DPS in the News
Thursday, August 03, 2006
New chief gives teachers credit
Superintendent Michael Bennet says there's more work to do, but giving teachers more autonomy proved to be a good start.
Story By Allison Sherry - The Denver Post
When Denver school board members hired Michael Bennet to run the state's largest urban district, they gave him one charge: Improve student achievement.
A year later, Denver scores on Colorado Student Assessment Program tests gained more than in four previous years combined. And the district posted gains larger than state averages.
But Bennet, though happy, said Denver Public Schools still has a lot of work to do.
"We're not satisfied," he said. "Obviously, we need to do this every year."
The number of Denver students who were proficient and advanced in reading jumped in all grades except third. Denver led the state's 10 largest districts in reading gains.
In math, Denver students in all tested grades increased their scores or stayed the same.
Among middle and high school students, math scores also jumped. In ninth grade, for example, 17 percent of students are proficient or advanced in math, compared with last year's 12 percent.
Bennet and chief academic officer Jaime Aquino attribute the gains to an "emphatic focus" on student achievement that started with Bennet's first day on the job in July 2005.
"Some of it could be people got better at what they were doing when we got here," Bennet said. "I think it's undeniable that there was an incredible focus as a district compared to before."
The two talked about teaching and learning to principals almost every day. They met with all traditional school faculty in the district. They started a tutoring program in January that targeted the district's students right on the edge of proficiency in core subjects.
And, for the first time in several years, they say, they gave teachers the freedom to do what they thought worked with their students.
"Teachers felt like there was a curriculum police before," said Aquino, who joined the district in October from New York City's school district.
At schools where there were particular jumps to celebrate, teachers - many of whom are still home for the summer - attributed higher test scores to more autonomy in the classroom and staff cohesiveness.
At Brown Elementary, for example, fourth-graders' scores in writing jumped from 14 percent proficiency last year to 33 percent this year. And fourth-grade reading scores jumped from 24 to 46 percent.
Fifth-grade teacher Amy Highsmith attributes gains to a clean start to the school - all of the teachers were new to Brown this last year.
Highsmith also said she enjoyed freedom in her classroom.
"This year felt like we were hired as professionals," she said. "It wasn't like, 'OK, here's a schedule, this is what we're doing."'
Aquino said this was the point. "We empowered them."
This fall, teachers will receive "planning guides" that detail sample lessons and state standards. They are meant to be helpful for teachers -- not "handcuffs," Aquino said.
At Bryant-Webster K-8 School in northwest Denver, roughly half the students are proficient or advanced in reading, writing and math, even though 96 percent of its students are eligible for free or discounted lunch, an indicator of poverty.
Principal Pat Salazar said her school's success comes from teachers' expecting that every single kid can achieve, no matter his or her background.
"If those teachers know those children can do it, then they're not going to accept excuses," she said. "Because the children are minority and high-poverty doesn't mean we can't have the same kind of rigor than are in the higher socioeconomic schools."
Though most grade levels saw gains districtwide, it wasn't enough for Bennet to receive his $40,000 bonus - negotiated by the school board if he met certain goals in CSAP scores.
Bennet makes $160,000 a year - $40,000 less than the previous superintendent. Bennet fell short of bumping up third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade overall performance by 5 percentage points.
DPS saw drops in scores on the Spanish CSAPs. The third- and fourth-graders who took the escritura and lectura tests fell from 2 to 10 percentage points from last year, depending on the test.
Bennet said he wasn't sure why that was, but that a new approach for teaching English language acquisition classes - to be unveiled to Denver principals next week - should help teachers in all classrooms whose students' first language isn't English.
This fall, Aquino's tutoring program "DPS Success" will be expanded. Students will also be given small assessment tests three times a year.
Parents of elementary-aged kids will also receive detailed report cards that show where a student is compared with the state standard. And middle schoolers and ninth-graders below grade level will have to double up in math and reading classes.
Bennet said he hopes that all teachers improve on teaching to the state standards.
"Not withstanding the fact we have a high-poverty district, we want to meet the state average," Bennet said. "Our goal is to close the gap with the state."
