El Semanario
Posted on 04-09-2009

What’s next for our children?

Editor’s Note: The following contains excerpts from the interview with The Weekly Issue/El Semanario’s Publisher Chris M. Frésquez and DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg. To read the interview in its entirety visit www.elsemanario.net.

Over the past few months there has been uproar within the Latino community over the Denver Public Schools’ hiring of the new Superintendent, Tom Boasberg. As concerns with his position and the future of Latino and other minority students within DPS have surfaced once again, I recently had an opportunity to sit down with Superintendent Boasberg to discuss the many questions and concerns the Latino community has had about the educational future of our youth in the DPS system.

Chris M. Frésquez: Reflecting on the high ratio of DPS’s Latino student population (55.36%), and their significantly high drop out rate – what are your plans to increase their odds of graduating?

Tom Boasberg: I think we are making some progress. There is some good news in terms of the proficiency, achievement and the graduation rate proportions. But there are still extraordinarily sobering numbers in terms of achievement gaps between Latino students and Anglo students – particularly the drop-out rates of Latino students.

I think that your question is a big question because it involves a lot of different things, so I will try to answer it a succinctly as possible. I think it starts at the beginning with offering opportunities for youngsters – to enhance the opportunities for four-year-olds to attend preschool and the opportunities for five-year-olds to attend kindergarten. So right from the beginning we can begin to narrow the opportunity gap that exists between low income students or students who may not speak English at home and more affluent students. We have increased our preschool opportunities over the past year with over 500 kids for full day preschool and this year we enrolled over 2,000 kids. We’ve taken kindergarten from 70% full day to 90% full day. So, I think that’s the start - getting kids in school early and giving them the chance to succeed.

For the students whom we have in the elementary school is to make sure that we have strong efforts to reach the individual needs of our students whether they are English language learners or students who speak English at home, having an academic program and structural program that meets their needs. I think that we’ve made a lot of progress in terms of our English Language learners and our approach to English Language learners, but we’ve got a heck of a lot farther to go in terms of training our teachers and having differentiated instruction and having our teachers truly understand the language needs of their students. Because for some, the way that they speak or the way that they communicate, they may appear to be completely fluent English speakers, but that sort of oral fluency sometimes masks the fact that some reading skills may not be there; that some literacy skills may not be there; some understanding of the higher order, text skills or vocabulary may not be there; that’s hidden behind someone who could have a perfectly fluent every day conversation with you – so I think that’s important.

I also think at the secondary level one of the things we are starting to see that we need more of are programs targeted at students who are at risk of dropping out or students who have dropped out. Many of our existing high schools are bringing forth Credit Recovery Programs. Where someone who is 17 years old and only has the credits of a ninth grader – to tell that 17 year old to just go back and do ninth grade again – it didn’t work for you the first time, but just try it again – is obviously not the right approach. To have the right programs that are targeted at those individuals to really help them recover the credits that they are behind. Some of these programs would need to be on the weekends, some of them in the evenings. I do think we need to do a better job at our existing schools of targeting those students who are at risk, many of which who are over age and under credited.

Secondly, what we are trying to do as well with welcoming new students is by welcoming new schools that can offer alternative programs for at risk students. Some of those programs need to have a stronger component in dealing with some of the older students who don’t speak English that well or students who are amazing English speakers, but for whatever reason are 16 or 17 years old and have dropped out of high school or are at risk of dropping out.

I think again, we need to start with the 4 and 5 year olds; we need to do better in the elementary schools, particularly with differentiated needs, particularly with English Language Learners; in the secondary schools we need to offer more alternatives.

CMF: Because last year was about closing schools, how do you plan on reestablishing schools? What are the plans for the growth of DPS for the coming years?

Boasberg: I think the core of it rests on two things: the first is changing the way we operate as a system and second, is doing a much better job on focusing on keeping, hiring and rewarding talented people within the system, because I think that whatever you do at a system level doesn’t amount to anything unless you have people who are on the frontline, in this case teachers and principals.

