DPS Parent: Boasberg, the Denver Plan is a failure
February 12, 2011
Dear Superintendent Boasberg,
When I opened The Denver Post this morning and read about the 52% graduation rate in DPS, I was stunned. We have had The Denver Plan for six years now, and all we can manage is a 5% improvement in our graduation rate? Particularly when this “improvement” is due to nothing other than a “lowering of the academic bar” to make DPS numbers look better than they are? Proof of this is in the increased remediation rate to 55% of our DPS graduates who attend college. That is outrageous!
It is time to fix our schools starting with the high schools. By “fix” I do not mean closing the schools and replacing them with charters. Find six excellent principals, or pairings of competent assistant principals with smart business people, (not those from education corporations), and put them into the failing high schools: Manual, Montbello, North, West, Lincoln (and possibly Kennedy). That leaves only five decent high schools remaining to serve the students in DPS: East, GW, TJ, and South. How can you spend six years not