What we can learn from Denver's lowest performing high school

Image retrieved from http://www.cpr.org/ on December 14th, 2014.

Manual High School has been closed twice due to poor performance, and it will be going through a complete restructuring again next year. The school itself isn't that bad - in fact, they do a lot of things that other schools could learn from. But Manual faces a significant hurdle each time it reopens: its utter lack of resources. How it continues to support its students despite its many obstacles is, in my mind, admirable. The following list is based off of a discussion with Pastor Vernon Jones, former assistant principal at Manual High School.

1. Utilization of community partners. Since reopening in 2007, Manual has taken many community members into its walls as teachers, club organizers, coaches, and more. Many of these positions are volunteer-based and have given students access to extracurriculars beyond academics. These community members come from the same neighborhood as students and not only fulfill staffing needs, but act as mentors and role models for students.

2. True college preparation. College readiness is one of DPS's largest struggles; many students graduate from high school only to realize that they are not prepared for college. According to data published by the Colorado Children's Campaign, 59% of DPS graduates required college remediation courses in 2010. This number is increasing. Vernon Jones says that college readiness is Manual's number one priority - not test scores. While we are seeing that tests such as the SAT and ACT are being questioned for their validity (they may not measure college readiness after all), other schools would certainly benefit from adopting Manual's mindset of college readiness as the highest priority.

3. Use of time. In Pastor Jones' own words, "When you put in the time, it's got to be good time" (Jones, 2014). Most schools in Colorado operate on seven-hour days, as Manual does. However, this doesn't mean that students are learning for seven hours every day. Many students in DPS lose learning time through free periods, long lunch times, and "filler classes." Manual focuses its energy in ensuring that as much of the school day as possible is utilized for learning.

4. Community engagement. Manual was successful on reopening in 2007 because it had support from the community. Today, we see schools flop in areas in which they are forced onto the community - the film The Lottery (2010) captures this as it traces the story of Harlem's Success Academy. Manual's community, however, wanted the school. This eliminated community challenges and increased the amount of support that went into reopening the school.

5. Faculty alignment with mission. When Manual reopened in 2007, it contained a faculty that truly believed in its mission and core values. In order for a school to be successful, the ones who exhibit the school's values on a day-to-day basis must believe in them.

Manual is not a successful school - it is about to be reorganized for the third time in its history. But when the school was performing well (in 2009 it met expectations for student growth and exceeded expectations for post-secondary readiness) (SPF, 2009), it was because of these five things. Schools that have access to larger budgets, community donations, and more resources overall don't need to do these things well in order to look good on paper. But these are the backbone of what makes a school successful - if you take away a school's funding, its demographics, and its resources, these are what remain. What can other schools learn from this?


Literature Cited

Colorado Children's Campaign. (2010). Start with the Facts: Strengthening Denver Public Schools’ Education Pipeline. Retrieved December 14th, 2014).

Denver Public Schools. (2009). Student Performance Framework. Retrieved December 14th, 2014.

The Teacher Factor

Of all that I’ve debated in my mind over the past few weeks, one thing has remained absolutely constant: good teachers, teachers who believe in what they are doing and constantly strive for excellence, are crucial for student learning. There is no replacement for a truly good teacher.

Today I had the privilege of giving my class a tour of my old high school, DSST Stapleton. I have mixed feelings about DSST as an institution – I truly believe that it is providing students with opportunities for college and beyond who wouldn’t have otherwise had those possibilities, but at the same time I can’t help but question some of its methods. Most of these methods revolve around its strictness, overwhelming focus on academics, and refusal to acknowledge the importance of athletics and the arts. While at DSST, my class met with Bret Poppleton, who has taken on a number of roles at DSST but is currently the dean of students, and Katherine Hendrickson, who taught me for two years and is currently in her fifth year teaching at DSST. I walked out of that meeting with an affirmed belief that those two teachers, among several others, made me a better person.

