Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet’s approach to improving the city’s high schools is becoming clear:
Give power to the community.
School administrators are about to launch talks about how to improve North High, the third of 12 Denver high schools to start reform. He has made it clear that he wants all his schools to be rigorous, high-performing and headed by a strong principal.
Beyond that, he wants the community to choose school designs, whether they are arts magnets, K-12 small schools or Montessori programs.
He is even taking that a step further with the district’s new “beacon schools,” which gives parents, community advocates and teachers an opportunity to create new schools or new programs in existing schools.
“I don’t know of another way of doing it,” Bennet said. “You can write a plan and tie a pretty ribbon around it, but … if there is no strong leader and the community doesn’t believe in it, it doesn’t work.”
This community approach is not completely untested. But it is being closely watched by national urban school-reform experts who, after more than $1 billion in private money invested in the issue nationally over the past decade, still don’t have a single prescription for curing what ails most cities: low-achieving students and unacceptable graduation rates.
“They’re (traditional high schools) set up to fail for a majority of the kids,” said Mike Klonsky, professor at Nova Southeastern University in Florida, who worked on school reform in Chicago. “They are sorting and tracking machines.”
Though it is too early to tell whether a community approach in Denver will work, it’s moving slowly at Manual, where community council members have just recently picked “attributes” of a principal, and a school design is still undecided.
Van Schoales of the Piton Foundation, who has studied school reform nationally, said the community would be well- served by an overarching high school reform plan written by DPS administrators.
“Talking to the community is a necessary component,” he said. “But taking it school by school assumes that the unit of change is in the school. Maybe it should be in the district. Maybe they should shut down some schools.”
Bennet says he will rely heavily on the community’s input when he decides what schools will look like.
Since 2003, the city’s community leaders, school-board members and even voters have called for high school reform. That year, residents approved a $2 million annual tax increase to go specifically toward that goal.
Clearly, something needs to change: Fewer than half of DPS students who start high school finish. At five high schools, proficiency rates in math among ninth- and 10th-graders hover at 20 percent or lower.
“I think people have an intuition that we’re not getting the job done,” Bennet said of the performance numbers. “I believe in a kind of community building where we’re not just forming schools but building reforms that have integrity.”
Already in the works is a community-driven plan to reopen Manual High next fall as a “premier” school.
When board members closed the school in February, neighborhood advocates and some clergy sharply rebuked the board and the district for not talking to the community first.
Since then, Bennet appointed a “community council” to study and make recommendations. These council members have canvassed the country on the district’s dime looking at exemplary high schools as they create a plan for the new Manual, a poorly performing northeast Denver school before it was closed.
At Montbello, a more incremental reform plan is underway, with support from the neighborhood’s community leaders and clergy.
Letting the community take a major role in what schools look like is not unique, experts say, but the strategy has had mixed success elsewhere.
Greg Richmond, who led school-reform efforts in Chicago Public Schools, said giving community members too much power didn’t work well there.
His district had money from the Gates Foundation in 2001 to break down several big high schools into small schools. Richmond said administrators handed the decision about which schools to dismantle to community members.
Five years later, many of those schools weren’t successful.
“You’re asking people to make decisions about something they don’t know about,” Richmond said. “It’s not a disparagement about the community. Schools are complicated.”
But Klonsky, who also runs the Small Schools workshop in Chicago, said community involvement is often skipped – and because community buy-in is so important, ignoring the people often thwarts success.
A plan could be perfect on paper, but if the community doesn’t like it, something may have to change, Klonsky said.
“Sometimes you have to sacrifice the purity of the plan for the needs of the city,” he said. “If you don’t understand that, you’re going to fail, whether you’re creating new schools or curing malaria in Africa.”
Staff writer Allison Sherry can be reached at 303-954-1377 or asherry@denverpost.com.
High school reforms
Manual High School
A “Manual Renewal Team,” including neighborhood advocates and parents, has held talks with community members to design a school vision and attributes of a school leader.
Private contractors have had at least 250 “documented” conversations in coffee shops about what people want in a high school.
North High School
The school’s new principal, JoAnn Trujillo-Hays, will launch talks this month with area elementary- and middle- school parents about what they want in a high school.
Ideas for the school include a K-12 or a grades 6-12 dual-language campus.
Montbello High School
Principal Antwan Wilson, in his second year, has held dozens of meetings with advocates and clergy members about bringing order to the school and boosting student achievement.
He has replaced 34 of 65 teachers. He has raised graduation requirements and added summer academies for ninth-graders.
He continues to try to bring in more parents.
Allison Sherry
