Jeanne Kaplan served for two terms as an elected board member in Denver.

Since she retired from the board, she has watched with a combination of disgust and rage as the district statisticians spin the data to make it appear that students are making dramatic progress

In the last board election, Dark money poured in to buy all seven seats on the school board for friends of corporate reform. Education Reform Now and Stand for Children brought in large sums to secure control.

This is the way the game is played: make a big deal out of growth and try not to talk about current performance.

She writes:

“If you have an important school board election coming up in less than a month and you want to protect your incumbent candidates and your “reform” agenda, and

“If community meeting after community meeting implores you, the District, NOT to close any more schools but rather put real time and resources into the schools with very high concentrations of students living in poverty and not speaking English as their first language and these schools are located in Board Districts where the seats are being contested, and

“Even if you have been warned repeatedly from both sides of the philosophical education debate that so much emphasis on GROWTH over STATUS is misleading, and

“If all of these decisions are determined by high stakes test scores where proficiencies are terrible (39% in reading and 30% in math) and achievement gaps enormous (the highest in the state and among the highest in the nation),

“WHAT WOULD YOU DO? Answer: Change how you calculate school success and rankings, and then put all your public relations minions to work to tout the importance of growth and to downplay the importance of grade level competency.”