From the editor
Sunday afternoon I attended a press conference in the soaring common space of the Denver School of Science and Technology, an inspiring and symbolically appropriate location, given the message.
The gathering heralded the formation of the Education Equality Project, a non-partisan national movement aimed at spurring the radical changes our education system needs if it’s ever to stop circling the drain.
New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein (who co-chairs the project with the Rev. Al Sharpton) was the front man, backed by several local political and educational luminaries. Klein did a fine job, speaking with what seemed to be genuine passion. He hammered home the importance of acting now, aggressively and without undue concern for bruising the feelings of those individual and institutions perhaps needing a forceful shove.
“This is going to make people uncomfortable. People always like happy talk. But happy talk isn't going to force this issue,” he said. Never mind that some of the local speakers sharing Klein’s microphone couldn’t resist sugaring their remarks with – you guessed it -- happy talk.
In the Blog Highlights and Ednews Highlights sections of this newsletter you’ll find links to a story and blog post about this new endeavor, and Sunday’s press conference. So I won’t regurgitate the background information here. My bottom-line reaction: the rhetoric is impressive and the goals and mission admirable.
However, I remain skeptical-bordering-on-cynical. Why? Simple. Because, having been immersed in the world of public education for well over a decade now, I’ve seen similar efforts explode on the scene with great fanfare and then fizzle out almost immediately, leaving no discernible impact.
I challenged Klein on this, and he told me I was right to be skeptical, given the track record of previous efforts. But he insisted this one was different, because the coalition is so broad-based, and because a new generation of superintendents and political leaders see this as the preeminent civil rights issue of our time.
Besides, the not-so-subtle subtext of the Education Equality Project mission is to fire a warning shot across the bow of teachers unions. The status quo is not acceptable; kids, not adults should be our primary concern; and a Democratic president won’t take the heat off if we have anything to say about it. That’s what these folks are really saying.
Given the focus this event placed on education reform, it seemed the ideal week to publish the article featured in this newsletter. Celeste Archer, a veteran geography teacher at Denver’s East High School, just moved back home to Arkansas. But she left me with some unexploded ordinance, that I’ve been detonating on the Schools for Tomorrow blog over the past few weeks.
But this one seemed worthy of placing in your mailboxes. While in Denver, Celeste, a passionate and aggressive advocate for her students, never cared much whether she offended adults while trying to make sure her kids got what they deserved.
As you’ll see below, Celeste, and her articulate student Rhay Garret, take on one of the most stubborn issues in the world of school reform: the achievement gap. Celeste wanted Rhay’s work shared with a wide audience. You may not agree with Rhay’s conclusions, but they are based on keen observation as well as his own personal experience.
And remember, the release of CSAP scores is just around the next bend. So this topic undoubtedly will be resurfacing soon.
--Alan Gottlieb
One student’s perspective on the achievement gap
By Celeste Archer
That questionably wonderful resource called Wikipedia defines the achievement gap as follows:
“An achievement gap refers to the observed disparity on a number of educational measures between the performance of groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability, and socioeconomic status. The achievement gap can be observed on a variety of measures, including standardized test scores, grade point average, dropout rates, and college-enrollment and -completion rates. While most of the data presented in this article comes from the United States, similar or different gaps exist for these, and other groups in other nations.”
Pundits far and wide have studied it, ruminated about it, developed programs for it – it is arguably the most discussed phenomena in education, since the beginning of education.
It very well may be the unsolvable and unanswerable question. I don’t think so but my solution is long, messy, arduous, and expensive and begins at birth.
Last year, one of my 9th grade students asked permission to take a real, literal, look at the achievement gap at East High School. For 10 minutes after the final bell rang, every day for 10 days, this student stood outside my door and recorded what he saw. From this data he developed a chart and from that data he wrote an indictment of those he feels create, maintain and celebrate the achievement gap.
Rhay will forever be a favorite student of mine. Even when he was no longer in my class, he checked in with me on a regular basis. He begins his junior year at East next year. I hope someone will read what he wrote below and take this young man on – he really could be the next W.E.B. Du Bois or, my own hero, Bill Cosby. Not sure which. Maybe the ultimate combination of the two. He just needs someone to help him navigate the writing and college world – someone who recognizes genius in a tall, urban savvy teenage package.
