From the editor

My ballot arrived in the mail Saturday, which got me thinking about how pivotal a moment the upcoming school board election represents for Denver Public Schools.

Three of the seven board seats are in play on November 6. One seat is open, because northwest Denver's Lucia Guzman is prohibited by term limits from running again. The other two seats are held by strong incumbents, Theresa PeƱa and Bruce Hoyt, both of whom are running for reelection against determined, active opposition.

The Denver Classroom Teachers Association is putting its substantial muscle behind an effort to unseat PeƱa and Hoyt, perceived by the union as too much in lockstep with Supt. Michael Bennet.  Bennet is making the union squirm by pushing for fundamental change in the way the district is operated. The union is also endorsing a candidate for Guzman's seat who is a total unknown, but who the union must believe is supportive of its positions.

Union leadership perceives Bennet's plan as top-down and disrespectful of teachers. It's not at all clear that most teachers agree with the DCTA on this. But the union calls the shots in terms of endorsements, campaign contributions and active campaigning on behalf of its anointed candidates.

Taken in isolation, school board politics is about as un-sexy as it gets. But the stakes in this election couldn't be higher. The future of DPS could hang in the balance.

In some ways, implementation of Bennet's change agenda has been slow to develop. But it's picking up steam now, with the announcement of a first-round of proposed school closures and, even more significant, an upcoming new schools creation effort.

It's hard to imagine anything more damaging to education in Denver than reversing course just as signs of real change are beginning to appear. Yet that's what would almost certainly happen if the DCTA's slate of candidates were to win. It's even conceivable that a substantially altered board could lead to Bennet's departure.

At least two of the candidates endorsed by the DCTA have been critical of some aspects of the DPS school closure plan, and its impact on neighborhoods and residents. It is hard to overstate how wrongheaded that position is.

If anything, the Bennet team, ever mindful of political realities, has been overly cautious in its closure planning. The eight schools being shuttered this fall were fairly easy calls, as these things go. The district could have and probably should have gone further. But the more schools are slated for closure, the more unhappy voters there are, poised to throw the bums out.ā€¯

While the move toward school closures has been a bit timid, early signs are encouraging on the new schools front. While other Colorado districts (first Mapleton and, just last week, Aurora) are creating new school entirely from within, Bennet announced earlier this month that the DPS plan will include soliciting proposals for new schools from outside entities.

This is good news. Cities like Chicago and New York, where large-scale new schools movements are showing at least some signs of success, are blowing open their formerly closed systems and inviting outsiders to join the party. That Denver will do the same offers some real hope for the future. But all of that could be stopped next month, if election results go DCTA's way.

Three years from now, DPS could be a cutting-edge district, well on the road to significant improvement and ongoing innovation. Or, it could be yet another urban district in steady decline, heading inexorably toward a death spiral.

So, whatever your position on this, please vote. And remember: it's a mail-only ballot.

_______________

This issue features the second monthly installment from Manual High School community liaison Brenda de Luna. As in her previous reflection piece, Brenda demonstrates an uncanny ability to empathize with the students, and to view the world simultaneously from their perspective and the perspective of an adult mentor and supervisor. Manual is lucky to have her.

Article

The Manual Life: Striking a Balance, an Ongoing Challenge

By Brenda de Luna

When I first came to Manual in July I had no idea what the difference was between private schools, charter schools, and alternative schools.  All I knew was that they weren't public, like Manual.  Then I visited KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy.  I'm really not sure what category that school falls into but I was able to see a lot of our kids behaving and performing to a much higher standard than they'd ever been held to in other schools.  And after working with faculty and staff of the new Manual I began to get a feel for what the new Manual was actually going to be: a public school with private school standards.  A lot of the debate about the reopening of Manual has been around this point precisely. 

