{"id":79746,"date":"2022-04-08T13:07:34","date_gmt":"2022-04-08T18:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=79746"},"modified":"2022-04-08T13:07:34","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T18:07:34","slug":"79746","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=79746","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

5 percent of Denver\u2019s Black, Latino 3rd-graders are reading at grade level.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

While the Denver school board was busy late last month focusing on adult-centered concerns like stripping the district\u2019s innovation schools of future flexibility, an advocacy group received some detailed data showing just how dire Denver\u2019s academic emergency has grown.<\/p>\n

Transform Education Now (TEN) filed a Colorado Open Records Act request and the resulting data provides a deep dive into how profoundly Denver Public Schools students are struggling in reading and math in the wake of the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n

The numbers are bad across the board, and deeply alarming when you disaggregate them by race and ethnicity. This disaggregated data, which is public information, wasn\u2019t released until TEN requested it. Little wonder: it shows that whole cohorts of kids are struggling mightily and those are the very same kids who can least afford to fall farther behind their peers and state standards.<\/p>\n

The data came with some caveats from district officials. Not all students at any grade level were tested. Some 58 percent of third-graders were tested in \u201cEnglish Language Arts\u201d and 54 percent in math. (If I were a district or building administrator viewing these numbers, I\u2019d demand that all kids get tested post-haste.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Interim assessments, officials wrote, \u201care not comprehensive and should be considered a \u2018dipstick\u2019 measurement rather than a full picture of how a student is currently performing on all grade level standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

And: \u201cDistrict-created interim assessments are not designed to measure student growth from one assessment to the next, nor are they designed to be predictive of student performance on (state standardized tests), but rather assess a student\u2019s mastery of grade-level content at that point in the school year.\u201d<\/p>\n

The two paragraphs above offer the perfect argument for why some state-mandated tests remain essential, despite the efforts of many, including current DPS board members, to eliminate them.<\/p>\n

Since taking office in late November, the DPS board has largely ignored how DPS is performing its core function: educating students. Some board members \u2013 Tay Anderson, Michelle Quattlebaum, and Carrie Olson \u2013 have begun saying that it\u2019s time to pivot away from adult priorities and back to kids, the district\u2019s core constituency.<\/p>\n

Some others, most notably board President X\u00f3chitl \u201cSochi\u201d Gayt\u00e1n, have shown little outward interest in how kids are doing academically. \u201c\u2026part of what I believe is the vision for this board (is) to continue to move forward so that we are affecting our teachers in a positive way,\u201d she said during the recent innovation schools debate, never once mentioning students or academics.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s problematic, given that the data reveals that in several schools in the part of town she represents, 0% of tested third-grade students \u2013 that\u2019s not a typo \u2013 were meeting or exceeding grade level in reading.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a chance to review the data TEN received, and I have five questions to which the board might demand answers from Superintendent Alex Marrero and his academics team.<\/p>\n

Reading at grade level by the end of third grade is considered predictive of future academic success. Yet according to the data, just 5 percent of Black third-graders and 5 percent of Latino third-graders met or exceeded grade level in assessments given last fall. Given the emphasis placed on equity, how can the district explain this, and what, specifically, is being done to address this dire emergency?<\/p>\n

Similar to question one, no sub-group of third-grade students has more than 30 percent meeting or exceeding grade level (white kids are at 30 percent). How is the district planning to catch its students up so that an entire age group isn\u2019t facing insurmountable hurdles as they progress through their academic careers?<\/p>\n

While older students, who had more pre-pandemic schooling, are doing marginally better, the numbers are still dismal at best. The strongest results are in eighth grade, yet even there just 24 percent of Black students and 25 percent of Latino students met or exceeded grade level in reading. Given that three out of four Black and Latino students struggle with reading on the cusp of high school, what strategies is the district putting in place to avoid a massive kids of color dropout wave in the coming years?<\/p>\n

Even as the school board moved to rein in innovation schools, four times as many Black and Latino third-grade students in the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone are meeting or exceeding grade level in reading than in the district as a whole. (The numbers of students in subgroups other innovation zones were too small to be reported publicly). Given this fact, what is the district doing to learn from those schools and to make sure the board\u2019s misguided policy change doesn\u2019t reverse these trends?
\nIf this hasn\u2019t gotten board members\u2019 and district leadership\u2019s attention, what will?’<\/p>\n

Perhaps a month or six weeks of mandatory summer school for all struggling students, paid for with federal Covid relief dollars, would be a small first step in the right direction. But since adults wouldn\u2019t like that, it\u2019s not going to happen.<\/p>\n

It probably won\u2019t even get discussed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

5 percent of Denver\u2019s Black, Latino 3rd-graders are reading at grade level. While the Denver school board was busy late last month focusing on adult-centered concerns like stripping the district\u2019s innovation schools of future flexibility, an advocacy group received some detailed data showing just how dire Denver\u2019s academic emergency has grown. Transform Education Now (TEN) … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education-schools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79746"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79747,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79746\/revisions\/79747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}