Hendrickson told our class very bluntly that initially, I was one of her most difficult students, and I think that Poppleton would agree that my attitude throughout high school greatly inhibited my ability to connect with others, particularly my teachers. Today, I really do think that people would describe me as charismatic and open-minded – a huge shift in just a couple of years. This attitude shift, which was 100% influenced and supported by my teachers at DSST, has allowed for both personal and academic growth in my time since graduating high school.

I see this positive influence just as much in my classroom at DDES. Julia Behringer, who graduated from college in 2012, is in her second year teaching at DDES. Earlier this week, she led professional development seminars at a national Expeditionary Learning conference in Boston. Her students, whom she treats with respect and pure love, absolutely adore not only her, but their fellow classmates, their school, and learning itself. On one of the first days that I shadowed her classroom, Julia explained to me how hard it was to put herself through school and teacher training programs, and how she is so grateful that today she is able to focus on just one thing: being with her students and helping them learn. In my eyes, this might be the most admirable thing that a teacher can say. So why aren’t more teachers like this?

Julia holds her student, Mya's, handwritten book as Mya reads it aloud to the class. Julia has her students take turns sharing their writing each day.

Katherine Hendrickson, along with many others, will tell you: teaching is exhausting. To be able to give so much of yourself to students day after day, year after year, is a quality that even the best teachers struggle with. It is exhausting, in all capacities. And for many, it is not sustainable.

DSST provides its students with a plethora of areas for academic and personal growth, but teachers are burning out. DSST has a 100% college acceptance rate, yet one of the lowest teacher retention rates. Our vision of a great teacher is a generous, kind, and intelligent person – one who provides our children with all of the emotional and intellectual support that they need in life. And we believe that this teacher should be able to not only provide these things for one student, but for twenty, fifty, even one hundred students at a time. And they should continue doing this for their entire lives.

Yes, this is the teacher that I want my children to have - the teachers that I see in Katherine and Julia. But this is not a realistic vision; even these two admirable teachers can't devote that much of their emotional and physical well-being for years on end. Before we even go near reforming schools themselves, we need to rethink the “teacher” model. Can all of this responsibility truly fall onto one person? Our children, and our teachers, deserve more than that.

Are charters the only ones who can innovate?

This week, I am experiencing the other side of the charter school discussion. DDES has flown its staff to a conference out of town for three days, so I spent Monday morning interning at Whittier ECE-8. And let me tell you, it's a different playing field.

While DDES teachers were send to a conference for professional development, the second grade teacher I worked with at Whittier was scrambling to make up for her absent TA, who was out on jury duty. I ended up leading two reading group sessions, making copies of materials for the next lesson, and reading aloud to the class while the teacher monitored behavior. It was an incredible learning experience, and I probably was given more responsibilities in one day at Whittier than my entire week at DDES, but it sparked some critical thinking.

DDES, although it is a public school, does have more flexibility with where its funding comes from and how to manage its budget. This allows for the utilization of certain resources that traditional public schools don't have the autonomy to access. However, I do wonder to what extent being defined as a "charter" or "innovation" school really helps a school succeed. For example, my classroom at DDES uses desk a fraction of the amount as my classroom at Whittier; instead, students sit on the floor in a circle for discussion and learning time, and desks are only used for independent reading and writing. I see this strategy having huge impacts on student engagement and how students interact with each other and the teacher, and yet any classroom can choose to do this, not just a charter school. This is the same with the types of assignments students are given. At Whittier, most of class time was spent filling out review sheets independently. DDES, on the other hand, had students talking, reading, writing, and moving, all at once, the facilitate learning.

The amount of resources that schools and teachers have access to definitely impacts their ability to cater to students' needs. But I don't see autonomous budget as a necessity for innovation. Are we becoming too stuck in the belief that, if you are a traditional district school, you can't be creative within a classroom? I would love to learn more about the freedom and restrictions that traditional public school teachers feel they have, and how much these truly are impacted by governance.

The Poverty Factor

Throughout my blog, I've discussed the importance of equal access to education - a value that isn't unique to just me. I believe wholeheartedly that if every student in the United States is enrolled in a high-performing school (whether it is public, charter, or private), then we will be able to close the achievement gap. However, there is a catch. For every school to be high-performing, this means that all of the students enrolled in that school are performing on an equal level - and this isn't the case today.

