Five failing schools to lose money supposed to help them improve
The Colorado Department of Education will cut off school-improvement money to five of the state’s poorest-performing schools because they haven’t gotten better despite the influx of cash.
The schools — Gilpin Montessori elementary, in Denver’s Curtis Park neighborhood, and four middle schools in Pueblo — received money for two years of three-year federal School Improvement Grants. The grants are given to states to help some of the country’s lowest-achieving schools improve.
The schools were notified this month that their grants won’t be renewed for a third year.
“We suspended the funds for four schools in Pueblo, also for one school in Denver, because of a lack of progress in academic achievement year to year,” said Patrick Chapman, chief of the department’s Federal Programs Unit.
The schools can appeal, Chapman said.
“They have the opportunity to come back and talk with us about making bold changes that would allow us to free that money up. But we have to have a much better understanding of and support for what they are doing” for the funding to be restored.
Representatives of Denver Public Schools will meet with the state on Friday to present a revised improvement plan for Gilpin, said district spokeswoman Kristy Armstrong.
For Pueblo, the loss, if sustained, would amount to $2.4 million for the four schools.
Gilpin’s total grant was to have been $1.26 million over three years.
Van Schoales, chief executive of the school reform group A+ Denver Schools, called the state’s decision “very significant.”
“It’s great news because it means the department of education has begun to hold schools and school districts accountable for performance,” he said.
Chapman said that if the state doesn’t reverse its decision, the money that would have gone to Pueblo and Gilpin will be distributed to other struggling schools.
In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education announced it would provide $3.5 billion to help improve the nation’s 5,000 worst schools.
Colorado’s education department has received roughly $52 million of that, which it has distributed to 25 schools.
Denver Public Schools got just shy of $15 million in improvement grants, which it used to overhaul six schools, including Gilpin.
Gilpin, transformed from a kindergarten through-eighth-grade school into a Montessori elementary, is the only one of the six that hasn’t shown at least a glimmer of improvement.
The state measures academic growth by comparing students with their peers across the state and measuring that against the growth they need in order to be on track to achieve proficiency in a particular subject. The measures are based on standardized test performance.
The four Pueblo schools that will lose funding have actually gotten worse.
At Pueblo’s Risley Middle School, for example, only 10 percent of students were proficient or better in math in 2012, down from 13 percent in 2010.
As reported by The Denver Post earlier this year, Pueblo City Schools spent $7.3 million of its $12.4 million in grant money on hiring New York-based Global Partnership Schools to help it orchestrate an overhaul of six of its failing schools.
One of those, Spann Elementary, closed in June because of declining enrollment and poor performance.
In August, GPS notified Pueblo it didn’t want to renew its contract with the district.
In a story at the time, the Pueblo Chieftain quoted a letter from GPS director Manny Rivera to Pueblo’s superintendent: “We know that achieving sustainable and significant change in performance requires that all stakeholders be completely aligned with, and committed to, the transformational strategies. Regrettably, I have become convinced over the past six months that not everyone at the school district remains committed to the agenda that we set two years ago.”
Pueblo City schools leaders did not return calls requesting comment.
Karen Auge
More money is not the answer to improving schools. One aspect rarely, if ever mentioned, is parents having high expectations. (or at least some expectations). A child misbehaves, skips school, or even gets a grade lower than a “C”, there are consequences at home, such as being grounded. It helped shape up our under-achiever.
Sadly, and not unexpected, is a complete lack of any mention whatsoever of the expectation of the families of the students, to be committed to the education of their children.
Our public schools teachers are busting their butts to educate a very large segment of our population that simply does not value, or support, the education of their youngsters. One can set a beautiful table for dinner, but if the guests are not hungry, the food goes to waste.
Doubt this, folks? Think that our “overpaid and under-worked” teachers are completely to blame? Go spend a few hours at your local public school and see for yourself what kind of “guests” are arriving each day to pass on the feast of education that is prepared and made available to them each and every day.