Thursday, August 03, 2006
It's Upward Trend For DPS Kids
Fifth-grader Shawn Glover writes an exclamation point on the board Tuesday during a punctuation exercise in Roberta Martinez's reading class at Colfax Elementary in Denver. Colfax, a year-round school, showed strong gains in fifth-grade reading in this year's CSAP results, rising 15 percentage points over its performance in 2005.
Story By Nancy Mitchell - Rocky Mountain News
Denver's lowest-performing students are improving on state tests.
An analysis of results released Wednesday shows the district is making progress with its poorest achievers, or those who score "unsatisfactory" on the Colorado Student Assessment Program.
Thirty percent of Denver Public Schools students shifted from the unsatisfactory category to the next higher level - the partially proficient category - or above on state reading tests between 2005 and 2006.
Between 2004 and 2005, the upward movement from the unsatisfactory category was 25 percent.
"It shows we focus on all kids," said Jaime Aquino, the district's chief academic officer.
Reports on the CSAP tend to focus on the numbers of students scoring proficient and advanced, or the level considered "passing" the tests. And some Colorado schools, in the quest to improve "passing" rates, have focused on moving students from the partially proficient to proficient categories.
But an analysis compiled by DPS looks at movement in every category - unsatisfactory, partially proficient, proficient and advanced - on the most recent reading and math exams. It also lists, for every Denver school, the percentage of students moving out of the unsatisfactory category on all tests.
Philips Elementary, a school in northeast Denver, tops the list of neighborhood elementaries in two ways. The school saw the biggest increase in students scoring proficient and advanced on all tests in grades 3 through 5 - a 13 percent gain. It also had the biggest decrease in students scoring unsatisfactory in all tests - a 10 percent drop.
In reading, for example, the number of unsatisfactory students dropped from 36 percent in 2005 to 15 percent in 2006.
DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet said the district is not focusing on any particular category.
"What we want to be able to do is move kids all along the trajectory," he said, adding, "We're not forgetting kids at the top, which has been a concern for some people."
The district's analysis showed DPS increased the percentage of partially proficient students moving up in reading. The upward movement was 19 percent between 2004 and 2005 and 26 percent between 2005 and 2006.
And the percentage of proficient kids moving up in math increased from 8 percent between 2004 and 2005 to 13 percent between 2005 and 2006.
"We saw movement from all levels," Aquino said. "It's about all kids, even kids doing proficient and advanced, and moving them to a higher level of performance."
MAKING GAINS
Results released Wednesday for the Colorado Student Assessment Program show Denver Public Schools is making gains across all proficiency levels of reading and math tests. Here's a look:
READING 2006
30 percent of test-takers moved up from unsatisfactory, the lowest scoring category, compared with 25 percent in 2005
26 percent moved up from partially proficient, the next lowest category, compared with 19 percent in 2005
6 percent moved up from proficient to advanced, the top two categories, compared with 5 percent in 2005
MATH 2006
14 percent of test-takers moved up from unsatisfactory, the lowest scoring category, compared with 13 percent in 2005
14 percent moved up from partially proficient, the next lowest category, compared with 9 percent in 2005
13 percent moved from proficient to advanced, the top two categories, compared with 8 percent in 2005
SCHOOL BY SCHOOL
Schools in Denver with the most notable reduction of students scoring in the unsatisfactory category:
• Elementary schools
School Change
Philips -10%
Schmitt -6%
Brown -5%
• Middle schools
School Change
King -8%
Henry -3%
Hill -1%
• High schools
School Change
Thomas Jefferson -3%
George Washington -2%
Denver School of the Arts -2%
Source: Denver Public Schools
Thursday, August 03, 2006
Denver Schools Pick Up The Pace: After Years Of Flat Scores In Reading, DPS Sees A Big Jump
Story By Nancy Mitchell - Rocky Mountain News
Test results released Wednesday show Denver Public Schools outpaced the state in gains on most exams for the first time in years and posted the urban district's biggest jump ever in reading.
At least 40 percent of Denver students in grades 3 through 10 were reading at grade level on state exams given in English last spring, another first in 10 years of the Colorado Student Assessment Program.
"We've got a long way to go, obviously," said an exultant DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet, "but we're extremely pleased with the results."