Because Manual has been such a historical marker in the Denver community we all want for it to be the neighborhood school it always had been.  We want our homecoming game and dance; we want the Manual jackets and shirts and sweaters and buttons and pompons; we want the legacy to continue.  On the other hand, we know that as a neighborhood school Manual had a lot of failures.  Not so much because Manual was a failure but because somewhere along the path to greatness Manual was failed by society.  Vicious cycle is what I call it.  It's hard to give when you ain't got none.  Either way, there were serious problems inside the walls of this institution.  We're talking violence, gangs, drugs, sex.  We're talking very little academic progress for the majority of the students and few options for those who actually had potential. 

Now, because I've attended both public and private schools, I have to point out the failures of a more rigorous system as well.  With our focus on academics -- which, when you think about it, is where the focus should be -- we sometimes tend to slight all the things that are vital to the social growth of our students.  I hear from the kids day in and day out that they feel as if they are still in middle school.  They don't feel like we're treating them as young adults. In part, this is because they're not acting like young adults yet, and partly because it's still scary to let them make the right choices on their own.  I take their cell phones during school because I don't trust them to use them appropriately.  And I don't trust them to use the phones appropriately because we've already seen them using their phones to create disruptive situations at the school. 

Closed campus in our case doesn't even include the entirety of the school.  Manual High School is too big for our students to be wandering through it on their own.  What can we do to make sure that our students are prepared for successful lives after high school and actually have a life while they're in it?

We've had to find that middle ground that's going to get our students at least proficiency to levels and still give them the high school experience they deserve.  We've been pushing standards-based academics since day one.  We've looked at every piece of data we have for these kids and used it create SMART goals that promote and generate success.  (SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant/Rewarding, and Timed.)  We continue to have professional development sessions twice a week where we look at the student population in general and at each individual to make sure that we're on the right path when it comes to teaching them.

The perfect example of the other half of high school is the homecoming festivities we just had.  Manual is so lucky to have teachers like Ms. Lizzie Krueger who remembers what it was like to be elected Homecoming Queen.  And Ms. Nicole Monet who knows that THE right dress for the dance is crucial.  Mr. Doug Clinkscales knows a good Powder Puff game is just the appetizer for the big homecoming game.  Manual had all of this going on last week, because we know we have WHOLE children in our care. 

We know these kids need the educational support and the social support and that having one without the other may be OK for a little while. But just like being on a one-food-type dietary plan, our kids will be deficient without balance.  It's tough.

It is so tough to strike that balance.  It is so tough to guide our young men and women in a way that they will eventually want to act like young men and women on their own and not have to be monitored to do so.  We don't want to be so permissive that they never get to it, or so pushy, if I may, that they resent it. 

New beginnings in uncharted territory are always tough.  Next year our sophomore class will be able to do some of the guiding for our new freshman and maybe then it'll be easier for all of us.  Once we get the recipe down right, it'll be a piece of cake.       

Blog highlights

Charter advocates: please justify your support

Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Written by: Quique

In Alan's What if choice doesn't work? post, he suggests that he and other supporters of school choice should perhaps avoid the trap of believing only data that reinforces our preconceived notions and should be serious about data-driven, researched-based decision-making " paying heed to research evidence showing no pattern of achievement benefits.  Alan's post was prompted by Steven Levitt's own blog post about a new study from his colleagues at the University of Michigan.

But Alan also wrote, You can take or leave this study and its findings, I suppose. Many of us are so convinced about the merits of choice that the findings of one study probably won't shake our conviction.ā€¯

One study?  Levitt's own blog post mentions another study he conducted, published the previous year in the top-notch journal Econometricaā€¯, which reached the same findings.

Here's the full cite for that one: Cullen, Julie Berry, Brian A. Jacob and Steven Levitt (2006). The Effect of School Choice on Participants: Evidence from Randomized Lotteries, Econometrica. 74 (5):1191-1230.

And here's a pre-publication version available online.