Starting with the system first, our system for generations has been a monopoly - we’ve acted like a monopoly. Monopolies lose concern about meeting the needs of their customers because they don’t have to – they are a monopoly and by definition they don’t have to meet the needs of their customers. They become very concerned about internal stakeholders, internal employees and they become very top down and very centralized - this is the way it’s going to be, this shape, this size, this color, this process. I think we need to radically change and decentralize and we need to change the monopoly model because today we face competition from charter schools and from the fact that families can send their kids to schools in different school districts. We need to compete for our students. We need to compete for teachers. I think the way that we need to adapt is to have a much more decentralized model in which we push out much more autonomy to schools and school leaders and recognize and respect them, but hold them accountable. Hold them accountable for results. We need to hold them accountable with strong incentives for strong performance and interventions for weak performance - and performance is judged by growth. Right now in Denver we have a growth model where we look at - how much did a student grow academically from year one to year two? Regardless, whether a student was a proficient student – or not a proficient student – in year one, how much growth has that student made from one year to the next? That accountability is critical.

The first thing again is taking that centralized top-down system and creating a more decentralized system with accountability for results. Part two – in order to make that successful – is a real focus on people and most importantly teachers. To do everything we can to retain our talented teachers, to reward them and to recruit them but also where teachers are not performing to remediate and when necessary to remove teachers. There is both a system’s focus on decentralization and accountability, but also a real focus on are we doing the right thing to get, keep, reward and develop good teachers.

CMF: Is this a working model that is has proven to be successful in other school districts faced with similar challenges?

Boasberg: There is not an urban system in the country that I think, is a successful urban system. I think that there are urban systems that do better than others. There are elements of those that are noticeable for getting better results. Some of our charter schools are very high performing and some are charter schools that are very low performing, and it’s not necessarily about curriculum, because we all have wonderful schools – again, I think it’s about people. I do think that we and other school districts have through our policies, through collective bargaining agreements, through state statues, that we have not had the right incentives and systems in place to get and keep our best people. I do think where I’m seeing other school districts take steps in that regard – New York being an example of that; Houston being an example of that – we are seeing some progress in those districts.

CMF: Many in the Latino and African American communities feel they have been excluded in DPS discussions regarding various changes -- and historically they have -- what are your plans to create open dialogue with parents and the Latino community to include their input?

Boasberg: The Denver Plan focuses on three areas of focus: having a great teacher, having a strong principal in every school, and having strong community engagement. The short answer is that we have to do efforts at the school level to make sure that our schools are responsive, receptive and aggressive in getting input into their schools from their parent communities – again, those are their customers. As we move to decentralize and put greater authority and autonomy at the school level I think that you create the right incentives for schools and school leaders to reach out to their communities – and that’s part of it.

The second part of it is that we at the district level also need to be very aggressive on the communications level and the community relations level in both that making sure we are hearing from folks and communicating with them. For example, we have just launched a round of very lengthy community meetings. The most recent meetings were about four to five hour sessions where we tried to reach out to try to have a dialogue with the community. We reached out with the internet, with phone calls, through fliers home with the kids, so I think that it really is an effort to reach out to all parents – all the notices were bilingual, there was translation available at the meetings. There is absolutely a great desire to reach out and have that dialogue. I do recognize that we have not been as successful with this as we need to be.

CMF: A common concern from the community is the lack of multi-cultural curriculum used in DPS, where more than half of the students are Latino. There has been an established multicultural curriculum called La Alma de la Raza, which had a short life in DPS and then faded out. Is DPS aware of La Alma de la Raza curriculum and will DPS implement this into the schools?

Boasberg: We are aware of it and I think it is in some of our schools. I can get back to you on exactly which schools are using this program.

CMF: A continuing concern of Latino parents and students at DPS is that there is little if any reference to Latino history and historical figures. Students have been quoted stating that their disengagement with school has a large part to do with the fact that they don’t relate culturally to what is being taught because they are not being taught about their history or ancestors.

