kids at the school before the Gates Foundation showed up as collateral damage is to say you don’t really know what was going on there.
And what do you mean by “single digit proficiency”? CSAP was first administered in high schools my second year there. Exactly what information do you have to make the sweeping statement that we were “failing to education [sic] the vast majority of [our] students to meet their general needs”? Our results didn’t look good in absolute terms but given the level of our incoming freshmen, we had a strong and positive trend underway before the money was dropped on us.
Well for those interested in the history of Gates investments in DPS, you should read the reports on the Colorado Children’s Campaign’s website in particular the report “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” about the Gates CCC 2000 investment in Manual. There continues to be lots of myth making about the facts and history of Manual and the Gates investments on small schools.
Recall that Gates provided the seed funding for Denver School of Science and Technology, the highest performing high school in DPS and likely the state for all groups of students. DSST’s development has already has had more of an impact on low-income kids success in college than any other program or school in DPS over the last 20 years. This was a remarkable investment in terms of return as measured by student success.
In terms of Manual, there were a host of reasons why the break up of the failing school in 2000 didn’t work at Manual from the school’s very poor leadership, poor instructional program, lack of district support and the gravity of the failing big urban school culture that the quasi-new schools were unable to break from with the new structures. As others have said those three small Manual schools were small schools in drag. Sadly this was true for hundreds of other big failing high schools across the country. NYC, Mapleton and a few other districts were mindful enough to phase out the old ineffective schools and replace them with new smaller focused schools that were built a grade at at time like the New Visions schools in NYC along with DSST and West Denver Prepin Denver.
DPS has seemed to learn some of this with the restart of Manual in 2007 but it remains to be seen whether the latest version of Manual can continue to grow without strong school leadership and substantive support from DPS. The district appears willing to let the school fall apart after Rob Stein and his very able staff developed a strong school culture and program that has been built over the last three and a half years.
On the Merida front, I have to say that it’s somewhat ironic that she would be so upset over this proposal when it will help Charters to be more mindful of the district’s and her concerns about charters and DPS’s overall need. Without such collaboration, the charters will be a growing set of high performing islands in the district’s sea of relative low-performance as has been the case recently in DPS. It appears that this work will help charters grow in collaboration with the district’s needs. I hope she can separate her disdain for Boasberg from what might be good policy and additional resources for DPS. Not likely but I want to remain hopeful.
Van,
I got the same impression from the description about the Charter Collaboration Coalition, that it’s a group that will make it easier for charters and districts to work together, and that it will make it easier to collaborate with other states to determine best practices.
I also got the impression that by complaining about joining the Coalition, Merida is micro-managing the district, which she shouldn’t be doing. The Board is supposed to set policy, not determine which specific resources that staff uses to perform better. When a new superintendent would come to Denver after Boasberg, Merida’s actions now will make it more difficult to recruit a high quality superintendent because many candidates will choose not to run if Denver gets the reputation of having a micro-managing Board that opposes everything the superintendent does.
Also, Merida is one member, and her alliance is the minority in many votes, so Boasberg acting without her consent is his job. I’m not familiar with everything that Merida opposes, so she may be correct on some things that Boasberg oversteps his authority, but on many issues he probably doesn’t, and this doesn’t seem like an issue where he would be overstepping his authority.
I don’t see either why this was embargoed.
Let me be clear. By “collateral damage” I mean the students at Manual who were in attendance when it was closed. A Denver Post evaluation indicated, to the best of my recollection, that as a group they fared even worst than they had been doing at the “failing school.” They were first the objects of an experimentation and when it failed, they were summarily dismissed without adequate consideration for the consequences of this disruption in their lives and their education. I think that kind of situation is unethical.
It is a false dichotomy to suggest that DPS has only two choices: Let a failing school struggle or intervene with whatever strategy without regard for the welfare of the students currently in the school or the unintended consequences of the intervention. This kind of “either or” scenario becomes the justification for ill-conceived and, in my opinion, politically motivated actions.
I am puzzled why the chief of staff has arranged a breakfast meeting to which she has the authority to “invite” Board members. Can she “uninvite them?” If she chooses not to invite Merida, will Merida be publicly criticized if she shows up? Shouldn’t the invitation be extended to the BOE by this coalition? From whom does this chief of staff work?
I am reminded of the time when I was the mother of a young child and on the advice of my parenting peers, I would start many conversations with him by spelling out roles: “I am the mother and you are the child.” I don’t know whether the board has not explained to Boasberg what his sphere of influence is and where they are in charge, or whether the BOE has simply found it easier to abdicate responsibility. It is not a healthy situation.
The valid dichotomy is to either either intervene or not (there is a third choice of closing the school outright, but let’s put that aside).
The results of no intervention are pretty clear, so the question becomes what type of intervention, and how can it be successful. National data suggests that successful turnarounds are rare, and DPS is no exception. However I think it is hard to claim the moral high ground that trying such turnarounds is a mistake. Doing nothing is the easiest political choice; that does not make it the right one, nor does it wash clean of political motivations.
What perplexes me is why more schools don’t opt for innovation or similar status and take a more active role in their transformation. I’d be more amenable to change coming from within, but their seems to be a reluctance from those inside schools to undertake this admittedly difficult task, particularly enough in advance to make it a legitimate option.
You would be less perplexed if you had lived through one or more attempts to turn a school around internally only to find that the district or someone else has other ideas or has lost patience with your failure to instantly flop to a new and more desirable state and decided to give you some “help” or to otherwise “intervene.”