The truth is that a large and still-growing body of research is out there for anyone interested in looking. A while back, as part of an earlier exchange about charter schools, I offered a long commentā€¯  that I'd like to now offer as a full post. In a nutshell, I did some quick on-line snooping about research into the effects of charter schools on achievement. Summing up these results in my comment, I wrote, one cannot read through this list and conclude that charter schools are meaningfully doing anything, on average, to increase student achievement.ā€¯

Given this, and given the negative unintended consequence of students being stratified/segregated into different schools, I urged those who see charter schools as a way to improve schooling to answer my earlier question, what, if anything, would it take in terms of evidence to make you end that support?

I remain genuinely interested in using this blog to better understand why and how charter school reform has gained such a strong following and to understand the extent to which its appeal is tied to outcomes.

So here are the results of that earlier morning's research, which used a website that is part of the Center for Reinventing Public Education and the National Charter School Research Project. There's a nice feature there called Research Library, which lets visitors sort through studies on different topics.

Part of what the NCSRP folks do is to (for many of the studies, at least) rank the rigor of the methods used by the researchers/study. I sorted out all the achievement studies on the site to see what the overall picture looks like. I included all studies ranked Fair or above, beginning in 2005.  Here are the results:

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/35: Quality: Very good.  Results: students made considerably smaller achievement gains on state assessments in charter schools than they would have in traditional public schools.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/205: Quality: Very good.  Results: charter school students are performing as well as, and sometimes better than, their counterparts in regular public schools.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/206: Quality: Fair.  Results: After adjusting for student characteristics, charter school mean scores in reading and mathematics remained lower, on average, than those for public noncharter schools.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/207: Quality: Very good.  Results: Elementary charter school students are shown to have made greater gains than if they had remained in traditional schools.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/18: Quality: Fair.  Results: the test scores of charter school students do not improve, and may actually decline, relative to those of neighboring public school students.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/21: Quality: Fair.   Results: after controlling for racial composition, only California among the major charter states retains a significant charter school advantage in reading proficiency. For math, charter schools do not have any statistically significant edge over their matched traditional public schools.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/34: Quality: Very good.   Results: after an initially difficult startup period, charters on average perform on par with traditional public schools in math and reading.

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/36: Quality: Very good.   Results: students entering North Carolina charter schools in grades 4-8 made smaller achievement gains than they would have had they remained in traditional public schools. The study also finds that this negative impact is attributable primarily to the first year. Students who remained in charters for more than one year kept pace with students in traditional schools. The negative effects of attending a charter school are considerably greater for students in newly opened charter schools than for students in charter schools that are more established.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/45: Quality: Very good/good.   Results: Students who attended charter schools starting in the elementary grades scored higher in both math and reading. For students applying to the 6th, 7th, or 8h grade, charter attendance did not have a statistically significant effect.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/60: Quality: Excellent/Very good.   Results: The authors examine the performance of different types of charter schools in California: classroom based, non-classroom based, startup, and conversion. They find significant differences in performance between the school types, with non-classroom based schools pulling down the average test scores for both conversion and startup schools. Their analysis suggests that startup classroom-based charter schools provide the greatest promise of improving performance while non-classroom based charter schools are performing poorly.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/62: Quality: Very good.   Results: charter schools with the highest degree of perceived accountability produce the strongest score growth and charters with high degrees of teacher mission commitment and leadership stability produce the strongest growth rates in reading and math.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/66: Quality: Fair. Results: non-high-school charter students are doing as well or better than if they remained at traditional public schools. In addition, traditional public school students in districts experiencing charter competition are doing better than students in districts without charter schools.ā€¯

http://www.ncsrp.org/cs/csr/view/csr_res/69: Quality: Fair. Results: Charter schools were found to have made greater year-to-year gains on several topics, including 4th grade math, reading and writing and 6th grade writing.ā€¯

One Response to Charter advocates: please justify your supportā€¯

1. Ax Says:
   October 9th, 2007 at 2:39 pm

Goodness me this makes me glad I am not in Ed Policy. I started reading Education Week a few years ago, and I quickly found that if you have a point of view, you can find a study that backs it up. Maybe I should be more impressed by citation volume; I'm not.