Take East High School, for example. East is categorized as a blue school by its Median Growth Percentile (MGP), meaning that it is "high-performing," as reflected by its high standardized test scores. MGP is a district-wide practice used to evaluate DPS schools; it measures student growth over time, comparing students who start at similar levels of performance in an effort to maintain fairness. Overall, East performs highly on its MGP. But when we break down its performance by race and socioeconomic status, we see an appalling amount of inequity. According to Alyssa Whitehead-Bust, Chief Academic and Innovations Officer at DPS, white, middle-to-upper-class students account for almost all of East's MGP success. When it comes to students of color, lower-class, and other marginalized groups, East fails to perform. As long as it continues to fall in the "blue" area overall, however, East has no stipulations to change its practices.

This is just a complicated way of saying that the "achievement gap" is very real, very pressing, and not properly addressed by DPS. While MGP does evaluate schools in a "fair and transparent manner" (Whitehead-Bust, 2014), something that is extremely difficult to do, it does not reach to a deep enough level.

In her book Reign of Error (2013), Diane Ravitch devotes a chapter to understanding the role that poverty plays in education. Teacher effectiveness, she claims, is not the solution to closing the achievement gap, as many reformers believe. Many schools have a "no excuses" policy when it comes to student growth: they "assert that every child, no matter how poor she is, no matter what her home circumstances, can succeed" (Ravitch, 2013, p. 92). However, Ravitch refutes this claim. She asserts that "poverty affects [students'] motivation and their ability to concentrate on anything other than day-to-day survival" (Ravitch, 2013, p. 94). She goes on to list, page after page, student resources that poverty diminishes: prenatal care, leading to more learning disorders; medical care; nutrition; sound housing; neighborhood safety; extra-curricular experiences; family dynamics; diagnosis of hearing and vision problems--the list goes on. Overall, her point is clear: no matter how good the teacher is, students will never be on a level playing field until poverty is addressed.

Dr. Donna Beegle, who trains professionals and students in a workshop called "Poverty 101," comes to a similar conclusion as Ravitch. She teaches methods of supporting children living in poverty across the country, suggesting tools to understand and support students coming from impoverished backgrounds. Although Beegle teaches that, with certain techniques and approaches, children living in poverty can benefit tremendously from education, she still asserts that addressing the issue of poverty is the first step in which to give children equal access to education.

It's hard to disagree with Ravitch and Beegle - poverty is one of the biggest issues facing the United States today. According to Ravitch, who cites UNICEF, 23% of children in the U.S. are currently living in poverty (Ravitch, 2013, p. 94). But what is the role of schools in all of this? While teacher effectiveness does not address poverty, it is the largest variant factor within schools themselves - other important factors reside within the home and family (Ravitch, 2013). So, the question remains: what is the boundary for school responsibility, and where do other responsible parties come into play? Originally, schools were expected to provide students with academics, no more and no less. Today, however, they play a much larger role in student development.

We know that poverty is an imperative issue that needs to be addressed, and there are institutions within the nation whose sole responsibility is to address it. But in the meantime, what does this mean for schools? What is, and isn't, their responsibility? And should the issues of education and poverty, topics which are extremely interrelated, really lie in the hands of different institutions?

Percent of DPS students who qualified for free and reduced lunch prices from 2003-2013. In the 2013-2014 school year, 71.7% of DPS students qualified for free and reduced lunch. Chart taken from DPS fact sheet published by the City of Denver.

Literature Cited:

Colorado Department of Education. (2014). Pupil Membership for 2013-District Data; Pupil Membership by District and Grade Level. Retrieved January 2014, from Colorado Department of Education: http://www.cde.state.co.us/cdereval/pupilcurrentdistrict.

Ravitch, Diane. (2013). Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools. NYC: Vintage Books.

