The Post Editorial: Denver Public Schools faces a big challenge to replace Tom Boasberg.
Let’s all pray Tom Boasberg isn’t as irreplaceable as he seems. After a remarkable 10-year stint as superintendent of Denver Public Schools, Boasberg announced this month he is stepping down.
His tenure was marked by deft handling of myriad emergencies; significant gains in academic performance by all students; a near doubling of the number of black and Latino students who graduate every year; and the rapid closing of the achievement gap between a district where almost 70 percent of students live in poverty and all other districts across the state.
But there are two things specifically that make Boasberg one of the most transformative school leaders in the nation.
First, and this statistic speaks for itself, Denver students who speak English as a second language went from significantly lagging behind their peers in other Colorado school districts to outperforming them on standardized tests by a not-insignificant margin.
Closing the achievement gap for students still learning English or living in poverty, has eluded urban districts for decades. Boasberg said helping traditionally underserved students is a matter of equality and justice.
“It’s about trying to push the ball up the hill, but in doing so to eradicate that hill, so that my kids and my kids’ kids are pushing that ball along a flat ground in a more just society,” Boasberg told us last week.
The landscape however is far from flat. Whoever replaces Boasberg must remain focused on the fact that while the district as a whole is closing its achievement gap, that gap has remained stubbornly large among students of color or those in poverty and their white and more affluent peers.
It’s an issue that could get swept under the rug in this rapidly gentrifying city.
Second — to Boasberg’s credit — is the fact that parents living in Denver who have the means to send their children elsewhere, are now choosing Denver Public Schools.
The growth in enrollment — an incredible 20,000 students or 30 percent — over the past 10 years has far outpaced any increase in the number of school aged children living in the district.
Boasberg says the district earned trust by focusing on talent.
“How do you attract and keep and develop the best possible people the best possible educators?” Boasberg asked. “At the end of the day that’s what matters. Do you have great teachers in every classroom? That’s what we focused on above all else. How do you help our teachers learn and grow in the incredibly difficult profession they are in?”
Boasberg answered those complex questions with a training and mentor program led by the very best teachers in the district — a system of peers teaching peers and simultaneously learning how to be leaders.
The confidence of parents in the district is also likely in part because there is simply so much choice within DPS. Language immersion, fine arts, college preparation and International Baccalaureate are just a few of the offerings.
Boasberg somehow has managed to wrangle the Wild West of charter schools into an orderly and accountable system that offers choice to everyone without leaving some behind.
It’s a model the rest of the nation should adopt — a standardized application for all schools that requires lottery-style admissions. It prevents schools from cherry picking students or discriminating.
The next superintendent, however, will grapple with a nationwide backlash to charter schools. Call it Betsy DeVos fever, if you will, but the movement is fueled also by those charter schools across the nation that have been: plagued by a lack of accountability, managed by companies pursuing profit, or failing to serve disadvantaged and minority students.
“You address it very aggressively,” Boasberg advised of the anticharter school sentiment. “It’s extremely contentious and cuts against very deeply held ideological convictions and political beliefs. Some of those accusations people make are true in places other than Denver. … The vast majority of our charter schools are boundary schools. We have a unified enrollment system. We control every wait list for every school in the city. Those allegations are true in some places in the country. It’s just the data is very clear; it’s open, and it’s public, and it’s jut not true in Denver.”
Whoever replaces Boasberg must be committed to once and for all closing the achievement gap, but also continuing the great tradition of choice. We’re anxious to see if such a person can be found.