Groups Call on DPS To Reform Color-Coded School Performance Criteria
Quality Not As Simple As Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange & Red
By Lynn Kalinauskas
Education Chair, GPHC, Inc.
Denver Public Schools recently finished the long process of setting its goals under the title Denver Plan 2020. It’s No. 1 goal is that, “By 2020, 80 percent of DPS students will attend a high-performing school, measured by region using the district’s school performance framework.”
DPS established the School Performance Framework (SPF) in 2008. It is a complex system of metrics that classifies schools as blue, green, yellow, orange, or red. In simple terms, blue and green schools are doing well while others may be struggling for a variety of reasons. The ratings determine a school’s fate. Schools in and around Park Hill have either closed or have been subject to turnaround efforts based on this color-coded system.
How is the SPF calculated? Several factors play a role here but the one that is most heavily weighed is growth, which can have up to 22 subcategories. Achievement (proficiency) comes next with up to 15 sub-categories. Consequently, a school can be rated green because its students show growth even though many or most of its students may not be reading or doing math at grade level.
On Oct. 21, a group of 15 organizations and schools, and several former DPS board members, petitioned DPS to have it revise its SPF. Here is the full letter sent to the Board of Education:
Dear Denver Board of Education Members,
We are writing to ask you to revise the School Performance Framework (SPF) criteria and thresholds so district staff, parents, and the general public have a clearer understanding of the definition of a quality school. Denver was a national leader in establishing the SPF nearly a decade ago. It is now time to reflect upon the purpose and design of the SPF in order to guide the district toward greater improvement.
The Denver Plan 2020 aims to have eighty percent of all DPS students in every neighborhood attend a blue or green school by the end of the decade. Our concern is not with this laudable goal, but with the way that blue or green schools are defined. It is critical that the district send a strong signal about what constitutes a quality school.
A quality school should truly live up to high expectations; that is, they should be places where most students are on grade level and are becoming prepared for postsecondary options. However, our blue and green schools are missing this mark. In setting the bar too low for schools, the current rating system gives parents the wrong message, indicating that schools are high quality when, in fact, most students have little chance of meeting the state’s standards.
Furthermore, descriptors of performance levels such as “accredited on probation” would be more helpful to parents if they were translated into language that is more easily understood by parents and the community. The SPF must be understandable to families so they can make informed decisions about which school will best meet their child’s needs. While SPF performance descriptors like “Accredited on Priority Watch” or “Accredited on Probation” do have negative connotations, as do the colors yellow, red, and orange, the descriptors themselves need clearer and more precise language to ensure families can understand the true quality of a school.
We think it is necessary for the district to facilitate a deep conversation about the purpose and design of the SPF. Our specific criticisms of the current SPF include:
Academic status expectations are too low, especially for elementary schools:
We agree it is critical to improve the percentage of third graders reading at grade level across the district; in fact, this should be the primary goal for Denver. It should follow then that green elementary schools, which are by definition meeting expectations, should have 80% of their students at grade level—particularly in reading. However, the current rating system does not come close to meeting this bar. There are green elementary schools that have fewer than one in five students at or above proficiency, and other green schools have only obtained 3% of the SPF status points. Other grade levels also have expectations far too low; for example, the current SPF gives 100% of the SPF points for those high schools that have 20% math proficiency.
“High performance” is inconsistent within schools:
It is critical to better define success for those communities that continue to be at the loosing end of the widening achievement gap. At “high performing schools” the current performance by low-income and minority students—and progress in closing the achievement gap—is unacceptable. This performance should not be defined as meeting expectations. The chart below highlights the achievement-gap within our green schools. Our focus needs to be on raising the scores of our low-income and minority students so that they too are achieving the academic performance promised them in a high quality school.
Growth overshadows proficiency:
In too strongly weighting academic growth relative to academic proficiency, the current School Performance Framework provides a false positive about what is a good school. There are a growing number of schools that are reaching the green or blue SPF level, but still have a great distance to go in terms of having most students at proficiency. We agree that high schools should be praised for making progress, but the message to school staff, parents, and the community should not be that this is sufficient. Many of these schools must continue to make dramatic growth (often at higher rates of improvement than is the current standard) in order to get students on a successful path. The system’s signal that they are green is likely to slow, not increase growth, as it will lead to complacency with the status quo.
It is our more vulnerable students who pay for this conflation of improvement and success, as schools that are labeled “green” that have high growth but do not meet proficiency expectations tend to have higher proportions of low-income, ELL, and minority students than do green schools that meet proficiency expectations.
It is critical that DPS not complicate the message to families that “high performing schools” are actually that—high performing, rather than simply on a path toward high performance. Some green schools are on a strong path to proficiency while others are on a path to proficiency but will never get there. Students need to be in schools that actually produce learning—as measured by proficiency metrics.
Ultimately, it is our hope that this letter provides an opportunity for Denver Public Schools to set clearer expectations for our schools and send a powerful signal about what constitutes a quality school. We are committed to engaging with you and the district staff as to how to best improve performance and accountability in the district, and we look forward to working with you in this first step of better defining our north star.
We ask that the district start a process to address these concerns by the end of November or earlier. We also ask the Board to acknowledge receipt of this letter with its plan to follow up on these suggestions.
Sincerely,
A+ Denver
Colorado Succeeds
Denver Alliance for Public Education
DFER Colorado
DSST Public Schools
Donnell-Kay Foundation
Dr. Sharon Bailey, Former DPS Board Member
Gates Family Foundation
Jeannie Kaplan, Former DPS Board Member
Latinos for Education Reform
Michelle Moss, Former DPS Board Member
Padres & Jóvenes Unidos
Rocky Mountain Prep
Stand for Children Colorado
Teach for America Colorado
Together Colorado
University Preparatory School