I'll leave the policy nitpicks to others. Here is my justification in Denver: 1) Denver School of Science and Technology, 2) KIPP Sunshine Peak, 3) West Denver Preperatory Charter School. All have open admissions policies; the first has Reduced and Free Lunch of 40%, the latter two are close to 90%.  Please give me just one District middle or high school with open admissions and RFL of over 20% that is comparable by any measure of student achievement (hint: Slevins, DSA, Morey and Hamilton don't meet the criteria). I think you have 60+ schools to chose from.

And can I challenge you on the same level? What is your affirmative alternative? More District schools? More money to those schools? It's great to be against things; what are you for?

What parents don't know can hurt their kids

Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Written by: B.A. Gardener

Last week, Pol Econ Ed referenced a new report -- The Proficiency Illusion on state test standards.    Colorado was the report's poster child for the country's lowest proficiency standards in math and reading"grades 3-8.   Ouch is right!   What's even worse -- the report found that states are aiming particularly low when it comes to their expectations for younger children, setting elementary students up to fail as they progress through their academic careers, and that eight grade tests were sharply harder to pass ā€¦ than those in earlier grades.  Full report here; Colorado portion of the full report here.

How many parents of Colorado public school kids know that proficiency for the CSAP test is a different animal than proficiency for a Colorado school to make it over the No Child Left Behind bar?  How many could read a school accountability report or a local newspaper report and know that, for instance, in 2005, Colorado's 5^th grade math and reading CSAPs, its 3^rd and 4^th grade reading CSAP, or its 7^th and 8^th grade math CSAP, were easier to pass than the 2002 CSAPs?  Not many, I bet.

How many think their child who scores proficient is on the right path?   Most, I bet.   How can parents truly be involved and fully advocate for their kids when the information given to them is murky and incomplete?

No wonder many parents are saying math is important for kids, but not for their kid.  If you really want to be frightened, read about what parents and B students in neighboring Kansas think about math and science.

Both Colorado and national business and education policymakers are stressing the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills throughout the P-20 education spectrum to preserve and grow the state and national economy. (See Colorado Wins $500K "STEM" Education Grant).

But, just across the border, only 25% of Kansas/Missouri parents thought their children should be studying more math and science.  Almost three-quarters (70%) thought things "are fine as they are now.ā€¯  Read here the report, Important, But Not for Me: Kansas and Missouri Students and Parents Talk About Math, Science and Technology Education, Public Agenda, September 2007.  

One Response to What parents don't know can hurt their kidsā€¯

1. Alan Gottlieb Says:
   October 10th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

Also, how many parents will defend, virtually to the death, a truly terrible school their kids attend?  Witness the uproar around some of the DPS school closures announced last week. These schools had been under-performing, at best, for years.  And angry, uninformed parents make great sound-bites, so they get on the TV news, which grants their ignorance instant legitimacy.

Another dissenting voice on choice

Thursday, October 11, 2007
Written by: Alan Gottlieb

The following is from a friend in Boston, from the world of academe. If you disagree with him, all you choice advocates, please don't take it out on me. I'm still licking wounds from my earlier post that dared question choice:

Hi,

Pat McQuillan from the East coast ( Boston College) chiming in here.  Just wanted to respond to Alan's comment that school choice (broadly defined), spurs traditional public schools to better performance, because it introduces competition into what had been a monopolistic system."I'd just wonder what your evidence is for this?  I've spent a good deal of time in schools throughout the country and I've never heard a conversation among teachers where they said they were motivated to work harder because they somehow wanted to do better than a competitor school.  I admit, I'm not the Wall Street Journal; I don't see market forces as a panacea for all social problems, far from it (just think of McDonald's and oil consumption by the U.S.).  But Alan presents this as common sense.

I see the motivation for change, when it actually occurs (which is not that often), much more as a reflection of teachers wanting to meet the needs of their students, not a desire to somehow score higher than a competitor school (unless it's in a sports contest).  As such, I see the motivation for change among teachers to originate from within, because of their values and beliefs about teaching and learning, than from without, because of potential sanctions or rewards.  In essence, I see the profession much more from an altruistic point of view.  Thus, to improve schools, you would want to give teachers more autonomy, more opportunities to assume responsibility for student learning.  Of course, it would help if they were in an environment where they could reasonably act on those ideals, where they had the support and resources to actualize their ideals.

