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Supt. Tom Boasberg
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Dear Team DPS,
Yesterday, in a part of our city where a decade ago the schools were seen as among the worst in our state, I had the honor of standing with school leaders, teachers, students and community members who are showing Colorado what is possible.
"We are changing lives," Manual High School Principal Nick Dawkins said, as he and other Near Northeast middle and high school principals described how their students are now making more academic progress than their classmates across the state.
This week, state education officials publicly released results of the 2017 Colorado Measures of Academic Success, also known as CMAS. And for the seventh year in a row, the results show, our kids are making stronger academic growth in English language arts and math than other students statewide.
In fact, our students posted record academic gains this year. And that growth was led by our students of color, students in poverty and English language learners, groups who have been historically underserved in schools in Denver and across the country.
"For anyone who doubted that this could work, we now know it does," said McAuliffe at Manual Middle School Principal Jessica Long, standing alongside Dawkins and leaders from neighboring Bruce Randolph School and the Denver School of Science and Technology at the Cole campus.
Little more than a decade ago, state education officials shut down the former Cole Middle School for poor performance, the first and only school to be closed under a now-repealed state accountability law.
Then, our students lagged their peers in Colorado in literacy and math by 20 to 25 percentage points on a 100-point scale. Our academic growth wasn't keeping up with state averages - meaning not only were our kids behind but they were falling further behind every year.
In 2005, we introduced the first district strategic plan, the Denver Plan. For the first time, in 2010, our kids began to outpace the state in their academic growth. They grew faster than their peers statewide every year, on every English test and every math assessment. Today, those gaps between our kids and the state are nearly gone.
We know it's not nearly enough. Because while our kids are growing faster academically, they often start out behind and have farther to go to perform at grade level or higher.
But what's happening inside our schools today is different. School leaders in Near Northeast Denver talked about opening their doors to their communities, academic rigor and focusing on creativity, problem-solving and critical thinking. They discussed building trust between teachers and students, and giving their neighborhoods the schools they wanted and deserved.
At Manual, Dean of Culture Chris DeRemer described tough conversations with every ninth-grader, "student by student, life by life."
"We told students where they were without forgetting where they could go," he said.
"We know growth is not enough," he added. "It's just the beginning. We can't wait to begin our next school year on Monday."
