Opinion: Board members, middle schools and truth

Posted on September 6, 2011 by axooms

Jeannie Kaplan and Andrea Merida, two sitting members of Denver’s board of education, published this Op-Ed last Friday.  Its genesis, they tell us, is in their conversations with Denver parents.  “We are listening,” they write, “and are calling for the truth about how neighborhood schools perform.” 

The specific call follows a few paragraphs later:

“But the data are clear that neighborhood middle schools are exceeding the growth expectations of the Denver Plan. These schools are actually performing better than the district average, including all the newer schools.”

Well, no.  Pretty to think so. But not true. Traditional middle schools in Denver are lagging the district average for academic growth, not leading it.  And more often than not, their students graduate 8th grade lacking the basic skills necessary to be successful in high school and beyond.

We are now over five years into the Denver Plan and a serious civic conversation about public education. So perhaps we might raise the bar just a little: It should not be okay for elected school board members to selectively choose and distort performance data, and then use it as a basis to recommend where parents should send their children to school. And that is exactly what these board members are doing.

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Posted in Politics, School Performance | Tagged | 1 Comment

The graduation-proficiency gap in DPS

Posted on June 6, 2011 by axooms

The recent Westword article on Denver North High School’s manipulation of its graduation rates, the  belief that “juking the stats” likely spreads beyond a single school and a sage comment at the end of Alan’s post wondering what other Denver high schools were affected all indicate that this is a topic where rhetoric might benefit from a closer relationship with data.

At its crux, the question is if graduation rates tell us something meaningful about how district schools are performing academically. And it sure looks like they do, but not in the way one might have hoped.

For what the North debacle — and a previous yet related controversy over Lincoln High School — bring into question is twofold. First, does a high school diploma signify a reasonable, baseline level of student achievement; and second, is the rise in DPS’s graduation rate spread evenly throughout the district or is being used by some schools to mask a lack of academic rigor and proficiency.

To answer the first question, we need to see if there a pervasive gap  – particularly at certain schools — between a school’s graduation rate and the ability of its alums to read, write, and do math at grade level.  As one teacher at North commented for the Wesword article, are we reaching a point where someone could say “Oh, they went to North? They’ll give a diploma to anyone” – and for how many schools might this be an issue?

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Higher ed: The next bubble?

Posted on April 17, 2011 by axooms

A provocative hypothesis is newly making the rounds: Does higher education currently have the basic characteristics of a speculative economic bubble?

Given new life by investor Peter Thiel, it is an idea that has been around since at least 2009 and this article in theChronicle of Higher Education. On the back of aprovocative discussion about the revenues needed to fund higher education in Colorado, I’ve been increasingly noticing a number of data points that seem to fit this hypothesis surprisingly well.

The most spectacular bubbles in recent years were the Internet (circa 2000) and housing (circa 2008). The hypothesis notes that bubbles such as these have certain qualities, among them: 1) everyone believes that the underlying value is both irrefutable and will continue to grow; 2) prices are rising exponentially faster than other goods or services; and 3) these prices are being met due in large part to the easy availability of capital (generally debt). To take these in turn:

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The price of milk in education (answers now provided)

Posted on February 23, 2011 by axooms

I’ve updated this post with the answers and source links, which follow the questions below:

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Last week I moderated a mayoral forum on education at KIPP. The candidates were, I thought, quite good – there was a suitable range of opinion, and almost everyone was willing to take a stand on some of the more controversial recent issues (including SB 191 and the DPS turnaround efforts in Far Northeast Denver).

As part of the forum, I reflected that my first memory of watching a debate as a kid was seeing a group of candidates asked “what is the price of a gallon of milk.”  I thought this was a pretty good question – not just because as a kid I thought milk was still cool, but I also intuitively understood that this and similar queries were a way to see if candidates walked in the shoes of normal citizens and understood the simple, concrete realities of daily life.

So, as the moderator, I wanted to come up with equivalent questions —  what are the basic statistics that mayoral candidates (and indeed all stakeholders) should know about Denver’s K-12 public schools? What is the price of a gallon of milk in education?

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2010 top education stories

Posted on January 10, 2011 by axooms

One of the whimsical pleasures in a New Year are the end-of-year lists.  These are often more for amusement than instruction, but do a reasonable job of measuring the sentiment of the previous twelve months.  So, in contrast to Van’s somewhat parochial approach to the Best of 2010 in ed reform, here is a different take on the top 10 education stories from 2010.

I chose it out of various options because I think it’s a more interesting list than most, both appropriately wonky (National Education Technology Plan) and topical (Rhee).  However I was drawn to some of the more unconventional choices:

At #5 is the Apple iPad, as a precursor to the way children, especially younger kids, will change their learning through the use of educational software and mobile devices.  Add to that this story in the New York Times about schools purchasing iPads and other devices.

I’m personally mixed – technology, like any tool, can be used well or poorly and is never a replacement for quality teaching — but in the hands of a supportive environment, I’m intrigued by the potential. And anyone who has seen a young child (like my three-year-old) use the touch screen and intuitive interface on an iPad (well before he can adapt to a keyboard and mouse) should recognize that the long-term implications here are considerable.

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Pension debate heats to a boil

Posted on January 5, 2011 by axooms

Two remarkable articles in the NYT about the dreary and critical subject of public pensions, including those of teachers.

The first begins with the YouTubed confrontation between teacher and Governor in New Jersey, but provides a very balanced and nuanced view of the issue:

Across the nation, a rising irritation with public employee unions is palpable, as a wounded economy has blown gaping holes in state, city and town budgets, and revealed that some public pension funds dangle perilously close to bankruptcy. In California, New York, Michigan and New Jersey, states where public unions wield much power and the culture historically tends to be pro-labor, even longtime liberal political leaders have demanded concessions — wage freezes, benefit cuts and tougher work rules.

It is an angry conversation.

The second takes that anger and examines how it is both given voice and exploited in the current partisan political dogfight:

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The performance of Denver’s charter schools

Posted on December 14, 2010 by axooms

The movie Waiting for Superman, and the recent signing of a district and charter compact, has energized an intense debate about the quality of charter schools compared to their traditional school peers. Local opponents of charters have focused much of their criticism by emphasizing a national statistic quoted in Superman which is based on a patchwork, multi-state CREDO study that concluded just one in five charter schools outperform traditional schools.

The question of charter school performance is vital. However this line of critique is largely irrelevant. The overwhelming majority of education policy and practice is not national, but local — charter results in Dayton and Detroit have little to do with school decisions in Denver. And in Denver, the very same CREDO study explicitly stated — and further analysis of more recent performance data confirms — that charter schools are doing far better than their traditional school peers.

Indeed, school districts across Colorado would be well advised to look at Denver’s model with an eye to replicating its success.

It’s helpful to quickly revisit the essentials. A central premise of charter schools is simple: encourage innovation and a variety of school models. Measure outcomes. Expand the good schools, and change or close the bad ones. This basic combination of innovation, evaluation, and adjustment should lead — particularly over time — to more high-quality schools and better outcomes for students.

Denver is a vibrant example of this theory.  Over the past several years a consistent (if fragile) coalition on the Board of Education has established a solid process for encouraging and approving innovative charter proposals. Denver Public Schools (DPS) created a comprehensive annual evaluation system to measure school quality. And both forged the collective political will to close charters that do poorly.

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