The road to improving our education system is a complex one, and it’s traveled by kids with different abilities and needs.
You want them all to advance individually, but how do you measure it? And then how do you replicate those successful schools where students routinely achieve in order to turn around problematic ones?
Denver Public Schools is attempting to answer those questions by wrapping a sophisticated set of measures and incentives around its students and schools.
It’s an ambitious endeavor, and one that has great promise. We’re glad to see DPS taking it on.
Among the goals, DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet told us, is to identify schools that are succeeding against conventional wisdom and figure out how they’re doing it.
For instance, the first run of this data-heavy performance framework has shined a spotlight on a handful of schools that have a lot of poor students yet are making significant advances.
Generally, socio-economic status is thought to be tied to educational achievement — low status, low achievement. While the overall achievement levels still may be less than desired, students at these schools are making great strides on things like state exams. The idea is to figure out why, support and reward those schools, and replicate their practices.
Conversely, schools that are not effective in advancing their students will face more strict supervision and remedial support. That could include those schools with students from wealthier families who generally score well on tests. But if they’re not improving, they’re going to get scrutinized.
The DPS effort to assess that progress, or lack thereof, is a far more detailed look at educational achievement than is the norm in Colorado.
Parents and educators now often look to scores from the Colorado Student Assessment Program to try to figure out whether the school is a “good” one. But that is a blunt instrument that doesn’t take into account changes in student population, individual growth or the acumen of the school’s teaching staff.
We understand the DPS school performance framework is a work in progress, subject to refinement as experience with it grows. But it’s a sophisticated idea that attempts to objectively measure what makes a successful or unsuccessful school. Its development is being driven by Jaime Aquino, DPS’s chief academic officer, whose hard work is evident in the framework.
The performance assessment is one of several difficult yet fundamentally necessary projects that DPS has taken on in an effort to turn the tide in an urban district that is facing challenges in school finance and achievement.
Figuring out what works — and what doesn’t — is a hugely important part of that journey.