Choicing into Choice

In an ideal world, every school in every district would be high-performing and capable of preparing students for college and careers beyond. However, this isn't the case today, and educators across the country are working to solve this. In the meantime, many school districts utilize a "choice" system. This system allows families to "choice into" a school that is not in their zone. The hope is that this system can provide students with the opportunity to enroll in a high-performing school if their neighborhood school is not.

Denver Public Schools has recently transitioned to using a single form for all students who wish to choice into a school that is not their zoned school. Depending on the admission processes for these schools, students can be enrolled via a lottery, performance, or first-come first-serve basis until the seats in the school are filled. Of course, students residing within the school's zone receive automatic admission, and the number of seats available after that depends on the capacity of the school and how many students from within the zone choose to enroll.

In theory, choice seems like a pretty good temporary solution to the public education crisis. To be honest, I don't think I can come up with a better way to ensure that as many students as possible are getting access to a good education while we work to fix the system as a whole. But I'm starting to realize that "choice" isn't as widely accessible as it seems. 

The first stipulation to this system is that students can physically transport themselves to the school. Most public schools provide transportation to students residing within their zones, but when students choice into a school outside of their zone, they become responsible for transporting themselves there and back. If the student has parents with access to cars and flexible work schedules, this isn't a problem - but then again, these aren't the students that the "social justice" aspect of the choice system hopes to serves. For many, choicing into a school means utilizing public transportation. This has many underlying issues, from unaffordability, to weather hostility, to just being a general time-suck. In my high school, it wasn't uncommon for students to leave their homes two hours before school started, take three or four buses, and still miss part of their first period. And this is assuming that they could afford the $35/month bus pass. Is choice possible for all? Yes, maybe. But is it realistic for most students? Absolutely not.

To get a taste of this system, my class had to take public transportation to our school placements this morning. For my classmate, Hannah, and me, this was a six minute direct bus ride downtown. But for others in my class, it meant leaving at 6:30 a.m., taking a bus and the Light Rail, and walking a significant distance. I'm not going to interrupt this intellectual prose with the photo of Hannah and me on the bus, but if you want a laugh, be sure to check out the picture at the bottom of this post.

Eagle Rock School, which my class had the opportunity to talk with today, takes an alternative route to the choice system. They eliminate the transportation factor altogether by requiring all students to live in dorms on campus. The school and professional development center, sponsored by American Honda, has a campus in Estes Park, Colorado. The high school, which is 100% tuition-free, accepts students via an application who demonstrate a lack of engagement in their current high school situation, a financial need, and a commitment to their education at Eagle Rock. While the school truly does open up the "choice" factor for students to whom it would otherwise be inaccessible, it relies on a great deal of student drive. For teenagers who don't demonstrate the same commitment to turning around their education, it is essentially not an option. So how else can we reengage this demographic and serve them equally?

Like I said, I don't have another solution for our need to provide students with an equal education while we are reforming public schools. And I do think that choice is founded on the right principles. The question now is how to make these choice-based systems equally accessible. This comes with transportation innovations, but also manners in which to inform families about the options that they have.

Oh yeah, and then there's the issue of ensuring that there are enough seats in high-performing schools for all students.

Eliza and Hannah ride the RTD bus to DDES; Eliza makes awkward face

What happens when charter schools fail?

In the reform world, charter schools are sometimes hailed as the solution to our failing public education system. They have autonomous governance, they can be selective with admission, and they have a plethora of funding options.

Reading, writing, and math Median Growth Patterns (MGPs) for Colorado's TCAP test. These charts demonstrate that the majority of charter schools are, in fact, performing higher than direct-run public schools. 

But what happens when charter schools, the solution to failing education systems, fail to serve students justly? After all, charter and innovation schools are largely experimental, and in the real world, trial and error is a huge part of experimentation. Unfortunately, when it comes to education, trial and error is dangerous. This is why the application process to create a charter school is so rigorous. However, sometimes even the best ideas on paper don't make it in the real world, and sometimes charter schools fail to prepare students academically. And in these situations, it isn't right to allow these institutions to continue serving students.