To Cathy M: You are absolutely right. When preschoolers live in homes where the parents read to them, talk to them, have dinner with them, teach them manners, take them to zoos and museums, and love them, they come to school ready to learn. All little kids like to learn, but way too many of them come to school without even a modicum of cultural literacy. I just finished reading Tony Danza’s book, “I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I ever Had,” and within the first couple of chapters, he nailed the problems with our schools. I cannot understand how politicians can determine what constitutes a “failing” school when none of them have ever been in a classroom except as students. Of course, they think they know everything, so why not? Schools have no control over what walks in the front door, but they must educate–or try to educate–all of them. It’s small wonder that most teachers who leave the profession do so in the first five years. We lost a very good teacher last spring who couldn’t live on her beginning teacher’s salary AND pay her student loans. She went back to bartending so that she could make more money.
I teach in a very good school, but even here, we have lazy students who expect high grade for merely showing up. As in all professions, we have some, but very few, teachers who aren’t very good; we have some who are purely brilliant, but most of us fall somewhere in the middle, working our butts off and loving the kids while wondering whether ten hour days and weekends are worth the effort when we are criticized harshly on every side by people who have never tried to do what we do.
You can lead a horse (Pueblo administrators) to water, but you can’t make it drink.
I agree with your sentiments. However, I must correct you on one point here — the line in your post, which I underlined, in not accurate. The aspect of the failing, or struggling, students’ parental expectations if NEVER mentioned. This has appeared to be most peculiar to me for a long time now. The best I can figure is that it is not politically correct to hold these parents accountable for the educational and behavioral failings that they are passing on to their children.
Bill Cosby was right. And if there was an Hispanic Bill Cosby, he would be right also. This is, admittedly not a politically correct thing to put into my post, but it is accurate. Yes, there are failing and struggling white students, but the majority of the educationally and behaviorally failing students come from the two cultures in our society that least value and monitor what their offspring are doing.
For those readers of this forum that have a death-grip on “blame the teachers”, just go to your local public school for a day and watch what goes on. See for yourself. Then come back to this forum and let us all know what you have honestly observed. You, and all of us, owe it to the children that are not completely beyond saving. And we owe it to ourselves as well, for these children are going to grow up and cause us real problems if we do not honestly address this horrendous situation.
An old saying: “There is a train coming, and I suggest that you move off the track.”
Just more evidence that simply spending more money does no good, for schools or anything else.
And something that will be ignored or outright denied by those crying out to just spend more money as a solution to all our various problems.
It’s a pretty strong indictment of Pueblo City Schools when the private contract company, which is in the business of making money, decides not to renew their contract due to district employees not being onboard with the plan to improve schools.
So to be clear, the contractor turned down money because of a lack of motivation on the part of school district employees? Telling, very telling!
Chicago is going the opposite route: Some parents will get $25 gift cards if they pick up report cards …
http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/16053933-418/some-parents-to-get-25-gift-cards-when-picking-up-report-cards.html
From my observation and experiences, teachers working in extremely poor schools work soooo much harder than teachers in high socioeconomic schools. The vast majority of there students speak more spanish than english, many of the kids have a parent in prison or parents that have significant drug/alcohol addictions. These kids do not receive proper nutrition and are influenced more by gangs than by teachers.
Teachers in these schools are constantly told they are failing by their administration, school district and community. Thus, the best teachers in these schools burn out and quit, or they move to schools in better areas.
I don’t know what the solution is, but its not our schools that are failing kids in these communities. It is the community that is failing.
That is part of the problem, many teachers were themselves mediocre students. In the US you can be a C plus student in high school and college and still become a teacher. In those countries that are ahead of us only the best are allowed in a classroom. Time to change that and raise the compensation level to attract the best.
What happened to all the money that was supposed to result in improved performance? Did they use it to fire the bad teachers, and hire better non-unionized ones (teachers that wouldn’t do the work for the lower pay?) Or did they simply give the existing bad teachers and union members raises, and assume that paying the poor-performing teachers more money will result in better-educated students? History has shown that you can’t simply pay someone more because they think they deserve it, and expect that they’ll automatically work harder and do a better job. The real world just doesn’t work that way. As long as teachers unions exist, true performance improvement is impossible to achieve.
Just so you understand, it is possible to be “average” in a group of very capable people. Average is a relative term, not an absolute. You chose to take it as an indicator of overall academic achievement, not where a teacher would rank among his/her peers. Further, as more than one career changer has learned, there is a lot more to being an effective teacher than pure subject knowledge. The knowledge is a starting point, but it is the interpersonal skills that often make or break a new teacher.