Is My Future in the Hallways?
By Rhay Garret
Where did it start? Was it the graffiti on the tables? Or is it the whispers in the back of the classrooms? No, that’s not it. I now believe it started in the hallway. The spinal cord of the school, helping to lead students to the source. The source is the classrooms. “The Brain.” Like the spinal cord, it only sends the message to us. It is up to the student to walk through the door. But some of us are paralyzed and cannot feel the source sending the message. They numb themselves to their own future, replacing it with weed and Church in the City. Thus I found 36% of our students in the hallway after the bell rings.
After a week of standing, watching, I’ve figured out that most who are in the hallway are black and Latino. The very minority of our country. Myself being a black man, I know why we are there. We are there because our friends are there. Popularity is there. Now reading this you might say there is more than one way to become popular. Well here in my generation it is getting the girls. Buying Jordans and clothes. Also the chill moments that often lead to smoking. Or, worst of all, street gang forming.
Now I can’t say all late comers are in the hallway because of this. Many say that RTD has a direct involvement. Buses coming late and never on time. I can see this as a once and a while excuse. But why is it always the same people? I can see them putting tacks in their shoes. I can see it in the way they walk back to their classrooms. Every step hurting their chances of getting where they wanted. A sickness making our generation weak and powerless.
We don’t care any more. We blacks and Latinos think we don’t have anything to work for. Not our rights or our pride. We live on the system. We live on the spinal cord never really getting the message. Sitting, waiting for our chance, never reaching for it. Only staying within fingertip reach.
EdNews Highlights
Heavyweights urge radical ed. changes
By Alan Gottlieb
A coterie of Colorado political heavyweights joined New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein Sunday to trumpet a new national effort to force radical education reform on recalcitrant special interests.
The newly formed, non-partisan Education Equality Project, co-chaired by Klein and the Rev. Al Sharpton, is framing school reform as a civil rights issue whose time, after decades of stagnation, has finally arrived.
“Every social movement in this country’s history has been built on failure, failure, failure, and failure, before reaching critical mass,” Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper told Education News Colorado following Sunday’s press conference. Education reform’s time has finally arrived, he said.
Retiring St. Vrain Supt. Reflects on his tenure
By Gina Bernacchi
Randy Zila, Superintendent of Schools for the St. Vrain Valley School District—who successfully guided the district through a financial recovery from a $13.9 million budget deficit— recently announced his intention to retire at the end of the 2008-2009 academic year.
Zila, 56, was hired by St. Vrain in July 2002. In addition to helping the district recover financially, during his tenure standardized test scores increased throughout the district. Zila and the leadership team he assembled implemented one of the state’s first post-secondary curriculum alignment programs.
He was named Colorado’s 2008 Superintendent of the Year. Education News Colorado recently sat down with Zila to pick his brain about the state of education in his district, the state and the nation.
Blog highlights
North principal departure is bad news, plain and simple
Friday, July 11, 2008
Written by: Alan Gottlieb
There simply can’t be any good news in the fact that JoAnn Trujillo-Hays, brought in with great fanfare to redesign Denver’s North High School, is leaving after just one full year on the job.
DPS is doing the usual spinning of this, as it must, but Trujillo-Hays’ departure suggests that forces aligned against real change have again worn down people trying to make something significant happen.
Just last August, the Post and the Rocky wrote stories trumpeting the changes coming to North, including implementation of The College Board’s EXCELerator college prep program. Community groups like Padres Unidos got behind the plan. Top DPS officials told people to keep a close eye on North, that great things would happen there. Real momentum seemed to be building.
But a brewing parent revolt at Trujillo-Hays’ old school, Academia Ana Marie Sandoval, combined with a reported lack of consistent district support and attention to the North endeavor, sent the capable and committed principal packing. She knows she can make a difference returning to Sandoval, so I suppose that’s where she belongs. But it’s a big blow to North, and to the change efforts struggling to gain momentum there.
Across town, at Manual High School, Principal Rob Stein is having at least moderate success because he recognizes that he’s basically on his own, and that he can’t count on the district for significant support. He has found other sources of aid, and the reform there is moving along.
Abraham Lincoln High School Assistant Principal Edwin Salem, an unknown quantity, will be the interim principal at North. I wish him well.