Bennet, who took over DPS with little K-12 experience in July 2005, said the 73,000-student district still lags statewide averages in reading, writing, math and science.
Consider that 68 percent of Colorado fourth-graders were proficient readers on the 2006 exams, compared with 42 percent of their Denver classmates.
So outpacing the state - as DPS did on 18 of the 29 exams given this year - is the only way the district can ever catch up.
"We are much lower than where the state is and we should be going faster than the state," Bennet said. "We need to do it again next year and the next year and the year after that."
"HUGE" READING GAIN
The 2006 achievement spike breaks what has been a pattern of stagnant achievement in DPS.
Reading scores particularly have been flat in recent years, despite expensive literacy campaigns launched in 1998 and in 2002.
But results released Wednesday show an average gain across grades 3 through 10 of 4 percentage points, a bigger jump than the past five years combined.
The exception came in Spanish-language reading exams given in grades 3 and 4, where results dropped. About 1,000 students took those exams.
Reading scores on English exams in every grade except third - which saw a 1 point dip - increased between 3 and 7 points.
"It's a huge one-year increase," Bennet said.
Math scores also improved at every grade but third and seventh, where they were unchanged. Science scores rose 2 points. Writing scores were flat overall, with increases in grades 7 through 10 but declines in grades 3 and 4.
Bennet and Jaime Aquino, the chief academic officer he recruited from New York City in October, said it's tough to credit any one change for the gains in their first year.
They point to an eight-week tutoring program for one in three DPS students that began in January and near daily meetings with principals.
"I would also say there's been a change in culture and beliefs to high expectations," said Aquino, whose first steps when hired included passing out research on high-performing, high-poverty schools. "We know it is possible. We can do this."
HIGH, MIDDLE SCHOOL GROWTH
Results for Denver middle and high schools, despite little progress in recent years, also improved.
Growth in every subject in grades 6 through 10 either met or beat statewide average gains. In reading, DPS sixth-graders improved by 7 percentage points.
"There's a lot of good news here," said Kunsmiller Middle School Principal Alex Magaña.
Kunsmiller, in southwest Denver, and Martin Luther King Jr. Early College, in far northeast Denver, reported the top gains in all subjects among the city's neighborhood middle schools. Both schools saw their students' reading proficiency jump by more than 7 points.
Magaña, who came to Kunsmiller this year from nearby Lake Middle School, was in the midst of student home visits on Wednesday. He said Kunsmiller staff has built strong after-school programs to support a quarter of their students.
Also, "Teachers are focusing a lot more strategically on reading skills," he said. "Everyone's a reading teacher."
Among neighborhood high schools, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson in southeast Denver posted the strongest gains in proficiency in all subjects. Their growth edged even East High, the city's traditional academic powerhouse.
LOW-PERFORMERS STRUGGLE
Other schools did not do as well as DPS leaders had hoped.
Bruce Randolph School in north Denver, where reforms included a new principal and staff, saw gains in reading and writing but was mostly flat in math and science.
And results for Montbello High School in far northeast Denver were largely flat. The school, the site of a lunchroom homicide in January 2005, saw a year of major change under new Principal Antwan Wilson.
"None of it surprised me," Wilson said. "You've got to have teachers in classrooms. We had a number of classrooms last year that didn't have teachers."
The school will launch year one of an ambitious reform plan this fall. Wednesday, about 350 students attended Montbello's first Freshman Academy, learning about the school and brushing up on literacy and math skills. The program began Monday and wraps up Wednesday.
"The idea is, once school starts, they'll be ready," Wilson said, predicting stronger gains for 2007.
Bennet and Aquino also predict bigger gains for DPS next year. When school resumes Aug. 21 for most campuses, the district reform plan kicks in, including double doses of literacy and math for struggling students.
"They should be bigger," Aquino said.
"They need to be," Bennet said, "but this is a good start."
DENVER PUBLIC SCHOOLS HIGHLIGHTS
More Denver students achieved proficiency on state reading, math and science exams this year, but they flatlined on the writing tests.
