Scrapping ranking system examined
A recommendation to scrap Denver Public Schools’ rating system could save the district as much as $900,000 a year, but some question whether switching to the state’s rankings could leave parents with less information about which school will best serve their kids.
DPS’s ranking system, called the School Performance Framework, combines schools’ test scores, students’ academic growth and other measures like graduation rates and parents’ responses to satisfaction scores to assign schools to one of five colorcoded rankings.
It’s a system no one in education has shown much love for, though there is evidence Denver parents use it to make schoolchoice decisions.
The rankings matter because DPS requires schools that score at the bottom level — red — to submit detailed plans to improve. In the past, board members were quicker to close low-performing schools, but they’ve taken a less aggressive stance recently.
A committee working since late summer voted last week to replace the academic portion of the school ranking with the state’s framework.
The main difference is that the state’s version doesn’t grade
schools on whether they serve all ethnic and socioeconomic groups equally well, said Jennifer Holladay, DPS’s associate chief of portfolio management. Another difference is that the state’s formula emphasizes whether students are currently testing as proficient in English and math, while the district’s puts more weight on whether students are closer to proficient than they were last year.
Both systems have their share of critics. Education reformers say DPS’s framework can make schools where only half of students are reading at grade level look good, giving parents a false sense that their children are on track. Teachers unions tend to dislike the state system, saying it penalizes schools where significant numbers of children start out behind their peers — a criticism some also make of the DPS framework.
Some people don’t like either, saying they put too much emphasis on tests and ignore whether schools are safe and supportive places for kids.
Holladay said the committee is going to continue meeting to discuss how DPS could build on the state rankings, perhaps by adding its own measures of equity for different groups and whether schools are serving the “whole child,” including kids’ emotional needs.
The goal is to send a recommendation for retooling the entire framework to the DPS board by May, she said.
It’s not clear how schools might fare under a ranking system that combines the state’s framework with new measures. In 2019, 14 schools in DPS scored lower on the state’s framework than the district’s, while the rest of the 165 schools that had comparable data ranked at the same level, according to an analysis by The Denver Post.
The state’s framework has four levels, while DPS’s has five, so The Post counted blue and green schools — the top two levels in DPS — as being at the same level as those that scored green, the highest level, on the state’s framework.
There’s more than prestige at stake if a school’s ranking goes down. An analysis by A+ Colorado found 94% of seats available in top-ranking, or blue, DPS schools were filled in 2018, compared to 50% of seats in red schools. Supporters say that shows parents are choosing the best schools for their children, while critics say that when parents with greater means leave schools that were labeled as failing, there are even fewer resources for kids whose parents can’t take them elsewhere.
Switching to the state framework could actually be more punitive for schools with large numbers of students in poverty, because the state rankings rely more heavily on proficiency than growth, said Van Schoales, president of A+ Colorado, an education research group. DPS’ rankings give more weight to growth, so a school that has students who come in behind will get credit for helping them catch up, he said.
With the state framework, “it’s harder to differentiate those schools that are adding value but have more poor kids in them,” Schoales said.
Tay Anderson, one of two DPS board members elected at-large, said he has some concerns about the state framework, including a lack of emphasis on equity for students of color and other underserved groups. But he thinks it’s a better idea to work with the Colorado State Board of Education to improve the framework for all districts than for DPS to shoulder the cost of running its own.
The $900,000 spent on the framework could be used to hire restorative justice practitioners to help students settle disagreements before they turn violent, and to provide free menstrual products so students don’t have to stay home when they can’t afford pads, Anderson said.
“We don’t have any money to waste in education,” he said.
Other board members said they need more information before making up their minds. Barbara O’Brien, the other member elected to represent the entire district, said the state has improved its rankings by raising the cut-off score for the top rank recently, but she doesn’t want to see DPS abandon its way of measuring whether schools are serving all student groups well.
“I think the Denver (School Performance Framework) got too complicated, but I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater,” she said.
Board President Carrie Olson, who represents District 3, said she’s also reserving judgment until she sees what the committee puts together. There are different ideas of how to define equity, and whether some parts of the framework should be based on a community’s priorities, while others are standard across all schools, she said.
“I think we are going to learn more about it as we go forward,” she said.
Schoales said he understands the frustration with the DPS framework, because it doesn’t allow parents to see the underlying data and uses too many measures. Still, he thinks streamlining the system is better than tossing it out altogether.
“Everybody is frustrated,” he said. “I think it’s a little like, people are mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore, and they want to burn the whole thing down.”