It turns out that the parameters of possible reform are heavily constrained by the fact that any individual school exists at the bottom of a large and entrenched bureaucracy. And because of the moral urgency driving reform and the immediate need to “stop the hemorrhaging”, it can be difficult, if not impossible to catch your breath long enough to make quality plans in the first place, let alone implement them. And if you do actually manage to get traction, you’ve got a really small window of opportunity to make those test scores pop or someone else will be sent in to try.
Eventually, reasonable people will conclude it’s a waste of time to try if their good ideas and sincere efforts are never allowed to come to fruition. And some have found it can actually be dangerous to attempt to participate in reform conversations, especially if you don’t happen to agree with someone important.
Fortunately for me, the Innovation Schools Act came along before I lost faith in my ability to create real and lasting change in schools. I know others who feel beat down and have become cynical.
Ooms, You have just stated that there are only two alternatives. I reject that as a false premise.
I believe that the first step is to determine why the school is struggling. I believe that is the responsibility of the District. Schools do not suddenly collapse. If there is ongoing and objective monitoring of schools, problems can be identified. Once identified, factors contributing to the problem can be isolated and then intervention based on specific problems can be plotted. For example, has the population changed? Is there a gang problem? Has there been an increase in the mobility of the student population due to the economy? Was there a recent intervention? Has sufficient time been given for the “reform” to work? Have good teachers fled to the private school system because of all the uncertainty involving teacher evaluation and tenure? I think that the “intervention” should match the problem. For example, DPS has not been successful mandating a charter school to replace an existing school. Why replicate an “intervention” which has not been successful? These are the kind of questions I would presume would come before an “intervention.” I don’t like the word “intervention.”
Whatever happened to “problem-solving?”
An organizational culture which says “we have to do something, anything, even if it might not work” is a very dangerous place for children, in my opinion.
If you want to maintain that there is a choice outside doing nothing, changing something, and stopping altogether, I certainly won’t stop you, but I think that is semantic and that your desire to “reject the false premise” is largely rhetorical.
DPS has been enormously successful in authorizing charter schools that are outperforming their peers, usually with equal or higher FRL (DSST, WDP, Odyssey, KIPP SP, etc).
I think you are vastly underestimating the dangerousness to students of poorly performing schools: the kids drop out and become deeply marginalized in an increasingly competitive society and one rarely sees them again (3% at Montbello attend higher ed). This damage is buried and invisible; the efforts to transform schools are not – I’m just not convinced that the latter is greater than the former. I’m perfectly happy to recognize our different opinions on this point.
And again, I agree that DPS has been largely ineffective with their internal efforts. I am impressed with the efforts of Jeff, DCTA and others in starting their own schools, and I wish this was more often the outcome.
Thanks for the nod Alex. I want to clarify that I am just one of 9 founding partners of the Denver Green School so yes, it’s my school in the same sense the house I share with the members of my family is my home.
Fair enough and I extend my appreciation to the DGS family…
Oms,
I am confused about what you are advocating. I am not comfortable when you restate my argument as “rhetorical.” You don’t think it is necessary to define problems in terms of their causative factors??? Why not? Or do you just see failing schools as a marketing tool for charters? I believe that one of the reasons DPS has been so unsuccessful in “transforming” failing schools is that it has not investigated, first, the reasons for failure, before jumping in with the latest “model.”
It may be that our differences lies in the definition of “intervention.” The Obama administration has used the term to define four specific “interventions.” I believe that proper identification of problems could lead to remedies which might not fit the current definition of “intervention.”
Leaving schools alone until they fall apart is not something I advocate. I believe that students need to be protected to minimize the kind of stress which can be associated with their school being closed or their teachers being fired. I think that is possible within the context of improving schools. I emphatically do not believe that it is ethical to trade the futures of the children in a school today in order to improve the futures of the children who many come tomorrow. I also believe strongly that the parents of children currently enrolled in a targeted school should be empowered to make decisions for their own children.
Students at Manual when it was closed did not fare better when they traveled to other schools. DPS had a policy in effect when the Gates Foundation intervened that parents of children currently enrolled in a school targeted for change had the opportunity to vote on whether or not they approved of the proposed changes. That vote was not a veto, it was an indication of parental support. I understood that the BOE would look to see 85% of parents supporting a change before the BOE would approve it.
That policy was very good, I think. It meant that parents had time to review proposed changes, ask questions and voice concerns and that those proposing the changes had to listen to the parents. That policy was waived when Gates wanted to try out its small school theory at Manuel. Perhaps, if the parents had been informed and had a chance to give their insights, the outcome might have been better.
That policy was suspended in 2003 in anticipation of the millions of dollars that a mil levy increase would bring to the District.
Sorry, I’m not trying to be confusing.
I agree it is helpful in understanding the root causes of failure; my point is that understanding does not itself help the school perform better. It is much easier to understand why something does not work than to fix it.
I think “protecting” students from the stress of school interventions when those schools are not educating them might be a well-intentioned mistake. If nothing else, students need to better understand if their schools are preparing them well for life after K-12. I think neither they nor their parents have a true idea how underprepared they are until it is too late – the student getting passing grades in high school while reading at an 8th grade level etc.
DPS has data that shows students at schools (including manual) have done better after the changes. I don’t have it, and I don’t know if it is accurate, but I saw it at one point in a DPS BOE meeting. I agree that it would be valuable to look closely at those students.
I’m in favor of parents having a more active say in their schools (and many now vote with their feet, so it might be more interesting to have parents within a school boundary vote, so you are counting those who believe the school is not the best choice for their kids). But I also think this could be a two-edged sword, and include the “parent trigger” that has stoked so much controversy.
In any case, although I am sure there are points where we will disagree, I appreciate your obvious passion and the conversation.
I really am glad we were all able to have this conversation before December 7, aka Pearl Harbor Day. Transparency is a good thing.