SUBJECT % PROFICIENT / ADVANCED CHANGE
Reading, grades 3-10 39.9% 43.6% Up 3.7 points
Writing, grades 3-10 30.5% 30.5% 0 change
Math, grades 3-10 28.6% 31.5% Up 2.9 points
Science, grade 8 20% 22% Up 2 points
• DPS posted stronger gains than most of its neighbors. Among the 15 metro-area school districts, only Adams Five-Star and Sheridan school districts saw greater increases in the percentage of students achieving proficiency on all state tests between 2005 and 2006.
• Redesigned schools saw improvement. Four low-performing schools were designated for "redesign" a year ago, meaning teachers had to reapply for their jobs and academic programs changed. Here's how they did based on students scoring proficient or advanced:
SCHOOL READING / CHANGE FROM 2005 MATH / CHANGE FROM 2005
Brown Elementary 44% / Up 14 points 38% / Up 7 points
Bruce Randolph 6-12 School 17% / Up 6 points 5%/Down 1.2
Martin Luther King Jr. Early College 36% / Up 8 points 19% / Up 7 points
Mitchell Elementary 22% / Up 3 points 23% / Down 0.1
• Cole makes gains. Cole Middle School in north Denver was taken over by the state after years of dismal student achievement and has been operated since fall 2005 by the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP Charter Schools Network. Here's how the school, now called Cole College Prep, performed based on eighth-graders scoring proficient and advanced:
COLE READING WRITING MATH SCIENCE
2006 10% 8% 18% 10%
2005 10% 3% 4% 1%
• Unsatisfactory schools struggle. Two neighborhood elementary schools rated unsatisfactory by the state saw small improvement:
SCHOOL READING % PROF/ADV GRADES 3-5 CHANGE FROM 2005 MATH % PROF/ADV GRADES 3-5 CHANGE FROM 2005
Johnson Elementary 18% Up 1.3 points 21.2% Up 4.9 points
Smith Elementary 22% Up 0.8 12.7% Up 0.1
• No bonus for Bennet. DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet will not earn his $40,000 bonus for improved student achievement. While CSAP scores increased, they did not rise by 5 percentage points in grades three, four and five in reading, writing and math. Reading scores fell in one grade and writing in two grades.
Thursday, August 04, 2006
Editorial: CSAP results show DPS gaining ground
The Denver Post
Denver's reading scores on the latest Colorado Student Assessment Program tests showed more growth than the previous four years combined.
Denver Public Schools has all the trappings of a large urban district: high poverty rates, growing numbers of non-English speakers and financial troubles. But now it also has something else: momentum.
Denver's reading scores on the annual Colorado Student Assessment Program tests showed more growth this year than the previous four years combined, and DPS's overall growth exceeded the state average in reading, writing and math for the first time. Denver led the state's 10 largest districts in reading gains. And scores increased among all ethnic groups, not just white students.
It's reason for measured applause because the district has a long way to go until even a majority of students are proficient in key subject areas, such as reading, writing and math. But it's a fine start.
"We know we have a long way to go, but we're pleased with what we're seeing and hopefully next year it will be better," said DPS superintendent Michael Bennet.
Most education officials figured next year would be the first time Bennet's reform measures would be reflected in the district's scores, since the core of his "Denver Plan" for schools will be implemented this year. But since he took the helm last summer, DPS has placed a increased emphasis on student achievement, and it's begun to pay off. "We had a shared vision," over the past year, chief academic officer Jaime Aquino said of the relationship between DPS officials, principals and teachers.
Overall, Colorado students had their best performance in six years, with large gains in math test scores across the state. There were some solid success stories, such as the Montezuma-Cortez school district, where the percentage of 10th-graders proficient and advanced in writing jumped 19 percentage points. But there were also those troubling pockets that must be addressed sooner than later. Only 10 percent of black and Latino sophomore are proficient in math statewide, an unacceptable statistic.
Some districts, such as DPS, have embraced accountability and are finding ways to have it work for them, such as hiring people to crunch data on students throughout the year, rather than waiting for the annual CSAP "autopsy." That way, the needs of individual student can be addressed long before testing. It's a wise move.
The districts making gains are empowering their teachers with the proper tools and a sense of obligation. CSAP tests are just one measuring stick. What's happening in classrooms today will be evident in tomorrow's workplace.