By Jennifer Walmer, DFER-CO State Director
The heat wave in Denver may be over, but Denver Public Schools (DPS) Board elections are heating up. We need people to take notice, get involved and vote for candidates who will support the progressive policies of the current DPS leadership.
Why is this election so important? Big gains have been made at DPS in the last several years under Superintendent Tom Boasberg and our reform-minded Board of Education, including the creation of a unified enrollment system, replication of high-quality charter networks, and most recently, a commitment to our youngest learners by passing an initiative which increased the number of early childhood education (ECE) seats for three and four-year-olds. We need these improvements to not only continue, but to accelerate post election. And, with four of the seven board seats up for grabs—and two incumbents who aren’t seeking re-election—we need to take this election seriously, or risk returning to the status-quo that existed prior to these advancements, that hurt Denver kids for so many years.
This profile of Superintendent Tom Boasberg that ran a few weeks ago in The Denver Post is an indicator of the high stakes behind this election, and what the outcome could mean for Denver students.
DFER-CO has been one of the leaders behind the scenes of the DPS race working hard to recruit the best reform-minded candidates to the school board, help run their campaigns, and raise much-needed campaign cash.
We believe the four candidates DFER-CO endorsed will make the best decisions for our students—even the very tough decisions that often come from school reform. Most importantly, they will continue the strong education reform momentum currently coursing through the district and our state.
The exciting announcement last week that DPS has moved up in the state’s performance rating framework, known as the School District Performance Framework (SPF), is promising. The Colorado Department of Education’s 2013 performance rating for DPS was upgraded from the second-lowest rating on the framework, “Accredited with Priority Improvement Plan” to “Accredited with Improvement Plan,” which is a big step in the right direction. It is just one indicator that the reforms that have occurred at DPS over the past few years are beginning to have an impact on student achievement.
DPS’s improved rating is the result of steady gains in student performance over the past three years. It is the only district among the state’s eight largest that had a year-over-year increase in the total percentage of points earned on the District Performance Framework.
“This is another encouraging sign of progress, and it’s the result of the countless hours of hard work and dedication that our principals, teachers, and support staff have put into improving our schools,” Boasberg said at the SPF announcement at Northwest Denver’s Skinner Middle School, which has shown strong performance gains over the past several years.
Although we’ve seen these large gains over the last few years, former Superintendent—now Senator—Michael Bennet initiated these improvements when he introduced the Denver Plan in 2005. The goal of the plan was to change the conversation in Denver about the quality of our schools and the need for reform. It focused on three key strategies: retaining, rewarding, and recruiting great people; strong family and community engagement; and strategic management of financial resources.
“When we launched the Denver Plan, DPS had some of the lowest rates of academic growth and performance in the state of Colorado,” said Boasberg at the SPF announcement. “Today, DPS is outpacing all other large school districts in academic growth and is seeing steady gains in performance in all core subjects.”
Prior to the start of the Denver Plan reform program, DPS had the lowest year-to-year academic growth of any major district in the state. Since then, DPS has consistently gained ground on the rest of the state in percentage of students performing at or above grade level, and Denver schools have become the fastest-growing major district in the state in terms of year-to-year academic growth (actually DPS is also the fastest growing urban school district in the country in terms of enrollment). For the second consecutive year, students showed more academic growth on average than those in any of Colorado’s 12 largest school districts. The cumulative Median Growth Percentile (MGP) for Denver, which measures year-to-year academic growth among peer students across Colorado, is the highest among Colorado’s major school districts at 163.
Education reform in Denver has generated strong momentum and we’ve seen significant gains in the achievement levels of our kids, but we can’t stop now. As Boasberg stated in his speech at Skinner Middle School, “We still have a lot of work ahead to get us to the top of the state’s ratings and to ensure we’re getting every student on a path to success, but we continue to be encouraged by the signs of progress toward those goals.”
As you can see, electing the right candidates who support reform policies that have already made a significant impact in Denver and who are willing to continue these reforms is critical to protecting these gains, and advancing others. We MUST maintain at least a 4-3 reform advantage on the DPS board, or all of the progress made by this administration is at risk.
Click here to get involved and make your commitment to Denver’s kids.
Jennifer Walmer is the state director of DFER Colorado (DFER-CO). Prior to joining DFER-CO, Walmer was the Chief of Staff for the Superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, Tom Boasberg, where she helped pass a $500 million bond and mill initiative in November 2012. Walmer also was the Superintendent’s primary strategic liaison with a divided Board of Education; managed government affairs for the district; and led strategic partnership efforts with community organizations. Read more about Jen here.