Hispanics get serious on choice

Burt Hubbard, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, April 20, 2007

Fine.

That was the gist of the answer most of the time when Rosanna Torres asked her son, Hugo, how his day had gone at Johnson Elementary in west Denver.

This year, the sixth-grader attends West Denver Prep charter middle school, and he has a lot more to say.

"Now I ask Hugo, 'How was your day?' and it's, 'Mom, I did this and I did that,' " Torres said. "He's really talking."

Torres is scouring the Internet for a charter school for older daughter Brittany, too.

Torres and West Denver Prep are part of a slowly emerging trend among Hispanic families to exercise more choice in where their kids go to school.

Most Hispanic families still attend Denver's traditional neighborhood schools — even when those schools are failing or underperforming.

Hispanic students, who account for 57 percent of DPS enrollment, are the least likely to leave their neighborhood schools for a charter, magnet or other DPS school, according to a Rocky Mountain News analysis of DPS data. About 80 percent of DPS' Hispanic students are low-income.

Still, among Hispanic DPS students, a hefty 37 percent chose a school other than their assigned neighborhood school in 2005-2006. The figure was more than 50 percent for Anglo and black students.

And interest in school choice has accelerated among all students. Since 2002, the percentages of DPS students bypassing neighborhood schools have grown 10 percentage points for black and Hispanic students and 6 percentage points for Anglo kids.

As choice widens, a sense of urgency is pushing DPS Superintendent Michael Bennet. He is leading a fast-paced effort to improve neighorhood schools because they're hemorrhaging enrollment. Preschool and kindergarten are growing, and so are DPS charter schools. But the district doesn't get full state and local funding for the youngest children, and for DPS charters, an average of 95 percent of per-pupil funding goes to the independent groups running them.

Bennet knows DPS must improve.

"We can't expect people, no matter the ethnicity, to compromise the education of their child," Bennet said.

Keeping kids close to home

Jaime Aquino, chief academic officer for DPS, said a tendency to choose neighborhood schools rather than send kids too far from home fits with Hispanics' strong belief in close-knit families.

"Hispanic families will be comforted to know their kids are near them," Aquino said. "If anything happens, they can get there very easily. We are very protective, sometimes overly protective, of our kids."

A recent DPS-commissioned survey of Denver parents found that Hispanics gave DPS a higher grade than Anglo or black parents did. The survey also found that low-income and high-income parents gave DPS higher marks than middle-income parents did.

In almost half of the predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods on the west side of Denver, fewer than 5 percent of students go to charter schools, the Rocky analysis shows. Districtwide, 6 percent of Hispanic DPS students and 6.6 percent of Anglo students attend charters, compared with 13 percent of black DPS students.

Private schools draw about 5 percent of Hispanic students, compared with 26 percent of Anglo students and 5 percent of black students, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Denver Hispanics' reliance on neighborhood schools reflects a national pattern.

Looking for structure

The discipline, academic rigor and uniform dress code are major reasons Rosanna Torres and fellow parent Olivia Sanchez chose West Denver Prep.

Every school day, West Denver Prep Director Chris Gibbons stands outside the two-story building on South Federal Boulevard, shaking the hands of all students as parents drop them off at 8 a.m. The school, in its first year, has only sixth-graders but will expand through eighth grade.

"Are you ready to strive for college today?" Gibbons asks.

The predominantly Hispanic and low-income students quietly enter the school and walk to their classrooms, passing a banner touting their college graduating class of 2017. Each classroom has the college pennant of its teacher on the door.

Students spend 2 1/2 hours a day on reading and writing and almost two hours on math. Homework averages two hours a night. Students stay in the same room to minimize disruptions in the hallways. Instead, the teachers change classes, wheeling carts filled with their books and eraser boards.

Students all wear blue polo shirts, dress shoes and jeans with belts. Discipline is strictly enforced.

"If you make a big deal out of the little stuff, the big stuff doesn't happen," Gibbons said.

Unlike Torres, Sanchez is a veteran of choice, with her four oldest sons going back and forth among neighborhood schools, private schools and charters.

She learned a hard lesson with her oldest son, Christopher. He went to DPS' Kunsmiller Middle School and did poorly, she said. Sanchez said she did not find out from school officials until weeks before the grading period ended that Christopher hadn't done his homework.

