Eric.ed.gov – Citywide Education Progress Report: Denver

The Citywide Education Progress Report looks at how a city is doing across three goals: (1) The education system is continuously improving; (2) All students have access to a high-quality education; and (3) The education strategy is rooted in the community. Across each goal it presents indicators of what the city is doing and how it is doing. The reports focus on education strategies for the 2017-18 school year. The analyses reflect developments through June 2018. These are updates to the original reports from the 2016-17 school year. Denver has been a leader in education reform and an early adopter of cross-sector collaboration. Over the past decade, the city has experienced improvement in school performance and rapid growth in student enrollment.However, in the past year Denver Public Schools has struggled to find its footing. Education leaders must continue to push themselves to tackle the tough issues that remain to continue to earn the trust of their community and to maintain their national reputation as a leader in education improvement. The district must increase equitable access to high-quality schools and deepen engagement with community and family groups. Citywide, school proficiency rates on state assessments have improved relative to the state, but outcome gains have been uneven. White students are more likely to enroll in top-scoring elementary and middle schools than in lower-performing schools, and they are overrepresented in advanced math coursework in high school. The city’s graduation rate remains 10 percentage points below the state’s. [For the main report, “Stepping Up: How Are American Cities Delivering on the Promise of Public School Choice?,” see ED578178.]