In a nation riddled with educational problems — from soaring dropout rates to a yawning achievement gap among races — Juan Sepulveda knows there are answers everywhere.
In states, cities and districts throughout the nation, someone has found an answer to every educational problem, said Sepulveda, director of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans.
“We know there are pockets of excellence,” he said. “How do we take these kernels of excellence and bring them to scale?”
Sepulveda was in Denver on Tuesday during a multicity tour to get people in Latino communities to start talking about challenges and possible solutions in the schools.
Sepulveda heads the Hispanic initiative, which was created in 1990 and is among at least three other initiatives that assist and advise the U.S. Department of Education in developing policy.
Denver Superintendent Tom Boasberg went to college with Sepulveda and invited him to the city — which struggles with low academic achievement among its Latino population.
In Denver Public Schools, where 60 percent of the students are Latino, only 41 percent graduate on time. Significant numbers of graduates do not go on to college.
“We are making progress, but it’s not fast enough,” Boasberg said. “The purpose of this conversation is: What do we need to do to change?”
Part of the process, Sepulveda said, is to get people across the nation talking about how to make change.
In Los Angeles, for example, Sepulveda heard of a school that encourages parental involvement by asking adults to volunteer 30 hours a year — and not with the traditional parent-teacher organization. Seventy-five percent of adults who volunteered put in more than 30 hours of their time.
In San Antonio, he heard of a group of advertisers who have had success with marketing campaigns to the Latino market heralding the concept of going to college.
In the afternoon session, a roomful of people brainstormed and discussed solutions.
“This is not something that is new,” Ana Tilton, Denver’s chief academic officer, said about wrestling with academic problems in the Latino community. “What is new is the White House is coming here and we are now having a national conversation.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
