Denver Public Schools is canceling its contract with one of north Denver’s long-standing schools, saying that after a decade, test scores at the K-12 school remain below district and state standards.
Since the first contract between DPS and the nonprofit, Escuela Tlatelolco, in the fall of 2004, the contract school has recorded low scores on state tests.
Shorter periods of similar performance have led DPS to close charter schools, but because Escuela predates state charter school laws and first opened in 1970 as a private school, DPS does not have the authority to close it.
Instead, the to keep the contract for a one-year transition but stated it won’t renew after the 2015-16 school year.
When the contract ends, Escuela will stop receiving money from the district. This year, Escuela received $886,802 from DPS, or about 42 percent of Escuela’s overall budget of $2,085,000.
Escuela officials argue that measures that DPS uses to rate the school’s performance aren’t fair for its Montessori K-12 model.
“The amount of testing and assessment that takes place doesn’t give us what we feel we need,” said whose father, Corky, helped open the school. “Our accountability is to the caliber of student that you graduate, to the student and the parent, the board and the community. We wouldn’t be around 44 years if they didn’t think we were doing a good job.”
DPS officials point to other Montessori schools in the district that are successful, even though none are high schools. In the 107-year-old Montessori model, students have less structure and more independence, and instead of grade levels, they move through three-year stages.
Alyssa Whitehead-Bust, the district’s chief academic and innovation officer, said DPS’s evaluation rubric — the school performance framework, or SPF — isn’t perfect, but it’s fair.
“There are lots of measures in the SPF that look at college and career readiness,” she said. “But regardless of pedagogy, you wouldn’t expect different outcomes.”
According to the most recent graduation data from the state, Escuela Tlatelolco graduated nine of 13 seniors in 2013 and had one “completer” — a student who receives a GED or certificate of completion instead of a diploma. In 2012, the school graduated eight of nine.
Because the number of graduates is small, the state does not publish remediation rates for graduates who enroll in college.
Data provided by the school shows that of the current students who are taking the Accuplacer — a college test to measure a student’s readiness for college-level work — none are testing into college-level classes.
School data also reveals that students who are with the school one year perform significantly lower on state tests than students who have been at the school at least two years. The school’s data also shows that students who take the ACT multiple times increase their scores by up to 2 points, and that every one of the current 12 seniors are on track to graduate in spring.
“A lot of these students have moved from school to school, they come in for roughly a year and they leave. Students with us over a longer time show stronger growth,” said Rudionna Garza, Escuela’s dean of curriculum, instruction and English-language learner.
The nonprofit school grew out of the 1960s Chicano movement when founders, including activist Corky Gonzales, felt that Chicano students in Denver were not being adequately taught.
Escuela focuses on teaching Latino and American Indian students, while helping them become vocal leaders for the community and well-versed in Chicano history.
Students are expected to speak in front of their classmates every day and give frequent formal presentations. They learn at their own pace in Spanish and English, and students learn to edit their peers.
“I guess you have to get used to trusting they’ll do it,” said Neena Massey, a teacher at the school. “I might do a lesson on grammar and then say you have until next Tuesday to do it. Most of them don’t need a reminder.”
Before the school was contracted by the district, students were charged tuition, but Escuela provided scholarships to those needing financial assistance — often more than 90 percent of students.
In 2005, then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper forgave $305,000 of a $350,000 loan the school had received about 10 years earlier, despite objections from the city’s auditor.
Garza said finding ways to quantify the success she believes is happening at Escuela becomes more important as the school prepares to return to a private model.
“How do you put that onto a data table?” Garza said.
District officials say they are starting to explore other partnership or contract options with Escuela, including some that may involve only the early-childhood center.
The open consideration is “in recognition of the fantastic work they have done around social justice,” Whitehead-Bust said. “Certainly the recommendation and decision of the board to transition out of the K-12 contract is a recognition that in the current contract we would want to see different results.”
Yesenia Robles: 303-954-1372, yrobles@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/yeseniarobles
By the numbers
$886,802 Total net amount of funding for Escuela from DPS this year
$14,000 Operational funding Escuela officials say they need per student
10 service hours required per month per family
93 percent of parents currently complying with the service hour requirements
92 percent of Escuela’s students complying with those service hours
60 out of the 170 students come from outside Denver
