Jeannie Kaplan was twice elected to the Denver Board of Education and is well qualified to review the claims made about that city’s schools. Due to an infusion of reformer cash from across the nation starting in 2009, Denver’s elected school board is now completely dominated by supporters of choice and high-stakes testing (i.e. corporate reformers). These “reformers” have a 7-0 grip on the city’s schools and its publicity machine, thanks to national corporate reform-minded groups like Stand for Children and Democrats for Education Reform (DFER). Their claims are repeated in the reformer media, including at Gates-funded and rightwing think tanks and publications. Jeannie is a very kind and compassionate person, and she is tired of having to refute the claims, again and again. But she comes once more to the front, to explain why Denver is a hoax, not a model.
In this post, she reviews the latest phony claims about “reform” in Denver.
She writes:
Let’s do a quick refresher course before we delve into this faux success story.
The main goals of “education reform” are:
Expanding charter schools, which as the state of Washington has determined are not common (public) schools;
Improving graduation rates. The most recent DPS strategic plan, Denver Plan 2020, calls for graduation rates for African American and Latino students of 89% by 2020, 90% for students who start in DPS in ninth grade;
Reducing or eliminating the achievement gap, that is, the gap between children living in poverty and those not. Another goal of Denver Plan 2020.
Eliminating the union protected workers in the public school system which can be exacerbated by closing “failing” schools and replacing them with either charter schools or innovation schools both of which are for the most part non-union;
Evaluating teachers based on test scores with all the concomitant issues around high stakes testing.
Reformers try to reach these results through something called a portfolio strategy, a business model used by Wall Street that simply put is predicated on constant churn. As Osborne writes, a portfolio strategy works “to replicate successful schools and replace failing ones.” The problem with such a strategy is students and teachers and parents and communities are neither commodities to be bought and sold nor should they be characterized as winners and losers. Denver has seen up close and personal how the chaos and churn this model brings.
Kaplan devotes the bulk of her post to debunking false claims of Denver’s success made in an article by David Osborne in the Hoover Institution-sponsored publication Education Next. EdNext cheerleads for charters, vouchers, and all forms of school choice. Osborne reliably concludes that “reform” has been a great success in Denver and that the day is in sight when most families will choose charters or other choice schools, thus obliterating neighborhood schools. Kaplan goes point by point through his article to correct him, though she notes that he provides no documentation for his statements.
She shows that at the present rate of change, Denver has no chance of reaching its “reform” goals by 2020. It is always dangerous for reformers to set concrete dates as predictions of their total success. This was done in Tennessee by Chris Barbic and the Achievement School District. He predicted in 2012 that the schools in the bottom 5% statewide would reach the top 25% in only five years. None of them has even managed to exceed the bottom 10% thus far and most remain in the bottom 5%.
Probably reformers should promise to reach their ambitious goals by 2050, a date so far removed that they won’t be held accountable in the meanwhile.
Kaplan concludes:
Denver has become a national leader for its implementation of “education reform.” This has been relatively easy to accomplish with the help of the national media who continuously bolster the “education reform” agenda of chaos and churn. “Education reformers” in Denver have all the elements in place to continue to push a failing education model. Be afraid, Denver. Be very afraid.
Why the hatred of neighborhood public schools? I don’t know.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
TRUE! There are HORROR stories about DPS. No wonder GREAT teachers are leaving the profession.
“Leaving” gives the impression that teachers CHOOSE their dismissal. Targeting, labeling, humiliating and vindictively dismissing much more accurately tell the years-long DPS story.
“Why the hatred of neighborhood public schools?”
I think the answer to this question is obvious. The community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional neighborhood public schools staffed by mostly highly educated, caring, professional teachers mostly supported from job abuse by teachers’ unions are an obstacle between the autocratic, for profit and often fraudulent and opaque corporate public education reform movement and the public money those who worship at the alter of avarice want and OUR children that they want to mold into an easy to manipulate and controlled consumer product.
Put even more simply, you can make money off of poor children and teacher blame.
Yes!
I wonder sometimes what the end-game will look like. They really could run it like Obamacare. There could be an individual mandate for education and they could set up a system of contractors and federal subsidies. States would still regulate education just like states still regulate health insurance so they would (ostensibly, anyway) still be complying with states traditional role.
It’s pre-approved by the Supreme Court 🙂
That’s how I see total privatization playing out. They have a kind of template with Obamacare which is really just a voucher to purchase services from a contractor.
God, I hope not. Obamacare is truly NOT affordable for a lot of middle income people. They don’t have 5000 dollars sitting around. Hell, they don’t have 500 dollars sitting around. 50 dollars. Maybe 🙂
I would like to see what happened in Sweden play out here. Once the research is clear that market based ideology is a failure, it will die a fitting death, and we will change the laws so that free public education will be seen as the public service that it is. People are starting to see the scam and sham that “reform” has produced. Our biggest enemy is the amount of resources the “reformsters” have to whitewash everything. Parents are catching on too. They will have to go through a mountain of tiger, soccer moms before “reform” could be accepted as the norm.
