Last fall’s turmoil over turnaround plans for a handful of Denver schools is pushing the district to shore up its school improvement strategy.
The district is heeding a call from President Barack Obama to turn around its lowest-performing schools, which could include closing schools or reconstituting their staffs.
But the district wants to avoid the discontent generated by 2009’s turnaround strategies for a handful of schools, particularly regarding the location of new schools.
Officials are seeking to rework the strategy so it is a year-long process and involves the community at every step.
“We have lessons learned here,” said Ana Tilton, chief academic officer. “We have been talking about how can we improve this process.
“We want to be able to do this in a better way. But we can no longer do this one school at a time. We don’t want islands of excellence. How do we move to scale, districtwide?”
Denver has a 50 percent graduation rate, wide achievement gaps among races and ethnicities and a glaring dropout problem. Only a handful of schools are exceeding expectations, and about 20 are accredited on probation.
The district is seeking to add new schools that address those problems. It also wants to close or reconstitute the lowest-performing schools.
The district’s process begins by identifying needs in each region based on choice, availability of high-performing options and projected growth.
A call for new schools will typically go out in February, asking for people or organizations to offer ideas. (This year the request for proposals will be released Thursday.)
The board votes on the new schools in June.
In September, the district’s School Performance Framework is released, ranking the schools on their achievement. By November, the board votes on turnaround plans for the lowest-performing schools and the locations of the new schools.
Board vice president Arturo Jimenez called for a moratorium on new schools, which he asked to be added to Thursday’s board meeting agenda.
“Really what we are doing is endorsing a process of closing schools that is not data driven,” Jimenez said. “I don’t care if Obama and (Education Secretary Arne) Duncan say it is a good thing. We don’t have research that closure and reconstitution is good for students.”
Superintendent Tom Boasberg disagreed, saying he and Jimenez had a fundamental disagreement on policy.
“When we have schools that for years and years haven’t shown improvement . . . we are better off in those cases to work on turning around those schools,” he said. “Some cases that will mean new principals; some cases it will be to replace it.”
