Two members of the Denver Board of Education - Bruce Hoyt and Theresa Pena - have been picked to take part in a major nationwide effort funded by a billionaire philanthropist to reform urban schools.

Saying that America’s public schools won’t improve until school boards do, Los Angeles-based philanthropist Eli Broad will bring new school board members from 10 urban districts together July 24-30 for an intense crash program in reform.

“Denver is a very important urban school district, and success there can inspire success elsewhere in America,” Broad said.

Hoyt and Pena will be brought to Park City, Utah for the unique program.
“I asked these two members of the Denver Board of Education to come to the Institute because they care about public education, and I know they can be among the leaders of this nationwide effort to improve the way public schools are governed,” Broad said.

All expenses for the training are paid by The Broad Institute.

New board members from Atlanta, Denver, Cleveland, Memphis, Long Beach, Providence, Charlotte, Wichita, Anchorage and Christina (Delaware), will come together for the program.

The Broad Institute for School Boards is a national training and support program for newly-elected and newly-appointed urban school board members. Each summer, the Institute conducts an intensive one-week residential learning experience modeled after Harvard University’s program for new mayors and new members of Congress. The Institute team is led by Don McAdams, former board president of the Houston Independent School District and a nationally-recognized expert on school boards.

Broad, who founded KB Home and SunAmerica Inc., building two Fortune 500 companies from the ground up, has put more than $400 million of his family’s money into The Broad Foundation to help drive reform in urban school districts.

As the achievement gap between whites and minority students gets wider, and as urban school districts continue to suffer from ineffective leadership, Broad said school boards must be radically reformed.

“The American people are tired of excuses. They don’t want to hear school boards complain about not having enough money, or having too many students who don’t speak English, or having too many children from poverty who don’t have good family support. There are already too many apologists for public education out there who really are adding zero to this effort. What we need are heroes, not zeroes. What we need are leaders who will say ‘I don’t care what the obstacles are. We’re going to get the job done. Period.’ That’s the attitude that America wants to hear from its school boards,” Broad said.

“If we don’t deal with the problem of urban education, the results for the American economy may be catastrophic,” Broad said.

The Denver Board members said they are excited about the challenge of being part of Broad’s nationwide reform effort.

“As a businessman, I would like to learn much more about the educational aspects of school reform,” Hoyt said. “What reforms work best to close achievement gaps in urban settings? What has been tried successfully elsewhere and what measurements were used to determine success?”

Pena said she wants to “better understand the operational roles between board members and district staff. I would like to review best practices of school boards that have achieved great academic success while educating students with a similar demographic profile of Denver.”

The summer, invitation-only Institute will mark the third time Broad has put new school board members from 10 urban districts through the program designed to “teach new board members early on how to be effective policy and reform leaders - in short, how to stay focused on student achievement,” Broad said.

Broad said there is reason for optimism that the reform effort is taking hold. “This is the third class of new board members we have put through this intense training, and already we’re seeing some results. In more than a dozen urban districts around the country, the focus on student achievement is taking center stage. And we have just begun,” Broad said.

Dr. McAdams, founder of the Center for Reform of School Systems and the managing director of The Broad Institute for School Boards, pointed to the continuing achievement gap as evidence that the quality of urban school boards must improve. Noting a study by the Education Trust, McAdams said in school districts where student achievement is the intense focus, the achievement gap is actually getting smaller.

McAdams pointed to the Education Trust report that shows: 1) the achievement gap between white and Latino students in fourth-grade reading in Arizona would shrink by almost two-thirds if Arizona’s Latino fourth-graders performed as well in reading as Latinos in New Jersey do; and 2) the gap between whites and Latinos in California in eighth-grade in math would shrink by half if California’s Latino eighth-graders performed as well in math as Latinos in Texas do.

“Clearly, this notion that poor and minority kids cannot be expected to perform as well as more affluent white kids is wrong,” Dr. McAdams said. “The pockets of progress we see around the country in closing the achievement gap prove it. So it’s time for local school districts to stop using poverty and ethnicity as an excuse for the real problem: a failure of school district leadership to focus on student achievement and get the job done.”

McAdams will lead the summer training program which will bring together some of the top leadership in public education to “teach, mentor, and build relationships of trust,” McAdams said. The program will dig into original case studies of success and will put the board members through challenging exercises to focus them on attitudes, knowledge and skills required to govern for student achievement.

Broad and his wife Edythe created The Broad Foundation to dramatically improve K-12 urban public education through better governance, management, labor relations and competition. Broad has devoted much of his family’s wealth to The Broad Foundation to improve urban public education. The Broad Institute for School Boards is one of the foundation's flagship programs.

The Broad Foundation is having a tremendous impact on education reform across the country. Another of the Foundation’s flagship programs, the Urban Superintendent’s Academy, already has helped place new superintendents in urban school districts around America. So far, nine graduates of Broad’s Urban Superintendent Academy have gone on to lead urban school districts.

In July 2002, 23 school board members from 10 urban districts attended The Inaugural Broad Institute in Colorado Springs, Colo. A total of 52 urban board members from 20 districts have been trained prior to this year.

For more information, contact The Broad Foundation at 310-954-5050 or the Center for Reform of School Systems at 713-682-9888.