By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com
Denver Public Schools officials announcing the closure of eight schools had explained that they weren’t taking questions from the public. But the woman in the crowd at the Auraria campus Monday night shouted out anyway.
“All the schools you’re closing are black schools, Latino schools,†she yelled. “All kids of color. They may not come back to school.â€
She forgot to add what was most important in the decision.
All the schools slated for closure and most of the students in them were failing.
The upset woman also missed another point. The DPS student population is 80-percent minority. It was going to be tough to share the pain.
Still, she was right. What happens to displaced students measures the success of educational reform. Just how badly hurt students of the eight closed schools will be is a $3.5 million question. That’s the savings realized from shuttering the buildings.
The answer of who got hurt and who got helped won’t be available for years, former Denver Mayor Federico Pena reminded the crowd. It can’t be.
Urban education reform “is a multi-year process,†said Pena, co-chair of the volunteer A+ Finance and Facilities Subcommittee that set the criteria for school closures. “We will not reform the schools in one year, two years or three years. But if we start with this baby step, we hope over time to see measurable improvement in achievement and drop out rates. We’re here for the long haul.â€
The year-long closure and re-invention of Manual High School, the first failing Denver school to undergo a radical makeover in the administration of superintendent Michael Bennet, proved a couple of things.
First, too many students were lost in the process.
But second, the new Manual gives kids a shot at success that simply did not exist at the old Manual.
“We set a number of challenges for the administration,†said A+ co-chair John Huggins. But the main one was to “make sure every student from a closed school had a better opportunity†to get an education.
So the battle lines are drawn where they are in many military campaigns – to achieve goals while minimizing collateral damage.
“We have to assure families that they will get a better product than we have now,†Bennet said.
At the same time, the notion that no child will be left behind in transition is pretty much a pipe dream. Closing Manual proved that. Dozens of kids didn’t make it to another school.
If the A+ committee and the school board approve current recommendations, Bennet said, DPS will be moving 3,000 kids and almost 300 staff.
DPS already closed one of the eight schools discussed Monday. Del Pueblo Elementary in the city’s Baker neighborhood did not open this year. There were plenty of tears and anger over that decision. But the school, like all the others slated for closure, had terrible standardized test scores, and was losing enrollment. For example, DPS found that only 5 percent of Del Pueblo students were proficient in writing in 2007.
Another school slated for closure, Remington Elementary in
This doesn’t mean the teachers and administrators at Del Pueblo or Remington or Fallis, Hallett, Mitchell, Smedley, Whiteman or Wyman - the other six schools scheduled for closure - did not try hard. It doesn’t mean the kids at those schools are bad children.
It means something wasn’t working and hadn’t worked for so long that it wasn’t worth trying to fix.
That’s a brutal judgment. But it is no worse than the alternative.
The risk of martyring children to educational reform is an ugly, but inevitable business. Thing is, if current circumstances already doom those children to failure, you have to take the gamble.
Copyright 2007 by Jim Spencer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
15 users commented in " Denver Tries to Close Schools, Save Children "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackGrammar Nazi Alert
It is spelled Peña and not Pena.
The same as Mayor Peña.
The same as Peña Blvd.
Why is so difficult for people to spell correctly?
The woman you write about is Rita Montero. Current candidate for DPS school board…and perhaps equally important, she served on the Denver School Board and knows what she is talking about…and truly understands the politics of the board and superintendent. We should heed her comments with the knowledge that she knows the inner workings of the school board…goals achieved….goals failed.
The upset woman to whom you refer was Rita Montero, a former school board member, current school board candidate, and full-time wacko. In one of the papers, Wellington Webb referred to her outburst as a “political stunt.” You need to do a bit more homework before putting your column out there for people to read.
Who cares’>&*-?
As for the issue of the closed schools with
failing illiterate students, sounds like
people are angry because their local “Day
Care” for preteens went out of business.
Not all word processing programs used within a browser will let you insert a letter with a tilde over it. I can do it in Wordperfect, but not in Firefox.
Same kids, same parents, same socio-economic background, same teachers, same DPS tenure system…just different schools.
Will this change scores?
I have a question, why is a tilde required
in ENGLISH grammer or writing? I’m sure
many words are derived from various
foreign languages
and have accents which would be appropriate
in THOSE languages.
This is just another example of the
pervasivness of foreign languages on
the English lexicon which are not
necessarily appropriate and are
contrary to the concept of assimilation
Public eduation struggles with the same
baloney for instance BI LINGUAL ed.
you have classrooms filled with students
who speak and write (but not very well)
foreign languages. It’s almost ironic
that the Grammer nazi brought it up.
It’s appropoe to failing public education
and failing students and closed public
schools
Dennis Hammond,
It is hard in this world today, with all of the crap that is said by ALL sides, to not become hardened and bitter. I encourage you to try to see the goodness that is out there in life. I am trying to do the same. We only have one shot at this world and it is better to become part of the solution, no matter how small that your role may be.
re: usersuz wrote “Not all word processing programs used within a browser will let you insert a letter with a tilde over it. I can do it in Wordperfect, but not in Firefox.”
That is nonsense.
You don’t use a “word processing program within a browser”. That is just technical nonsense speak.
It is just laziness upon the part of writers (typists) that causes names such as Peña to be misspelled. Sheesh. Next you will tell me you can’t spell François Mitterand or Gerhard Shröder or José MartÃ.
,dave
Noidea, what fun is that? Besides, somebody
has to address the truth. Our elected
officials and office holders certainly
don’t, they hide from it. An open, public
discourse by those who have absolutely
no power or authority is always helpful.
Maybe your computer was made in Mexico Dave.
Dennis, always the pro-education guy! “Who cares’>&*-?” “Public eduation struggles with the same baloney for instance BI LINGUAL ed.”
Jim, I really disappointed in you; it seems you need an education in public education. You seem to be an apologist for Bennet and the school board who feel the way to “fix” schools is to close them. Why is it the school that’s broken? Is the school tested? The teachers? No, it’s the students? So why did the students fail or for that matter improve on their standardized CSAP/LNCB testing made up by right wing education wannabes? The real reason can’t be addressed because it’s politically incorrect. That’s what this woman was trying to suggest. You can’t make it about people of race and color, because that would be “racist” and biggoted. But where is the problem?
Ask any teacher off the record where the problem lies. They will tell over and over it lies with the parents and their environment. Call it racial, call it cultural, but it’s not that simple. It’s parents who wont invest in their kids future or support the teachers and school system. How come the inner city schools fail, but the urban schools get by?
So how do you fix the problem. You hire a businessman to run an education system. It’s not about money; if it was, hire a contractor to fix the problem. The problem is learning, for that you need EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS, not businessman. Just like the Dennis and the right wing believe “anyone can teach” even they’re smart enough to know the DPS efficacy motto that “every child can learn” isn’t exactly true. You don’t fix the problem of learning improvement by closing schools and reopening, and showing how much money you saved. This is how businessmen think, the bottom line, never the human element. I’m wait for some failing corporation to hire a professional educator to fix their problem.
Dennis,
Before going off on another inane rant about language, learn how to spell the word grammar.
1. My computer was made in China like everyone else’s. My computer was not “Hecho en México”.
2. English is very strong at absorbing words from other languages. For example, façade and fiancée. Both of these have accent marks and both are spelled as shown by the American Heritage Dictionary. English does not require that we drop the accent mark when English absorbs the word. FYI, the New Yorker magazine (full of literate English-writing Americans) spells it coöperation. Although, they are last holdout on this.
3. The tilde is required in Federico’s last name because that is how HE spells it. WE don’t get to decide how to spell HIS name.
Leave A Reply