Denver’s graduation rate is on the rise. Statistics released today show that 56.1 percent of seniors graduated “on time” in the spring of 2011, as opposed to 51.8 percent in 2010. “On time” means they graduated four years after entering high school as freshmen. Meanwhile, the dropout rate stayed the…
Colorado is seventh in the nation when it comes to the quality of its charter school laws, according to a ranking released today by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. That’s actually a downgrade from last year, when Colorado ranked fourth in the country. Why the slip? The folks…
Update: The State Board of Education has approved new standards for charter school authorizers — the school districts and one quasi-state agency that approve new charter schools. But the standards aren’t mandatory. As the Colorado Department of Education’s Amy Anderson tell us, state board members classified them as “guiding principles”…
The Charter School Institute board is once again complete. Last week, Governor John Hickenlooper appointed a ninth member: Liz Aybar, who once served as principal of the now-shuttered P.S. 1 Charter School in Denver. Aybar and the other eight board members have their work cut out for them, as explained…
The amount of money Colorado spends on children is shrinking at a time when the number of children — and the number of children in poverty — is rising, according to a report released today by the Colorado Children’s Campaign. President Chris Watney says it’s disheartening to watch the safety…
Back in May, the governor signed a bill to increase efforts to stop bullying, adding that students who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender should be protected — especially after a number of gay teen suicides. One Colorado, a statewide LGBT advocacy group, took the ball and ran with it,…
ColoradoSchoolGrades.com, a new website developed by a coalition education advocacy groups, attempts to simplify the process of figuring out whether a school is a gem or a lemon. Using the same data used by the state to label schools on a scale from “performance” to “turnaround,” the easy-to-use website gives…
Yesterday marked the death, for now, of a Colorado Board of Education rule mandating that school districts tell parents when staffers are busted for sex and drug crimes, among other offenses. That’s good news to Troy Lowrie, a strip-club owner who lost a side job coaching high school tennis after…
Applications were due yesterday for schools wishing to continue under the banner of the Charter School Institute, a quasi-state agency created in 2004 to approve charter schools rejected by districts with an ax to grind. The Ricardo Flores Magon Academy — the subject of our cover story, “A Hard Line”…
Earlier this fall, we told you about a parent-led crusade to delay the start of public school in Denver until September to avoid the heat that plagued August. This agitating led to the creation of a task force to survey the community about its start-date preferences. The results are in…
Enrollment in charter schools is growing nationwide, as well as here in Colorado. More than two million students now attend charter schools in the U.S., a 13 percent increase from last year, according to numbers released today by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Colorado contributed to that growth…
Last week, in a post about the CU Boulder student legislative council passing a resolution to move the annual 4/20 event off campus, we noted that the university had topped a survey by Newsweek and the Daily Beast of the nation’s druggiest colleges. But CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard — who…
This week’s cover story, “A Hard Line,” looks deeper into complaints against a Westminster charter school called the Ricardo Flores Magon Academy. One former teacher is now suing the school, claiming she was discriminated against and then fired in 2009 after she called in sick with the swine flu, which…
This week’s cover story, “A Hard Line,” takes a look at the Ricardo Flores Magon Academy, a charter school in Westminster with both high test scores and a high number of former teachers, one of whom recently filed a discrimination lawsuit against the school. Among complaints voiced by some former…
The annual 4/20 bacchanal on the CU Boulder campus, dubbed an orgasm of cannabis consumption by NORML exec Allen St. Pierre, is a tradition many university officials would like to end — and student government leaders like Carly Robinson are heading in that direction, too. But at a forum last…
The Ricardo Flores Magon Academy charter school in Westminster gets spectacular academic results and has won accolades for its tennis and chess programs. But former teachers and parents say not everything there is working — especially the administration. How much will the personality clashes, high teacher turnover and multiple lawsuits…
If you missed the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade yesterday, you didn’t see Broomfield’s Legacy High School Lightning Marching band. The more than two-mile parade for Legacy High marked the first time in ten years that a Colorado high school marched in the parade. Big photo below…
Update: Arrowwood Elementary parent Rachel Drummond had objections to a play scheduled for her daughter’s second-grade class today, due to references to Native Americans as “savages” and a speech that overtly referred to a higher power. However, Douglas County School District public information officer Randy Barber believes it’s important to…
This year may be the last for the Life Skills Center, a last-chance high school that Westword profiled in 2007. Last night, the Denver Public Schools board voted to shutter the struggling alternative charter school, which had been given a second chance in 2008 after facing the same fate…
Jefferson County Child Support Services has developed a new video intended to show that the department offers support for teen parents and children. However, most of the 21-minute long production called Think Beyond Friday Night is spent detailing all the horrors and tribulations of teen pregnancy…
East High School’s principal is leaving — though under less dubious circumstances than the principal at West High, who suddenly resigned earlier this year. In an e-mail to parents, East principal John Youngquist announced that he’s accepted a job to become Denver Public Schools’s Director of Principal Talent Development…
A new report by the American Association of University Professors’ Colorado Conference concludes that CU-Boulder’s dismissals of professor Ward Churchill and untenured history instructor Phil Mitchell were unjustified — but that’s not all. The document also concludes that its actions were so egregious that profs looking for a job should…