She and her husband enrolled him at Mile High Baptist, a private school in Jefferson County, to finish middle school. Christopher persuaded his parents to let him go to Lincoln High School.

He dropped out after two years.

"I just couldn't get him motivated," Sanchez said.

Christopher's younger brother, Danny, also wanted to go to Lincoln with his friends, but Sanchez prevailed.

"We almost gave in," she said.

Instead, Danny and younger brother Louie attend Southwest Early College, a charter high school in west Denver.

Their youngest boy, Marcos, went to Mile High Baptist through third grade, then returned to his neighborhood DPS school, Doull, for fourth and fifth grades. He's doing well as a sixth-grader at West Denver Prep, she said.

During a schoolwide community meeting held each Friday, Marcos was part of the choir that sang "Seasons of Love" from the Broadway musical Rent. The teachers used the song's "525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year?" to review math techniques.

Earlier, during a discussion of the book Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry on segregation in the South, Marcos asked a pointed question.

"What would the story say from the white person's point of view?" he said.

Awareness growing

Word of mouth, federal education mandates and recruiting campaigns are spreading awareness about school choice in the Hispanic community, said Scott Flores, trustee for the non-profit Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options in Colorado, a group that advocates for choice and vouchers.

Every month, CREO holds classes for Hispanics on school choice and their rights. In February at American Lutheran Memorial Church in west Denver, about 10 Spanish-speaking parents showed up to hear Linda Sosa, a CREO leader, explain choice in Spanish.

Some had heard about choice from other parents. Others had received letters from school. The federal No Child Left Behind program requires school districts to inform parents of students at low-performing schools that they have the right to switch their child to another public school, with transporation provided.

Last year, 1,500 of DPS' 73,000 students took advantage of the program, a DPS study found.

Flores estimates that CREO worked with about 4,000 parents in the metro area last year. About 70 percent were Spanish speakers, he said.

Some of the Hispanic interest in choice might come from new options springing up. West Denver Prep is only the fourth charter school in the city's western neighborhoods. Denver has 20 charters.

For this year's class, the charter had 138 applicants for 100 spots. More than 180 students applied for 110 positions in next fall's class. The school eventually will serve about 300 sixth- to eighth-graders.

The waiting lists show the demand among Hispanic families, Gibbons said.

"That tells me, wow, if we had more room, people would come," he said.

Both KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy in central Denver and Cesar Chavez Academy in Pueblo have shown that charter schools can succeed with low-income Hispanic students. KIPP's middle school was rated average by the state last year, while Chavez's middle school was rated high.

Another charter is on the way.

The Ricardo Flores Magon Academy at West 72nd Avenue and Irving Street expects to open in August with kindergarteners and first-graders, with plans to expand through eighth grade. The DPS school board turned down a contract with the charter last year, but the Charter School Institute, a state body that can overrule school districts, approved it to serve Denver and Adams County students.

The school day will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. to accommodate working parents and increase academic achievement, said school leader Marcos Martinez. Summer break will be cut short and the Christmas break extended because many parents take their children to relatives in Mexico during that time of year.

"We're trying to cater to the community," Martinez said.

Recruiting heavily

After West Denver Prep obtained its charter last year, Gibbons and the school's teachers went door-to-door to encourage parents to apply.

The first year, his student body was 91 percent Hispanic, with 84 percent eligible for free or reduced-priced lunches. Gibbons estimated a third came in proficient at grade level, another third were two to three grades behind and the rest were even further behind. Almost all the students came from DPS elementary schools in west Denver.

Students took the CSAP standardized tests for the first time this March and won't know results until summer.

But Rosanna Torres and Olivia Sanchez said they already have seen results with their sons.

For hyperactive Marcos, the uniforms and structure are comforting, Sanchez said.

Torres said Hugo fought back tears during the first weeks when he struggled with hours of homework. Now, he has set his sights high academically.

"Every day he's saying, 'I'm going to go to college, mom.' "

Big growth in choice

The number of DPS students who don't go to their neighborhood schools has jumped dramatically, even among Hispanics, who are least likely to bypass the closest school.

YEAR BLACK HISPANIC ANGLO

2000 43% 29% 44%

2001 43% 28% 46%

2002 43% 27% 46%

2003 45% 29% 48%

2004 50% 32% 51%

2005 53% 37% 52%

Source: Denver Public Schools