Denver Public Schools I 2017 Denver Public Schools, May 2017
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START WITH THE FACTS MAY DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS I 2017 DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS, MAY 2017 Acknowledgments A+ Colorado would like to thank the following individuals who lent their time and expertise in the review of this report: Denver Public Schools administration; Betheny Gross and Jordan Posamentier, Center on Reinventing Public Education; Karen Baroody and Jonathan Travers, Education Resource Strategies (ERS); Brenna Copeland, EdPlex; Ali Huberlie and Phil Vaccaro, Parthenon-EY; and David Osborne, Progressive Policy Institute. 2 DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS, MAY 2017 Introduction Denver Public Schools has recently received These are outcomes that the district needs to a slew of accolades: from ranking as the top address. Indeed, the best district for choice in district for school choice to having the second the country should be one in which families highest academic growth of large districts in the are choosing between multiple quality options country, to gaining recognition for its structure without having to trade off academic outcomes, for teacher leadership.1,2,3 proximity, and school model. The highest rates of academic growth in the country should also With all of this recognition it may be tempting mean that more students are mastering the to think the district is on target to reach the content that will prepare them for life after high goals laid out in its strategic plan, Denver Plan school. 2020. By many measures, the district has made substantial progress. The district has rapidly The good news is that Denver already has moved from one of the lowest performing many of the policies and systems in place to districts in the state to one in the middle. The address these challenges. Now it is a question district has more students reading and writing of how policies are being implemented, at grade level than other Colorado districts what is working, and what is being done to serving similar student populations. accelerate those initiatives. This report explores performance data from the past four years, However, at its current pace, the district will showing that Denver has moved to the middle not reach its strategic academic goals. In five of the pack of Colorado districts. This next years, 80% of third graders are supposed to decade of work in Denver Public Schools will read on grade level; today only one in three do. require that the district move from average to Students are still under-prepared for college great. This will be even more challenging, and or a career after high school. ACT scores and require collaboration and commitment from college matriculation rates are flat. Of the the district and the entire Denver community DPS graduates who pursue a postsecondary to ensure that all of our children receive an degree, half still face the reality of having to pay excellent education. It is no longer about for remedial classes. A high-quality education whether the district has these systems in place; is still significantly more difficult to find for it is about the efficacy of these systems and students from low-income families and students how equitable they are. of color. But first, let’s start with the facts. 1 Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst, The 2016 Education Choice and Competition Index. Center on Children and Families at Brookings. (March 2017). Accessed April 24, 2017. https:// www.brookings.edu/interactives/ the-2016-education-choice-and-com- petition-index/ 2 Education Resource Strategies Inc. Denver Public Schools: Leveraging System Transformation to Improve Student Results (March 2017) Accessed April 24, 2017. https:// www.dpsk12.org/wpcontent/uploads/ DPS_ERSreport_march17.pdf 3 National Council on Teacher Quality. “2017 District Winners. Great Districts for Great Teachers.” (2017). Accessed April 24, 2017 http://www.greatdis- tricts.org/district/winners.do 1 DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS, MAY 2017 Who are DPS Students? Denver Public Schools (DPS) is the largest and largest student group. White students make one of the most diverse districts in the state up a larger portion of the population in the of Colorado. DPS has five different regional Southeast and Central parts of the district. School Board Districts, each serving a different The largest proportions of black students are cross-section of DPS kids. Across all five in the Central and Northeast board districts. board districts, the Latinx (a gender-neutral Asian students, multiracial students and Native term for students who identify as Latino or Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander students Latina) population is either the largest or make a up relatively small part of DPS’ student second largest population. In the Southwest population. and Northwest, Latinx students are by far the Figure 1: Race and Ethnicity of Denver Public Schools Students by Region (SY 2015-16) 100% 46% 8% 15% 0.1% 39% 21% 1% 0.1% 2% 0.4% 75% 5% 74% 84% 49% 0.2% 0.1% 5% 29% 50% 6% 30% 25% 21% 22% 