DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS OFFICE of the SUPERINTENDENT TEL 720-423-3316 FAX 720-423-3317 Web
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DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT TEL 720-423-3316 FAX 720-423-3317 Web WWW.dpsk12.org April 25, 2006 Dear Mayor Peña and Mayor Webb: We want to thank you for attending last week’s conversation with the DPS Board of Education and administration on Denver’s significant achievement gap and the ways in which our strategic plan intends to address the needs of all children, especially children of color. We are following up to provide more context for the direction of the district and, more specifically, for our decision to temporarily close and then reopen Manual High School. As you know, 57% of our district is Latino; 19% is African-American; and 20% is Anglo. Sixty-seven percent of our children qualify for free and reduced lunch. The data show us that we have a tremendous amount of work to do. We have enormous gaps in proficiency at every level of our district and in every subject. We include here the proficiency data related to Reading and Math, the cornerstones of academic achievement. (The tables show the percentage of students taking last year’s CSAP who scored proficient or higher.) Anglo African-American Latino Elementary School Reading 76% 42% 34% Middle School Reading 73% 36% 25% High School Reading 71% 34% 24% Elementary School Math 75% 35% 35% Middle School Math 53% 15% 15% High School Math 37% 5% 5% The percentage differences are shocking, but, to our mind, the raw numbers are even more telling. For example, only 61 Latino students and only 33 African- American students scored proficient or better on the 10th grade Math CSAP in the entire district in 2005. These 94 children represent fewer than four classrooms of students. To be sure, the 10th grade math test is only one barometer (and it is a tough test), but passing it is a pretty good indication of whether or not a child is going to be able to graduate high school prepared to succeed in college and in our workforce. It is unacceptable that we are losing a generation of African-American and Latino students in Denver. DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT 900 Grant Street • Room 702 • Denver, CO 80203 Many observers of public education believe that the problems we face are intractable. We disagree. As we pointed out to you last week, a number of districts across the country have witnessed dramatically diminishing achievement gaps as they have instituted data-driven reforms. We believe we can lead the nation’s cities in closing the gap, even though we are behind a number of them today. You have not and you will not hear from us excuses based on the economic conditions faced by our children and their families or because many of our children arrive at our schools speaking a language other than English. We have a moral obligation to educate all of our children and to raise the bar for every one of them, including our highest performing students. Our strategic plan, the Denver Plan, seeks to elevate our standards (last week we proposed the most rigorous graduation requirements in the State of Colorado), while also providing real-time interventions for kids that are falling behind grade level. As we discussed last week, none of this will be easy. All of it will require change; in some cases, radical change. And success cannot be accomplished by the district alone; the transformation of our schools will require the relentless work of our entire community. This singular focus on student achievement will force significant choices as we break from the past to meet the needs of the 21st century children in our schools. As a school board and administration, we are committed to this path, no matter what it takes. We fully realize the trials that we will face as a community, and the turbulence that change can create. But we know you will not let us give up on our kids. Since our last meeting, there have been some news accounts in the local papers and elsewhere about the temporary closing of Manual. We wanted to take the opportunity here to correct a number of misstatements. First, the Manual decision has been characterized as an “attack,” an action perpetrated on the school because the students who go there are primarily Latino and African American. Nothing could be further from the truth. We view the decision to move the current Manual students to other schools as an admission of complete failure by the district over many years and as a rescue mission for the children that are there. Once we began the public meetings around the initial proposal to close and reopen the school over the next year, we became convinced that we had a moral obligation to admit to Denver that we could not educate our children adequately at Manual as it is today. Furthermore, we concluded that the depth of the problems at Manual could not be “fixed” but required a major overhaul. There are a number of reasons for our having reached this conclusion, but, fundamentally, the continued declining enrolment at the school meant that we knew in the near future we would not be able to offer even the bare minimum classes required for students to obtain a high school diploma in the State of Colorado. 2 DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT 900 Grant Street • Room 702 • Denver, CO 80203 Why was the enrollment declining? Parents and children were searching for something better, unwilling to consign their kids to a school that plainly was not working. There are over 1,375 high school students in the Manual neighborhood. Our projections for next year were that only 580 students would attend the school. This means that over 737 neighborhood children, about 54%, were choosing a school other than Manual. The attrition within the school itself has been extraordinary. In 2002, Manual had 1,091 students; next year it would have had half that number. In September 2001, 475 ninth graders started at Manual; four years later only 95 graduated. The achievement rates at Manual are of equal concern. Manual’s 2004-2005 Combined School Accountability Report (SAR) index was the lowest of Denver’s high schools, even adjusted for free and reduced lunch. Manual has been in the bottom two for the last four years. For three consecutive years, not a single child in any category has scored advanced on the CSAP. For three consecutive years, fewer than 3% of the students have been proficient in Math; fewer than 9% have been proficient in writing; and fewer than 20% have been proficient in reading. Last year, across all three schools at Manual, only 2 African American children and only 5 Latino children were proficient on the 10th grade Math CSAP. There is no doubt that some of our other high schools face similar challenges and that our achievement rates in some of those schools are nearly as appalling as at Manual, but the level of achievement combined with the dwindling student population made the Manual situation untenable. We mention this not so much to explain our action with respect to Manual, but to point out that there is a lot of improvement needed in our other schools. Our failures are too large to be assigned to any individuals or groups of people; they are institutional failures of the district. Second, some continue to contend that the district does not intend to reopen Manual, or that we intend to reopen it as a magnet school that will not serve the Manual neighborhood. Neither of these allegations is true. We will reopen Manual in the fall of 2007 with a ninth grade, and then rebuild the school one grade at a time. We intend the school to serve the neighborhood, but we will not make a decision about what the ultimate configuration of the school will be until we have an authentic community discussion about what the community would like in its high school. Last week, we appointed a committee, led by Councilwoman Elbra Wedgeworth and Board President Theresa Pena, to advise us on (1) the selection of a team to facilitate the conversations around the reopening of Manual and (2) the development of a community process that will result in the reopening of the school. Third, some have said that the current Manual students will drop out because of the decision we have made. We are doing everything humanly possible to make sure this does 3 DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT 900 Grant Street • Room 702 • Denver, CO 80203 not occur. Every Manual student received his or her first choice of their new school; all but nine students have filled out choice forms; we have spent countless hours at Manual working with Denver’s mentoring organizations to assign mentors to each of our students (although we don’t yet have a full complement of mentors, we met for three hours at the school on Saturday morning to provide training to over 100 citizens who have selflessly signed up to mentor); all students choosing to attend a higher performing school in the district will receive yellow bus transportation and others will receive a free RTD bus pass. Fourth, we have learned from the newspapers that some are threatening legal action against the district based on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment and other federal civil rights statutes. Although it eludes us how laws meant to protect children from the ravages of separate and unequal education could be used to reverse the board’s decision, we wanted you to be aware of the threatened litigation.