Denver schools are poised to improve academic achievement exponentially, but all eyes must be fixed on a few specific goals and student-level data used to track progress toward them, a consultant told the city’s education compact.
“Denver, right now you’re so well-positioned to do this,” said Jeff Edmondson, managing director of Cincinnati-based Strive Network, a consulting firm that helps communities improve education from cradle to career. “It takes time to get the social capital that you already have here.”
The Denver education compact, co-chaired by Mayor Michael Hancock and Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg, met for the first time Thursday.
The first goal of the 25-member panel of educators, politicians and businesspeople is to identify by December three to seven goals focused on improving education.
Edmondson presented a framework developed by Strive Network that is in use in cities such as San Francisco, Boston and Portland, Ore. It helps stakeholders across a city work together to organize and direct resources to solve education problems.
“It’s a slow and steady process to begin to weave together assets that help children,” Edmondson said. “Every community is going to look different. Every community’s assets are different.”
The framework was born out of a compact in Cincinnati, where a group of about 300 people is working together and seeing results, he said.
For example, pushing one-on-one advising for high school students helped the city realign resources to increase that kind of counseling. That change led to a 40 percent increase in college enrollment, he said.
Edmondson said getting student-level data to determine that advising is what made a difference, but gathering similar individualized data for out-of-school factors has proved a national challenge.
He also said some cities get weighed down by setting too many goals.
Three other presentations provided an overview of the current state of education in Colorado. The overviews included discussion on financial barriers for access to early-childhood education and a K-12 achievement gap that’s not narrowing.
The group will have a special goal-setting meeting at the end of November and reconvene for the next full session Dec. 12.
Yesenia Robles: 303-954-1372 or yrobles@denverpost.com