13% Percent of Student Population of Percent 3% 8% 0.6% 0.8% 0.6% 0.4% 1% 5% 4% 6% 3% 1% 0% Southeast Southwest Central Northeast Northwest School Board District 1 School Board District 2 School Board District 3 School Board District 4 School Board District 5 Asian Students American Indian or Alaskan Native Students Black Students Latinx Students Multiracial Students Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander Students White Students The Southwest and Northwest DPS Board students with disabilities. The Central and Districts have the highest proportion of Southeast Board Districts have the lowest students eligible for free or reduced price proportions of those same student populations. lunch, emerging multilingual students and Figure 2: Eligibility for Free and Reduced Price Lunch and Students Receiving Specialized Instructional Programming by DPS Region (SY 2015-16) Southeast, School Board District 1 Southwest, School Board District 2 Central, School Board District 3 Northeast, School Board District 4 Northwest, School Board District 5 100% 88% 75% 80% 66% 50% 54% 48% 46% 35% 25% 30% 21% 20% 13% Percent of Student Population of Percent 9% 11% 10% 10% 0% Students Eligible for Free or Reduced Price Lunch Emerging Multilingual Students Students with Disabilities 2 DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS, MAY 2017 Figure 3: Denver Public School Student Demographics (SY 2012-13 to SY 2015-16) 100% 21% 23% White Students Native Hawaiian or Other 0.2% Pacific Islander Students 3% 0.2% 3% 75% 58% Multiracial Students 56% Latinx Students 73% 69% 50% 37% Percent of Student Population of Percent 32% 25% 14% 14% Black Students American Indian or 11% 11% Alaskan Native Students 0.7% 0.6% 3% 3% Asian Students 0% 2012-2013 2015-2016 2012-2013 2015-2016 2012-2013 2015-2016 2012-2013 2015-2016 Students by Race or Emerging Multilingual Students Eligible for Free Students with Disabilities Ethnicity Students (ELL) or Reduced Lunch Over the past three years, DPS’ student students in DPS. At the same time, white population has seen a few important changes. students and multiracial students are now a Emerging multilingual students and students larger proportion of DPS students. Changing eligible for free or reduced price lunch demographics in this large district could be are a smaller proportion of DPS kids than the result of gentrification, increased rental they were three years ago. There is also prices, and low income families and families of a smaller proportion of Latinx and black color moving to outlying school districts. 3 DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS, MAY 2017 How has DPS Performance Changed Over Time? Performance on standardized assessments and districts did relative to other students provides us with one indicator of what students in Colorado schools and districts to better are mastering in school. With the transition from understand student performance over time. TCAP to CMAS PARCC in 2015, results on the This percentile analysis method compares two assessments are not directly comparable. performance in districts to other districts, and In light of this transition, A+ produced an performance in schools to other schools. For analysis that compares how students in schools more on the methodology, see Appendix B. Figure 4: Denver Public Schools’ Relative Performance on Core Academic Assessments (2013-2016) 70 Elementary English Middle School English Language Arts Elementary Math Language Arts 60 56 51 49 50 43 42 41 40 38% 30 35% 35% 32% Percentile Rank Percentile 30% 19 26% 20 17 17 18 15 15 10 0 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 2013 2014 2015 2016 Percent of DPS Students Percentile Rank (TCAP) Percentile Rank (CMAS PARCC) that Met Grade Level Standards (CMAS PARCC) Last year, looking at only one year of CMAS These improvements are considerable, and PARCC data, A+ reported that Denver saw signal that Denver has drastically improved. significant gains in academic performance With that said, it is equally important to note relative to the rest of the state. There were that this analysis shows that this improvement big questions about whether this relative is relative to the rest of the state. To illustrate, improvement would be reflected in the next the percent of students meeting grade year’s data. In 2016 these trends by-and-large level expectations in Denver was greater held. While three to four years ago performance in 2016 than in 2015 across elementary in Denver consistently hovered in the bottom ELA, elementary Math, and middle school 15 to 20% of all districts in the state, in the past ELA (even though relative performance in two years, academic performance in Denver is elementary Math was slightly lower). Further, much closer to the middle of the state. To put the percent of students reaching grade level this in context, there were few districts who expectations—30% in elementary Math, 35% saw gains in academic performance as large in elementary English Language Arts, 38% in as those in Denver, and no district serving middle school English Language Arts—is still far more than 10,000 students saw larger gains in below what we should expect for students.