The end game is school to work. At jobs that are mostly non-creative. Filled by mostly people who have had data collected in them since pre-school. Tracked students. From the age of 5. The end game had little to with education. All to do with work. More on this to come in another post.
A lot of parents have no idea what is going on here in Denver. I opted our daughter out of certain tests that are lengthy and can’t be named. (Something about copyright infringement) Many parents are too occupied with their children’s extra-curricular activities to take the time to question test and cirrculum changes. I have always been a fan of public schools but private schools are looking better by the minute.
Thank you, Jeannie Kaplan for continuing to write so intelligently about what is happening in Denver.
It is astonishing how corrupt these reformers are. They have morphed into ideologues who only want to look at the data that suits their purposes and absolutely fight with all their might NOT to look at the full picture. The fact that their billionaires have been able to purchase the media allows them to get away with it.
“As for DSST. DSST students score very well on standardized tests. DSST students who start at DSST in the ninth grade do not all make it to graduation. In seven years at the flagship DSST, Stapleton, 972 students started as freshmen. Four years later 549 graduated. Graduation rate? 56.5%. The Green Valley Ranch DSST had a slightly higher rate for its only graduating class to date: 145 started, 86 graduated. Rate = 59.3%. And if you bother to read the latest DSST graduation celebratory email entitled, Celebrating 100% College 9 Years in a Row.” Hmmm. Isn’t it amazing how not one student in nine years has failed to be accepted to college? Try to find the actual number of graduates in the press release. And 100% is a bit misleading. It is 100% of a little less than the original 60% entering freshmen. Where the missing 40+% go and why they leave is a tale yet to be told.”
For those wondering about the methodology that Ms. Kaplan uses to achieve these numbers, she offers useful detail in the comments here:
https://themerrowreport.com/2016/03/18/evas-offensive/#comments
Thank you, Stephen. I actually used the number of starting freshmen provided by DPS through the TCAP participants. (TCAPs we’re the standardized tests before PARCC.) I dividend that into the number who actually graduated as seniors. This is the same methodology used by CRPE which found Denver to be 45 out of 50 urban districts for improving graduation rates. I am trying to track down why kids left and where they went after leaving DSSTs. These are actually not easily discovered facts. One would think that a business with a focus on customer satisfaction might want to find out why it was losing customers and where they were going. Apparently not the case with charters in DPS. Just keep that public money coming! I have heard this year’s second graduating class at the Green Valley Ranch, the school with higher FRL and minority students than the original HS at Stapleton, has fallen to below 55%, using the same methodology. I will try to confirm that asap.
Trump wants to get rid of the US Education Department and the services it provides including at-risk and special needs students. (This might not be a high priority group for you but remember your child may be in a group that is high priority to you.) He wants states to have total control which means school boards would make all school decisions. Already familiar with their self-serving agenda? Trump believes school choice is the only solution and hopes public schools will fold with the competition. Are you swallowing that Kool Aid and wondering why you keep getting sick?
Look at the research, student success at charter/private schools are ranked the same as public schools. There are certain rights students are guaranteed that are absent outside the public-school system plus additional cost and parental responsibilities (sometimes legal assistance is required). You are being sold a dream that cannot be achieved without vigilant commitment.
Experts determined bad teachers in bad schools are why children are failing and the parents are totally responsible for their children’s achievement. Teachers have been fired, bad schools are getting worst, and you can’t figure out how to provide a successful environment for your loser children (their term, not mine). How about more money to fix the problem? That hasn’t worked either, has it? Problem solve, what’s left? The authority above the teaching level is administration. What can do more damage, a large group of wealthy administrators with a wrecking ball or a single teacher with a broken hammer (low pay, can’t afford a new one)? A reporter on the New York Times screeched at the very suggestion the media get involved with exposing a protected “mafia” system.
Concerned teachers, community groups, education advocates, and all others are powerless to make any progress without the intervention of parents. We can make shallow waves but your opinion and demands are the high waves that can tip the boat. You have a right to know how your child’s school budget is spent. For example, an elementary school in Thornton, CO employs 6-7 support personnel at a teacher’s wage. These individuals are not licensed teachers and do not have a case load that requires them to be at the school full time but they are special friends of administration. If you removed this nonessential staff approximately $360,000 would be added back to that one school’s budget. Districts are firing older experienced teachers and replacing them with inexperienced learners, some without licenses, to save money. Think that is a good plan? If you had to have surgery, even minor, would you want a doctor with experience or someone building experience with your life? In those critical learning years, what is the correlation between highly qualified professionals and success?
Remember the nearly 40 years of lotto tax for school infrastructure? Research how much is allocated to schools. Where did all those funds go? Where does all the marijuana tax go? How did school districts pay for the expensive campaign demanding more money? They got it, now where will it go? Read the school board minutes. There is gossip and parties, how to stay out of trouble when bilking the public but nothing visionary, no apparent concern for their customers. Why do you continue to keep paying a mechanic that lies about fixing your car and blames you for not driving it correctly? Change mechanics, demand answers or accept paying the expense of a non-working vehicle (and be sure to add the cost and frustration of using RTD).