DECEMBER 2019 | VOL. 4

THE CURE
An Insider Guide to Denver's Fight for Education Justice
BUILDING AN ANTI-RACIST SCHOOL SYSTEM
The CURE is Powered by: Righteous Rage Institute for Grassroots Community Organizing
Systemic Racism in the SPF:
How schools with outstanding metrics are still being rated “red” on the DPS School Performance Framework

The School Performance Framework (SPF) was created and continues to be used as a key tool for implementing systemic racism and creating inequitable learning outcomes in Denver, with similar tools being used in communities all across the country. In part 1 and part 2 of this series, we explain the historical context of how tools like the SPF and practices like calling Black and Brown school leaders to the “whippin’ post” are the modernized approach to maintaining slave plantation practices. Here, we breakdown specifically how these tools are being used to make excellent leaders of color at some of the best schools in the district feel insufficient, devalued, and dismissed. 

Worse yet, these are the tools that are being used to gaslight communities of color that are happy with their schools in an effort to convince them that their schools are not well-performing, and the tools being used to discourage enrollment - the first step in squeezing schools out, siphoning resources from them, and then justifying the shut-down of some of our best schools serving students of color.
To understand this in practical terms, let’s take a look at Hallett Elementary School.

Last year, Hallett achieved the following results that by any logical assessment would qualify them as “distinguished” performance:
  • 61% of students that weren’t reading at grade level the year before now are, including 46% of students that were significantly below grade level and now reading at or above
  • 89% of parents are satisfied with the school, 5% increase from the year before
  • Enrollment increased by 81% (75 more students than the year before), despite being the only traditional school with no enrollment zone. This means parents from all across the Denver Metro area are choosing to enroll their children here. 

Based on these scores, Hallett should qualify as “Distinguished” -- blue rating. They would be exceeding expectations in categories of Student Progress, Family Engagement and Satisfaction, and Academic Gaps. 

Instead, they have been categorized as Red, or “does not meet expectations”, with these excellent data points that would suggest otherwise being concealed from the public. If a parent went to the SFP website to see how Hallett was doing, this is what they would see:
As a parent, if you wanted to dig deeper to understand the actual data points behind the scores -- how much growth did students have? How many parents are satisfied? You wouldn’t be able to find that. The district only shows the ratings by color category, without the ability to see the data for oneself. 

The SPF has misconstrued and concealed the actual progress of this school , painting it in a very inaccurate light that would deter parents from wanting to enroll their children there.  In reality, this is one of the best institutions, especially for children of color, to enroll given their growth outcomes and high percentage of staff of color (which is proven to correlate to higher test scores for students of color). If you visit the school, you immediately get that sense from the warmth, love, and excellence that exudes from the building. But many families won’t ever visit, taking the misinformation of the SFP at face value.
Here’s how the conceal-campaign works:

  1. White “reference” groups: Many of the “student progress” measures are calculated by comparing improvement in test scores of students of color, free/reduced lunch, and English language learned to White students. Therefore, there must be a “reference group” of at least 16 White students for schools to even get scored on metrics related to growth of students of color. This is racist, and suggests that White students are necessary to validate the growth of students of color. Hallett serves 96% students of color, and does not have 16 White students to compare their students’ to. Therefore they were not scored on 9 different indicators of student growth, 7 of which would have reached the benchmark for “meeting expectations”. If they received those points for meeting expectations, they would have scored “exceeds expectations - blue” on student growth, but as a result of that growth being left out and concealed, they were unjustly, and inaccurately scored a “red - does not meet expectations”.
  2. Racially biased application of “Safe Harbor” rules: There are special rules that enable white-majority schools to maintain full-points, even if there are large gaps between outcomes for students of color and white students -- these are called “safe harbor” rules. Safe Harbor rules are most often applied when a dis-aggregated racial group, like English Learners or Students of Color meet the benchmark of “Median Growth Percentile” (MGP) of at least 65. Even if the White students’ MGP is significantly higher than the students of color, that school automatically receives full points. What this tells white majority schools is “it’s okay to have significant performance gaps between students of color and white students, as long as your students of color hit the low bar we’ve set for them”. At a systemic level, this means that schools without significant white student population are getting punished for their lack of whiteness, scored lower, and students of color are being told you must instead enroll in white institutions to succeed. Once in those white institutions, their needs and performance are literally “white washed” - schools are not held to the same accountability of closing achievement gaps. 
  3. The same Safe Harbor rules could be applied to a school like Hallett: if the students of color meet the benchmark standard for meeting expectations, they could automatically get the full points, even though they don’t have white students to compare them to. But DPS chooses to subjectively apply the decision, largely in support of white-majority schools to boost their performance, while refusing to acknowledge the growth occurring in schools serving children of color. 
  4. Rules that limit low-income parent participation in surveys: if you are looking carefully, you may have noticed Hallett only received 37.5% of possible points for parent and student engagement, despite having 89% positive responses from parents. This is another metric that did not get scored because it didn’t meet the 20% threshold for parent participation. In 2019, 15% of Hallett’s families participated in the satisfaction survey, but the real inequity is that the school is not permitted to monitor or request that families turn in the surveys to the school to ensure that they meet the participation threshold. With low-income parents that work more hours and are not sitting on email looking for notices from DPS, this creates a structural barrier based on race. Schools see parents every day, and are the source of information for most parents on things that they need to complete, so why wouldn’t schools be allowed to remind parents to participate in something that will greatly impact school ratings, as well as the financial resources that schools receive the next school year? Instead, It’s completely outside of a schools’ control, yet they are penalized for “missing the mark”.
  5. Subjective and changing “similar schools” comparison: Ideologically, if the stated goal of DPS is to have all schools be great choices for students, it wouldn’t make sense to have SPF scores based on comparisons to schools similar to them. But that is part of how schools are scored. Meaning, even if a group of similar schools are all helping students grow and meet performance standards, those schools will still be pitted against each other, with some receiving more points than others for comparatively higher or lower test scores. To add insult to injury, Hallett’s “comparison group” was changed after the principal review period for the SPF, showing the subjectivity of decisions around which schools you would be compared to in the first place. As a result of the bait and switch, Hallett’s scores in the “compared to similar schools” buckets decreased without adequate notice to the principal for her to review and push back on the last minute change.

The SPF needs to change immediately, to remove the racial inequality that misrepresents performance of schools serving students of color. The rules and metrics used to “score” schools are deeply racialized, so even the schools meeting performance benchmarks are not getting the credit they deserve. Beyond of all this -- test scores have been proven to be racially biased, and are not an accurate representation of learning that is happening in schools or the level of resources and supports available to children and families. 

We need to change the SPF to be a “Superintendent Performance Framework” -- if DPS and its leadership is not providing schools the resources needed to succeed, and if outcomes across the district continue to be differentiated by race, then our central office and DPS leadership have failed, not our schools, and not our children. 
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