A solid handle on urban education issues, a talent for forging business and community partnerships, experience “in the trenches,” and a passion for under-represented students qualify Christine Johnson to oversee the metro area’s most urban school district, peers and colleagues say.
“She’s done all the hard work,” said Antonio Esquibel, an assistant principal at Abraham Lincoln High School. Esquibel was a student there when Johnson was principal in the late 1980s.
“She’s been a teacher. She’s been an assistant principal. She’s been a principal,” he said of Johnson, who is one of three finalists for the job of Denver Public Schools superintendent.
“Teachers really respect that because teachers really like to see someone who has been in the trenches,” Esquibel said.
Friends and colleagues describe a nearly flawless record for the 52-year-old president of the Community College of Denver, who has been recognized nationally for helping low-income, minority and immigrant students advance academically.
But a weakness in her campaign for DPS’s top job may be that her proposals for change, in a district where the dropout rate is high and student achievement is lagging, may not depart dramatically from existing DPS practices.
Also vying for the spot are Michael Bennet, chief of staff for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, and Pat Harvey, superintendent of St. Paul (Minn.) Public Schools.
The priority of the school board, which could select a successor to outgoing Superintendent Jerry Wartgow as early as Monday, is to raise achievement.
Johnson’s strategy for doing that includes:
Recruiting business people to mentor principals.
Wartgow also joined with business to benefit the schools. Under Wartgow’s leadership, the private, nonprofit DPS Foundation amassed more than $1 million – most of it from the private sector – for after-school programs.
Creating a student tracking system that will give teachers and principals data on an individual student’s grades, graduation rates, mobility and other data that could help them address student needs.
Assistant Superintendent Wayne Eckerling said the district has the ability to track student mobility and individual performance, but he concedes that it is not sophisticated.
Johnson said such a system is needed immediately.
“You can’t have it a year later or two years later,” she said.
Rewarding teachers in the most difficult schools. The Professional Compensation System for Teachers (ProComp) – a system the district and the teachers union hope voters approve in November – includes monetary rewards for teachers who serve the most-at-risk students.
Regularly evaluating whether new initiatives are successful.
A recent study conducted by the Piton Foundation and Children’s Campaign found that, despite millions spent in new initiatives during Wartgow’s four- year tenure, the achievement gap has continued to grow and the district’s poorest students showed the least gains.
“The analysis should have been initiated by the district,” Johnson said.
Eckerling said the district has several approaches to monitoring student progress, including testing elementary school students in reading before and after they undertake a new reading program. However, he acknowledged, “the system needs to be stronger.”
Launching a parent- education initiative in which organizations such as school PTAs would help educate low-income parents on how to support their children’s education.
Johnson said she does support some of Wartgow’s initiatives, such as a common curriculum in the schools to make it easier for mobile students to transfer within the district.
She has also been an advocate for school choice, such as charter schools and vouchers for disadvantaged students, and nontraditional approaches to education, such as schools with longer hours, extended school years, or additional lab time for students who are behind in their work.
Van Schoales, executive vice president of the Colorado Children’s Campaign, has worked with Johnson on early-college programs that allow DPS students to take college-level courses while still in high school.
Schoales said Johnson understands the consequences of a student’s not graduating. But as a traditional candidate – one who has moved up through the education track – she may appear “less bold in (her) reform plans” compared with non-traditional candidates who may offer more drastic ideas for change.
Throughout the Denver education and political community, Johnson is lauded as an effective advocate, particularly for minority students. For example, at CCD, minority students are assigned advisers who seek the students out and follow up on their progress during the year.
Rick O’Donnell, executive director for the Colorado Commission on Higher Education, said Johnson, a former CCHE board member, understands the importance of preparing high school students for college.
With Johnson having “a foot in both worlds, she understands what some of the weaknesses are,” O’Donnell said.
Pres Montoya, a member of the Colorado Community College system board, which oversees CCD, said Johnson needs to make sure others understand her commitment to low-income, minority and immigrant students.
“I think a weak point is Christine doesn’t toot her own horn,” he said.
“What I learned from Christine is how she as a president was able to make the changes to recruit those (disadvantaged) students in. That includes changing how the campus looks to an incoming student. It’s how she runs her financial aid.”
But it wasn’t until he visited that he learned about those programs, he said.
“I was in shock,” he said. “I said, ‘Why aren’t you telling everybody about this?”‘
Staff writer Karen Rouse can be reached at 303-820-1684 or krouse@denverpost.com.
