No matter how you slice it, DSST kicks ass
Wednesday, April 9, 2008Written by: Alan Gottlieb
The Denver School of Science and Technology continues to amaze even hardened cynics like yours truly. Today, the school announced that 100 percent of its first graduating class has been accepted to four-year colleges.
The news comes on the heels of this week’s release of
Look for an article soon on Ednews Colorado about the School Performance Framework.
Here are some excerpts from DSST’s press release about its college-bound seniors:
The 100% acceptance rating is particularly inspiring considering the diversity of the Senior Class, which includes 62% minority and 40% low income students. Additionally, 50% of this first graduating class will be first generation college students. “This achievement demonstrates that with hard work, great teaching and the right school design, all students can go to a four-year college. We are very proud of our seniors and their accomplishments,” commented Bill Kurtz, Head of School.
Chris Torres , one of DSST’s seniors commented, “DSST has pushed us to limits that we never really conceived of - limits that we had previously set too low. Now we have the mentality of going above and beyond. The academic structure sets students up for success. It is a rigorous environment that is both challenging and supportive.”More than half of the class was accepted to the University of Colorado-Boulder, which is the most selective public institution in the state. A representative list of the other colleges and universities where DSST’s students have received admissions includes: Bowdoin College, Cal Tech, Cal Berkeley, Carleton College, Carnegie Mellon, Colorado College, Cornell University, University of Denver, Howard, Metro State College of Denver, Middebury College, MIT, Pomona College, Northwestern, Stanford, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Tufts, University of Northern Colorado, Wesleyan, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Two DSST seniors also won Boettcher Scholarships, four-year free rides to any college or university in
Maybe now those within the DPS leadership (and Michael Bennet is NOT among the guilty ones) who view DSST and other successful charters as resource-sucking headaches for the district will begin to claim them as an integral part of the team. If you were a struggling NBA team, would you ostracize Michael Jordan if he asked to play for you?
But I won’t hold my breath.
April 9th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Yo Alan…
Thanks for the kind words about DSST…I think it is fair to say that Bill Kurtz and the team he has put together has exceeded all expectations.
However, I think the relationship over the years between DPS and DSST has been a lot more nuanced and positive than you suggest, even though we have butted heads from time to time.
To begin with, DSST wouldn’t have come into existence without DPS and the taxpayers of Denver, who agreed to invest $5 million in bond money in the DSST facility. At the time, the idea of a district putting capital dollars into a charter building…and one that didn’t meet DPS facility standards…was cutting edge stuff. This was back in the days when Jerry Wartgow, Elaine Berman and Les Woodward were leading the district.
Second, there’s always going to be tension between an independently operated demonstration school and the district it operates in, because the mission of the school is to try and shake things up…hopefully for the better.
When the relationship is healthy, the district views this is a positive challenge, and I think many aspects of what DSST is putting into place in terms of culture, student expectations, assessment, etc., is being adopted and tweaked by a number of high profile school leaders within DPS…people like Rob Stein. This is true even in terms of school design…there’s a lot more discussion going on about whether DPS should continue investing in 100 year buildings or start thinking about less expensive options.
Third, we managed to get our middle school approved, lease renegotiated and charter re-authorized about as painlessly as one can expect in these times.
I don’t want to minimize the financial issues that make the charter/district relationship difficult for both sides, especially for charters in need of decent buildings. And, at various levels of the DPS bureaucracy, you still have to deal with Soviet style bureaucrats.
But I think there’s a growing realization within DPS that there has to be a move towards a portfolio management approach, and that charters are part of the mix. Our Board chose to put the school in DPS to make a statement about the importance of the district to the future of Colorado, and there’s no question we’d all make that same decision once again today.
David Greenberg
Founder
DSST
April 14th, 2008 at 10:05 am
DSST’s results are wonderful and admirable. I was wondering, however, if anyone else was a little concerned about the school’s retention rate. According to the numbers in the Rocky article, only 60% (79 out of 131) made it to graduation four years later. (Again using numbers from the article, the senior class at East, by contrast, was 75% the size of the freshman class four years earlier) I wonder what the graduation and college attendance rates are for the 52 kids who did not make it to senior year at the school. Hopefully, the opening of the middle school will help improve retention rates by providing students with the base level of preparation they need to graduate from such a rigorous high school. But are any other more immediate measures being taken to retain more kids at DSST?
April 14th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Hi…
There are a few answers to your question. First, comparing East and DSST retention rates is somewhat apples and oranges, because DSST, with a few exceptions, only enrolls students in 9th grade. East continues to enroll through all 4 grades, so the only accurate comparison would be to longitudinally track the East students who entered in 9th grade only. My guess is that the numbers would be relatively equal.
Second, most of the students who left DSST transferred to other DPS high schools…we know anecdotally where some of them are going to school, but have no formal data base. (One African-American student was given a 12th grade full scholarship to Andover…I wouldn’t be too worried about his future.) We do know that many of the students who came in substantially behind in 9th grade exceeded the state averages for year to year improvement while at DSST, but still couldn’t catch up sufficiently to pass 9th grade.
Third, from Year One we focused heavily on improving retention rates, with some success. Next year’s class will have about 10 more grads. However, the reason we moved from a high school to a secondary school model was based on the realization that there was only so much you can do with a 9th grader who is way behind…a few students were given 700 minutes of math a week, plus tutoring, plus summer school…that’s unsustainable for both the kids and the teachers.
DSST believes in continuous improvement. The math curriculum has changed three times since the school began operations. The assessment model was totally revamped last year, and the 9th grade physics program has also been substantially modified over the years. That process will hopefully continue as long as the school exists.
deg
April 14th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Thank you for your very informative response, David. I am glad that retention is being addressed because the more students who get to benefit from four years at a high-quality school like DSST, the better. The middle school seems like a promising way to promote retention at the high school level. So is an elementary school maybe a next step…?