On Saturday, Oct. 25 the Rocky Mountain News ran the following guest column by Colorado Governor Bill Owens. The column’s headline was “A glance back shows the great future of DPS.”

Following is the text in its entirety:
By Bill Owens

With the school year in full swing, the focus of parents across Colorado is once again on the performance of their children's public schools. As we enter the eighth year of implementation of the CSAP program it is instructive to look at how far we've come.

The good news is that student achievement across the state continues to go up, particularly in reading. While we're proud of the many schools throughout Colorado that are scoring above average, we're concerned about the students from some of Colorado's poorest neighborhoods who continue to lag behind.

Denver Public Schools – which faces many challenges – is squarely facing up to them and is focused on boosting student achievement. In many ways, it is the bellwether for education reform in Colorado. While DPS has some of the most affluent neighborhoods in the state, it also has the highest number of low-income students, the most students for whom English is not their native language, and the highest number of transient students.

I'm proud of how the teachers, administrators and parents within DPS are facing this tough challenge. And, while we all recognize that education reform is a work in progress, there is no question that DPS is clearly headed down the road to success.

Let's look at where things were when the first accountability rankings were published. DPS had 21 schools that fell into the "unsatisfactory" category. That number dropped to six by last year, earning DPS the 2002 "Governor's Distinguished Improvement Award." Preliminary data suggest that the number could be down to one or two when the new rankings come out later in the year. Of the 26 different assessments administered over the past two years, DPS students matched or exceeded the statewide student improvement in more than half - clearly the trend line is positive.

What accounts for the improvement? A district-wide focus on achievement, on setting high expectations for all children, on closing the performance gap among students and, most of all, an emphasis on literacy.

DPS' teachers are accomplishing this improvement day in and day out. In addition, the DPS school board, under the leadership of Elaine Berman, has rallied behind Superintendent Jerry Wartgow's reform agenda, providing him with the backing to implement proven ideas to move the system forward.

DPS has aggressively moved in the direction of providing more educational choices for Denver families, offering everything from Montessori, dual language and Core Knowledge programs for elementary students to some of the most respected high school programs in the nation. This year Newsweek magazine named George Washington High School one of the 100 best schools in the nation, and the Denver School of the Arts has become a national leader. More than 30 percent of all DPS students participate in some sort of choice program.

Yet another innovation, and one of the most watched experiments in the country will be the DPS Pay for Performance pilot, which is an attempt to compensate teachers for their ability to impact student results.

This is not only a partnership between DPS management and the teachers, but is also a collaborative effort involving the support of philanthropic organizations across the city.

Education reform may be the toughest challenge in all of government.

It's a highly emotional subject, there are innumerable setbacks, and in an era when everyone wants a quick fix, success won't be clear for years. But if the DPS Board and management stays true to the course and teachers keep implementing proven learning strategies in the classroom, if the Denver community continues to provide the support DPS needs to improve, then DPS has the potential not only to be a model for our state, but for the entire nation.