By Melanie Asmar and Eric Gorski, Chalkbeat
Four persistently low-performing Denver schools face the prospect of closure based on poor showings in the school district’s latest school ratings, district officials confirmed to Chalkbeat.
The ratings released publicly Thursday put four schools at risk under a new policy called the School Performance Compact, DPS said. They are: Greenlee Elementary in west Denver; Gilpin Montessori, an elementary school in northeast Denver; Amesse Elementary in far northeast Denver; and West Early College, a high school on the West High campus.
Those schools still have one last chance to stave off closure — a school quality review that will involve school visits and interviews in an effort to gauge whether they are on the right track.
Adopted last year, the School Performance Compact evaluates low-performing schools under three criteria, the first of which is whether they rank in the bottom 5 percent of schools based on multiple years of school ratings and aren’t exempt from the policy because they’re in the midst of a significant intervention meant to boost performance.
According to district officials, six schools met that criteria.
But two of them — Lake International School, a middle school in northwest Denver, and Wyatt Academy, a K-8 charter school in northeast Denver — showed an adequate amount of growth on the most recent state tests, rendering them safe from closure under the policy’s second criteria.
The four schools that did not make the cut each will undergo a comprehensive school quality review, in which a team of district employees, community members and staff from a third-party vendor visit, observe classrooms and speak with faculty, students and parents. The team will give each school numerical scores ranging from 1 to 4 in 10 different categories, including classroom instruction and staff culture, for a total possible score of 40 points.
Schools must score at least 25 points on their review — and not have a score of 1 in any category — in order to be safe from possible closure.
Greenlee Principal Sheldon Reynolds said Thursday he is optimistic that the review will capture the progress made under the school’s latest turnaround effort and ultimately save the school.
Under the guiding hand of Reynolds, a DPS graduate, Greenlee has adopted a “Possibility Plan” that celebrates students’ accomplishments and seeks to strengthen school culture.
Greenlee serves a high-needs population. Nearly 92 percent of Greenlee students last year were children of color, many of them immigrants. About 94 percent qualified for government-subsidized lunches, a measure of poverty.
On the new ratings released Thursday, Greenlee did show progress. DPS rates schools on a five-color scale: blue (the highest), green, yellow, orange and red (the lowest). Greenlee moved up from red to orange and had an even stronger showing in student academic growth.
“I think we’re really close,” Reynolds said. “We have changed our paradigm. Instead of saying, ‘What kind of intervention do our students need?’ we have focused on, ‘What kind of talents do our students already have, and how can we build on that?’”
Other DPS schools that were previously identified as being potentially subject to the closure policy showed significant improvement on this year’s ratings and are in the clear.
Centennial, an elementary school in northwest Denver, jumped well into the yellow category after being red in 2014. The school is several years into a redesign as an expeditionary learning school.
DPS officials say the School Performance Compact was necessary to bring clarity and consistency to the politically volatile and highly emotional school closure process.
The policy seeks to both give schools support and reasonable time to improve, while also allowing the district to move promptly once a school is clearly falling short. It’s consistent with the district’s aggressive reform policy. Over the past decade, DPS has phased out, consolidated or shuttered at least 48 of its lowest performing schools, according to a district list.
The school board is expected to vote in December on the first closures under the new policy.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
