A look back at Denver's Manual High

A man-made disaster for hundreds of Denver's kids

It's been three years since the disastrous Gates Foundation's early venture into small schools at Denver's Manual High ended in defeat. This early turnaround project failed, primarily because of the foundation's top-down approach, ignoring teacher, parent, and community wisdom. As one parent summed it up: "We weren't against small schools. We just wanted it done with us, not to us."

It didn't take long for Bill Gates to throw his hands up and abandon Manual and the small-schools movement altogether, claiming that high school restructuring was "too difficult." The school was closed at the end of the 2006 school year amid militant community protests. 558 students were scattered across the city to new schools, lives disrupted and relationships with teachers destroyed.

According to a recent University of Colorado study:

Nearly a third of those students are now classified by the district as withdrawn. They are either dropouts, have moved to a different state or their whereabouts are unknown. One student has died, and 94 transferred out of Denver Public Schools. Their progress is no longer tracked.

The C.U. study is one of the few projects that watched what happens to kids after a school closes.

Its findings:

• Only 52 percent of the students who were juniors when Manual closed went on to graduate. Manual had previously graduated 68 percent of its seniors.

• Historically, Manual students had a 6 percent chance of dropping out of school. After closure, the chance that a displaced Manual student would drop out soared to 17 percent.

• Colorado Student Assessment Program test scores among displaced Manual students dropped from between 3 and 38 points in reading, writing and math. Historically, Manual students typically gained between 8 and 19 points each year in those subjects.

The Gates Foundation chalked it up to experience and left town. Arne Duncan now says he wants to close 5,000 schools. I'll leave it at that for now.

Killing the small schools

It looks like the beginning of the end for small schools in Ohio and in Oregon. Why? Bill Gates apparently is growing weary and moving on to greener pastures. Small wasn’t the panacea he had hoped it would be and he’s looking for a new magic bullet. It seems that test scores in some of the small schools aren’t keeping pace with NCLB standards. Some districts, obviously were only in it for the grant dollars and are now moving back to the big, traditional model and using the Gates pull-back as their excuse. All this despite high student and parent satisfaction, better relationships within the schools and lower dropout rates.

As urban superintendents go…

…I thought Denver’s Michael Bennet was a good one. But the revolving door keeps revolving and now he’s Senator Bennet. Despite looking into the face of the current economic disaster, Bennet’s replacement, Tom Boasberg seems to have his head on straight. Boasberg is no educator. That might be asking too much these days. He’s a former lawyer/businessman as is the fashion. The thing that makes me nervous about Boasberg, is that the hedge-fund school reformers seem to like him too. But in this entire interview, he refrains from the typical teacher and union-bashing and doesn’t appear to be big-time school closer. His urban teacher residency program makes a lot of sense, as does pushing lots of financial decision making down to the local school level.

Bye bye Kette

Eduwonkette trades in her cape and blog today for elbow patches and a real job in academia. The mystery woman was even bold enough to have me as a guest blogger. Thanks for that, Kette. Let’s hope Edweek finds another swift, research-based rapier sword to replace hers.

Denver charter school in tatters

Mugged by Mosaica

Shades of earlier KIPP closings in Denver, hundreds of students who attend the Denver Arts and Technology Academy are out in the cold after the charter school’s board of directors opted to close shop in the wake of mounting debt, low enrollments and an on-going feud with the private management company that runs the northwest Denver school.

Dahl pointed out that Mosaica, which operates 77 schools across the country, ran into trouble for allegedly mismanaging a school near New Orleans. The Louisiana dispute led to arbitration. In the end, Mosaica was forced to pay $350,000 in damages. Additional information about the dispute between Mosaica and the board members with the Lafayette Academy can be found here.

(Source: Denver Post)