Alyssa Whitehead-Bust, Chief Academic and Innovation Officer at Denver Public Schools, goes as far as to say that allowing these schools to continue operating is "unjust." In these cases, she says, it is necessary, although extremely unfortunate, for the schools to be closed. But closing a school is the last step in a process of remediation, taken only if the school fails to bring its performance up over time. And when it does occur, it can only happen if the students currently enrolled in the school have access to seats in other high-performing schools. Whitehead-Bust insists that closing a failing school and sending its students to another failing school is just as wrong.

Therefore, closing down charter schools is almost as difficult as opening them - and who knows which has higher stakes. Charter schools might be a temporary solution to education reform; most of the time they perform at drastically higher levels than their public counterparts, and only in the rarest occasions do they perform below standards. However, privately governed institutions can't be the answer to a civil right.

In Whitehead-Bust's words, choice is designed to "level the playing field" for students who currently live in zones with underperforming public schools, but she adds that they are only a temporary solution. Charter schools are necessary right now in providing as many students as possible with a decent education while we work to fix the public school system. The endgame? For 100% of students in the district to have a seat in a high-performing public school.

The problem is, now we have to figure out how to do that.

Because We're Different

"Why do we do it? Because nobody else does." - Phillip Douglas (2014), Project VOYCE Site Manager and C.H.E.S.S. Founder.

At first glance, this statement can spark some negative feelings. Is that really a justifiable foundation for doing something - because nobody else does? However, my experience with this mindset has given me a new understanding of "doing things just to be different." When people, especially students, are a part of a unique movement, they form a cohesive community that is reiterated through practices that are unique to this community.

I saw this practice in action twice today. It was especially apparent during my afternoon visit with Manual High School's Project VOYCE class. Project VOYCE (Voices of Youth Changing Education) is a class that is currently implemented at seven schools throughout the Denver area. Their mission is "to empower youth to create positive change within their lives, their schools, their communities, and the world" (Douglas, 2014). My class sat in on one of their sessions today - as each student entered the room, Phillip and the other instructor, Sir Martin, bumped heads with them. They call this "head love."

While this action alone is minuscule, its impact is huge. For one, Phillip and Sir were acknowledging the presence of each student who entered their classroom, smiling at them and indicating that they were happy that they were there. This unique gesture has another implication, though. This classroom, and with these people, is the only place where students engage in "head love." In doing so, students recognize their place in the group when walking in the door. It immediately sets the tone for the class and reminds students of the environment that they are in. From there, a safe community can be fostered.

I saw Douglas' words in action again at Downtown Denver Expeditionary School during my daily internship. DDES's motto, "We are crew, not passengers," is implemented throughout the building via decorations, vocabulary, and attitude. The school, which currently teaches grades K-3 and is expanding upwards, is divided into "crews" instead of classes. Each teacher has his or her own crew for all subjects, with the exception of P.E. and art (for which there are different teachers). Teachers consistently refer to classmates as "friends," "crew members," and "teammates."

Sticker displayed in Julia's classroom at DDES

So, what's the big deal? Classes are called crews and everyone is called a friend. Yet, even simple vocabulary adjustments have a huge impact on attitude - especially in forming community. When kids enter the building and everyone around them uses vocabulary that is unique, they gain a sense of place. When certain norms and values are associated with this vocabulary, they begin to shift their behaviors and attitudes to foster this community as they see indicators in their environment shift.

These experiences bring new meaning to my understanding of "doing things just to be different." Of course, there are limits. The impacts of these practices must be measured to ensure that, if there are adverse effects, they can be corrected with minimal harm. That's why I believe these attitude-adjusting tools to be best - when we can associate community values, norms, and practices with seemingly small gestures, we can consistently reiterate goals in a way that is understandable and accepted throughout the community.

Phillip Douglas' words exhibit innovation in its purest, most primitive sense. It is different, it is able to be implemented smoothly, and it is effective. As Douglas' own daughter put it, "It doesn't cost anything to care" (Douglas, 2014). I believe that the first step in education reform is a shift in attitude - of teachers, students, and administrators. Let's show students that we care about them, and that we care if they care back.