School board member Arturo Jimenez is quoted in today’s Post saying of the North changes: "This is very good for north Denver. (The district) has put leadership in positions that correspond to their greatest strengths."
What a load of hooey.
Ed. Equality Project: hot air on a summer Sunday?
Friday, July 11, 2008
Written by: Alan Gottlieb
Coming to a press conference near you: The Education Equality Project. Led by NYC Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, a diminutive heavyweight, the EEP rolls into Denver Sunday for a 2:30 p.m. press conference.
That’s right. A press conference. On a Sunday afternoon. In the middle of summer. Oh well, I’ll be there to cover it in my Education News Colorado reporter hat. I guess this is what we get for hosting the convention this fall. After all, this is a project of Democrats for Education Reform. Whitney Tilson calls it “the teacher unions’ worst nightmare.”
The project sounds worthy:
“…a new organization focused on transforming America’s public schools and educational outcomes for high-needs students. The Project will challenge politicians, public officials, educators, union leaders, and others to view fixing public schools as the foremost civil rights issue of the early 21st Century. It will focus America’s attention on its highest needs students, who 54 years after Brown v. Board of Education, still receive far less educational opportunity and often struggle and fail in school.”
It’s studded with big names spanning the political spectrum – among them Geoffrey Canada, Corey Booker (rising star mayor of Newark), Chicago Supt. Arne Duncan, our own Peter Groff, the Ed Trust’s Kati Haycock, Roy Romer…the list goes on and on.
And it’s co-chaired by Joel Klein and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Talk about strange bedfellows!
So is this another high-wattage political stunt, or will this group insist on cutting through the happy-talk B.S. that permeates Eduworld? Sounds like a question I’d better ask Sunday.
Around here, certainly, there’s often a lot more spin than substance, and some of the local luminaries participating in Sunday’s press conference are spinners par excellence when it comes to our local schools. Count me skeptical until EEP proves me wrong.
So head on over to the Denver School of Science and Technology (2000 Valentia St) Sunday at 2:30, and see whether there’s more hot air outside or in.
The elephant in the room
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Written by: David Ethan Greenblog
Those of you who have been following this or other ed blogs, or whose lives are sufficiently empty that they read Ed Week, have probably noticed a certain pattern: the arguments about what to do to fix the system are frustratingly circular.
Take ProComp. The teachers union argues that the bulk of additional public money should go to more experienced teachers. DPS says the money should focus on attracting new blood to the system. Folks on the outside wonder whether more money for teachers, young or old, will lead to better results. But here’s something none of the advocates have said: "If you spend the money my way, I can prove that it will result in 24 more Hispanic kids graduating fully prepared for college. That’s 15 more students than my opponent’s strategy."
In fact, no one will say what the results of ProComp, or almost any other expenditure, will be in terms of a correlation between the investment and the result.
Let me illustrate the point a different way. What does it cost a school district to produce one low-income Hispanic student who graduates high school ready to attend a four-year college? What district in Colorado is most efficient in achieving that result? How large a dollar difference is there between the best district’s performance in this category and the worst? What does it cost the best district in the nation? Is there anything the best performing district does differently that might account for the better performance, and save taxpayers money?
I can’t answer that question, and neither can you. In fact, no one can.
Why? Because no one measures the cost of outcomes. No one measures what it costs to achieve a desired educational result.
Even more odd, few districts even bother to define what a desired educational result might be.
Remember, it wasn’t until this year that there was even a national standard for defining the drop-out rate.
Remember the Denver Plan? Here’s its first objective:
All students will engage at every grade level in a rigorous course of study in the Denver Public Schools and, upon graduation, will exceed state performance standards in four core subject areas (literacy, math, science and social studies); be prepared to succeed in college/other post-secondary opportunities; and be critical thinkers.
The problem with this objective is that it is non-quantifiable. It says, for example, that upon graduation, all students will exceed the state performance standards. But it doesn’t say: "All students will graduate". Nor does it say they whether its a two or four year college, or whether they will "be prepared to succeed in college without remediation". No numbers, no where, no how.
Now, according to the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) "report cards", DPS spends upwards of $700 million annually, or roughly $10K per student per year. Is that money being well spent? The only way to answer that is to have some measurable outputs, and see how they are doing.