Boasberg: From the top we have the President of the School Board, Theresa Peña, who these issues deeply resonate with her and her family and have worked on these issues for several decades. So, I think that from the top we have very strong leadership and attention to the issues. We also have as the head of Curriculum Instruction in our Division of Teaching and Learning, Donna Cordova – someone who grew up here, went to school here, taught here; these issues resonate very, very deeply with her.

It is important to understand that some of our key decision makers who work here are Latino, did grow up here, who have cared very deeply about these issues for a long, long time.

CMF: How do you feel about the concerns brought up by the Colorado Latino Forum, in January regarding the District’s superintendent selection process?

Boasberg: I think that they are very important concerns. We’ve had several discussions with them. Their concerns are very important concerns and I think that the good news is that we are starting from the same place – which is how do we do a better job of providing opportunities for our students to thrive with academic growth; to have more of our students graduate from high school; to ensure the needs of our English language learners; over 40% of our students are English language learners.

I think that we have a very good common ground of what the issues are and where we need to improve and I look forward to working in partnership with them.

CMF: What are your thoughts on the group A+ and have you been working with them?

Boasberg: We work quite closely with them. I personally speak with former Mayors Peña and Webb quite frequently. I think that organization as a couple key roles: one is to be a real link to different parts of the community for us to give us feedback and constructive criticism. They are also a good source for us to have a dialogue; we meet with them frequently to discuss major issues, such as the schools that we’ve opened. They’ve played a key role in helping us have the discussions when we’ve had to close schools because we had too many schools and too few students – in terms of setting up criteria for that.

I see them as both a place for us to have dialogue with various elements of the community, I see it as a place for us to get advice, thoughts and constructive criticism from community leaders. I also see them playing an important role in helping having dialogue with the community just as I would hope they would be very direct. I value their comments and evaluations of where we are doing well and where we are not. Likewise, we are doing things that are important to be ambassadors for the community to help and support our initiatives.

CMF: With DPS funding, are you going to focus more towards the teachers and curriculum? Or towards schools that are outdated? How do you plan to handle the technology and condition of the schools?

Boasberg: We are very lucky that the voters of Denver passed a major bond initiative last fall to allow us over 90% of the money from that bond to repair and renovate existing schools and bring more technology to those schools. So, we hope to go out later this month and be able to sell those bonds – depending on the market – and then begin that renovation and repair work over the summer, along with the large chunk of money dedicated to 21st Century technology. Again, it goes to the schools for schools to make decisions - within a menu - of how to spend the technology money – computer labs, computers, overhead projectors, mobile white boards – those kinds of things.

CMF: Have you gotten any numbers yet as to how much money the district can expect from the stimulus package?

Boasberg: We’ve gotten high level numbers, what we haven’t gotten yet are the conditions under which, when we get that money, we can use it. But I do think there is some terrific news in the stimulus money package for Denver because the money focuses on two things: the first are high poverty skills – which are known as Title 1 – and the second is special education and special needs. We in Denver, have the highest proportion of students in poverty in the state and we really look forward to using that money particularly to meet the needs of our struggling students – through tutoring programs, through credit recovery programs, through differentiated intervention strategies based on struggling learners – and likewise. The special education money will be really important for some of our students who have some social and emotional needs that need to be met through counseling and special sessions. We are very eager to find out what the rules on that stimulus money are going to be because we want to begin to put in to work immediately in our classrooms.

CMF: When do you think you’ll have a written plan in place to carry out these changes?

Boasberg: This is part of the strategy we have been pursuing, I don’t think that we have put together any comprehensive planned document yet. Our hope is by the end of April we’d be able to go to the community with what we call an Action Plan for 2009. We will build on the Denver Plan, which we put in place three years ago and we are still very strong believers in. We’ve been working on that for three years we want to have an update – but what have we accomplished in the three years since the Denver Plan came out and what are our next steps? We hope by the end of April to go to the community with a discussion document and say this is our action plan, have a series of community meetings and discussions and we hope by early summer to be able to take that feedback and come back with an action plan.

DPS welcomes community thoughts, ideas and input and can be directed to 720/423-1233 or vision@dpsk12.org.