I'm afraid that highly publicized discussions of ill-informed union decisions and policies give the impression that teachers are in the business solely for themselves.  Spending time in classrooms and talking with teachers, I have found that matters are quite different.  To my experience, most teachers care deeply about their students and they will do what they can to enrich their students' education, when they are given the opportunity.  I can't recall any instance of teachers saying they wanted to do a better job so their school could somehow exceed the performance of a competitor.

Regards,

One Response to Another dissenting voice on choiceā€¯

1. Jeff Miller Says:
   October 11th, 2007 at 4:39 pm

I think Pat has missed the point. The competitive rationale for school choice is not about getting teachers to compete with each other for better test scores. The argument is that choice forces innovation at the school and district level " whether it be through the creation of new schools or through the reinvention of an existing school. If a district is losing students and money to private schools, charters or other districts, it may begin creating new options for students and families. But in most cases it's school or district leaders who respond to competition, not individual teachers.

Teachers are not generally change agents or innovators. Although politically they are in general marginally liberal, they tend to be somewhat conservative in their classroom practice: they find an approach that seems to work and they stick with it unless forced to change. They may refine their approach over the years, and occasionally they'll try new things they've seen others succeed with, but, as Pat says, dramatic change is unusual. There are obviously exceptions, and those exceptions are the ones who would gravitate toward charters, magnets, etc.

I do agree with Pat's suggestions about giving teachers more autonomy and responsibility for student learning, but I think it needs to be done in a way that forces them to collaborate in an ongoing way with one another (and provides the time to do so), to use reliable data cut many different ways to make instructional decisions, and to re-assess their methods regularly in light of the data (evidence).

Burying the N-word at Manual High

Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Written by: Alan Gottlieb

Michael Simmons, a Denver Public Schools community liaison who spends much of his time at newly reopened Manual High School, didn't like some of what he was hearing during the first days and weeks of the school year. Specifically, he didn't like the casual, almost flip manner with which African American students, primarily boys, were flinging around the loaded word "nigger."

So Simmons, a powerful presence who never sits still for long, decided to do something about it. What started as a good idea soon morphed into something substantial, and yesterday, the school held a full-blown funeral for "the N-word and all words that hurt," complete with casket, pallbearers and preachers.

Buffalo soldiers on horseback accompanied the casket through the Manual parking lot. A phalanx of Junior ROTC students led the procession of students, and the flower-ringed coffin, into the school's dimly-lit auditorium. The students remained uncharacteristically subdued throughout the 45-minute service, sensing that something somber was transpiring.

Undoubtedly, the slide show behind the stage helped, a rapid succession of klansmen, lynching victims, civil rights workers being beaten

Yessica Holguin, a young woman who graduated from Denver's Kennedy High School, spoke to the 160 students and 40-odd community members, her voice quavering with passion.

"I want every single one of you to promise this today," she said, exhorting the crowd to repeat after her. "I will use the strength of my culture and background to my advantage and to benefit my community. I promise to better myself and I promise to pursue my education beyond high school." She looked up and smiled. "There," she said. "Do you realize what you just promised?"

The Rev. Vernon Jones followed Yessica. "You've all heard that old saying, sticks and stones can break my bones but names will never hurt me, right? Well, that's a lie. Words, names, can hurt."

Whether the lessons of the day stick, and students stop using derogatory terms with one another remains to be seen. But the ceremony's message certainly seemed to rivet their attention.

One Response to Burying the N-word at Manual Highā€¯

1. Nila Says:
   October 11th, 2007 at 8:30 am

That is a wonderful thing to do at that school but what about the other schools that still through the N- word like it is nothing I think it would a dramastic change if all the high schools tried to bury the N word cause now days every race use the word when they are talking to each other why not make a difference an bury it in all high schools around colorado.

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