Let me digress by pointing out that this essay is not about DPS, and that, as I will explain over time (since I intend to write about this a lot), DPS actually understands the nature of this problem better than almost any district in the nation. I could use Aurora, or Mapleton, or for that matter Cherry Creek or Scarsdale, and the point would be the same. At least DPS has a plan. Most districts nationwide don’t even have a mission statement saying that graduating students able to perform at a certain level is what the district is supposed to do. There are no agreed-upon output standards, and because they don’t exist, it is impossible to measure performance against dollars invested. So instead we waste a lot of time arguing about dollar inputs.
What might an output standard be? Well, the Greenberg Standard for being considered "college ready" is scoring proficient or higher on the 10th grade CSAPS, and achieving a 20 or higher on the ACT composite. Somewhat arbitrary, but it more or less aligns with the CCHE college admission index, and the data is more or less accessible from the CDE homepage. It basically means a student could attend UNC or Western State without the need for remediation.
So how much does it cost DPS to generate one low-income Hispanic student who graduates, by the Greenberg Standard, "college ready"?
The primitive calculus goes something like this: Take the cohort of all the free/reduced fund eligible Hispanic students who enrolled in DPS over the past 13 years as potential members of the Class of 2008. Multiply that by $8000, which roughly represents, in constant dollars, the amount of per pupil revenue and federal money that was allocated annually to educate these kids. Now, find the total number of kids in the cohort who actually graduated in 2008 having met the Greenberg Standard.
Use that as the denominator…for those a bit slow in math, that means take all the money DPS spent on all the kids, and divide it by the number of kids who met the standard. Throw in a "fudge factor" to account for kids who left the DPS system but didn’t drop out and met the standard.
What you will find, in general terms, is that for every 100 shiny happy Hispanic boys and girls who walked into kindergarten with their heads held high, perhaps 3 walked out in 2008 being college ready, at least by the Greenberg Standard. That’s a 97 percent failure rate, although if you take into account the "fudge factor", maybe its only a 90 percent failure rate. Either way it means DPS invests somewhere north of $4 million to produce one "success"…and believe me, that’s a low estimate.
By contrast, I can send a kid to Graland and Colorado Academy for roughly $250,000 (constant dollars) with a high level of confidence that the child, regardless of race or family income, will come out college ready.
I’ve deliberately picked a hard case; you could argue that the Greenberg Standard is unreasonably high. If we asked how DPS performs with white, middle-class girls, my guess is that the output costs would be pretty reasonable, compared to other districts and private schools. But no one knows, because no one keeps the data or asks the question.
No doubt there are dozens of flaws in my methodology, but it is "directionally correct" and it does illustrate the problem. We don’t know, and we don’t talk about, what the outcome costs are. And if we don’t know, then what is the point of debating who gets the crumbs in ProComp, or whether charter schools are a good or bad investment for a district, and a million other questions?
So next time you advocate a specific reform, tell us not just what it costs but how it will change the cost of a given outcome…that should save a lot of trees, and, in the case of blogs, make life easier on those poor, innocent electrons.
2 Responses to “The elephant in the room”
1. Jumbo Says:
July 10th, 2008 at 2:24 pm e
I agree that clear targets and indicators and quantifiable evidence are ideal. But it’s politically impossible for a district to establish unambiguous graduation targets. If a district says “100% of entering freshmen will graduate,” they’re setting themselves up for failure. There are too many factors they can’t control. And if they choose a more realistic number, say 65%, or even 95%, they’ll get attacked for “giving up” on some students. Politically, it’s a no-win situation.
This is not to say we shouldn’t try, but I think we need to acknowledge that the fact that an idea makes sense may actually guarantee that it can’t happen. Our ideals sometimes get in the way of our objectivity.
2. David Ethan Greenberg Says:
July 10th, 2008 at 4:13 pm e
Well, the district is going to be held accountable, in terms of having to report its true graduation rates. While it is definitely true that a 100 percent graduation rate has to be considered an “aspirational goal” (assuming you actually have to learn something in order to graduate), a district needs to have a realistic goal that it needs to aim for…otherwise what’s the point?
If we were honest about the costs involved, and had a national database to compare results, then it might not be politically suicidal for a district to aspire to a 70 percent graduation rate…it might, in the context of other urban districts, be a significant achievement.
But if we continue to pretend the elephant ain’t there, nothing is going to change.
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