Schools for Tomorrow Blog

Governor Ritter introduced the members of his P-20 Council yesterday, and it’s a good group.  We’ve got everyone from Gerald Keefe, a passionate advocate for rural districts, to Mark Hyatt, head of the Classical Academy charter school in Colorado Springs.  This group is comprised mainly of people who are out there getting their hands dirty in education, from ECE through higher education.  Interestingly absent are representatives from the “education establishment” groups, business people (is Bruce Benson the token business dude?), and reform wonks like the readers of this blog.  In other words, the people doing the P-20 reform work will be the people who do the hard work of education every day. Could be a stroke of genius “

No one should doubt the good intentions of the Denver Scholarship Foundation, which is fulfilling Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s pledge of a few years back to help all Denver Public Schools students attend college. Nor should anyone question the generosity or heart of oilman Tim Marquez, the son of schoolteachers, who has put $50 million of his own fortune into the scholarship fund.

But it seems more than a little odd, not to mention childish, that Hickenlooper, Marquez and DPS Supt. Michael Bennet held an hour-long gripe session last month with top Denver Post editors about the paper’s coverage of a DSF communications snafu. Word got out to schools in early May — inaccurately, as it turns out — that the foundation would cap its award to graduating seniors at $3,000. The fund was never intended to fully finance college, but to provide bridge or gap funding to students in need (See a previous post on this subject for more details).

As it turns out, the cap didn’t really exist. Or maybe the $3,000 was a soft cap. Or just an average. Or something like that. In any case, communications between the foundation and schools got mangled, and the word handed down to kids was that a cap was in place.

Anyone familiar with schools knows what hotbeds of gossip and rumor-mongering they can be. So it’s no surprise that the Post found out about the story.

Nothing of substance in the stories proved inaccurate, and the fact that kids were getting this devastating news (even if it was false) was a legitimate news story. But the self-dubbed Three M’s (Mayor, Marquez, Michael) felt compelled to storm the gates of the Post and rant and rave about the paper’s “inflammatory” articles, according to an e-mail Marquez sent to friends and foundation employees.

Free advice to the Three M’s: Surely you have better ways to spend your time — like running a city, a school district, a business. Crying to editors about unfair treatment rarely works. Especially when you’re wrong.

Today’s Public Education and Business Coalition’s annual luncheon was a great success in terms of gathering hundreds of key players to rally support for reforming public education. Such events provide an excellent opportunity to remind everyone of the important connections between our economy, our democracy and a quality education system. But some of the rhetoric from the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce was dismaying in its vapidity.

NYU professor Pedro Noguera shared his experiences in education reform and challenged the audience, particularly politicians, to escalate the making of bold and difficult decisions. He said that the education system needs more money, but he also said we have to change the way we spend what we have. He noted that most of the federal Title 1 program funding in urban districts can be described as a jobs program that adds little educational value to poor kids.

Ryan Warner from Colorado Public Radio lead a short discussion about Noguera’s remarks with Denver Superintendent Michael Bennet, State Sen. Sue Wendels, Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition Leader Patty Roybal, and the President of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, Joe Blake. While the discussion was too short to get much beyond the usual rhetoric of the importance of quality teachers, engaging kids and strong relationships between schools and families, it was interesting to hear some of the responses from Joe Blake when asked about the specifics of the what the Denver Chamber has done to engage kids.

Blake mentioned that the chamber was supporting internships and urging Denver Public Schools high school counselors to point out career opportunities. Not exactly effective strategies, to put it mildly. DPS, like most school districts in Colorado, has ratios of kids to school counselors of over 400 to 1. Counselors with those kinds of workloads won’t know kids well enough to point out career opportunities, or do much of anything personalized.

This kind of palaver makes one wonder what the chamber leadership is thinking and doing. If as Blake and other chamber honchos never cease to remind us, education is vitally important as to the economy, then surely there must be some more intensive interventions at the chamber’s disposal.

Imagine what might happen if the chamber spent as much time and money on education as it did getting transportation improved through passage of the multi-billion dollar transportation initiative “Fastracks.”

It would be nice if the sleeping giant of the business community woke up to the realities facing urban public education in Colorado. Then again, maybe they needn’t do anything. Perhaps cheap immigrant service labor from Mexico and knowledge workers with college degrees from other states will be Colorado’s ticket to the 21st century economy.