Denver Parents Plan To Use School Choice To Desegregate Districts

By Tori Mason

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    DENVER, Colorado (KCNC) — It’s the time of year when families make one of the most important decisions in their children’s lives: what school they’ll attend in the fall? As parents flip through school choice enrollment guides, a group for educational equity hopes they’ll rethink their ideas of what a “good school” truly is.

“I think what’s happened largely is that everybody looks for this concept called a good school. And oftentimes, the way we’ve defined good schools is by test scores, but we know that there’s a lot behind test scores,” said Katie Zaback, a parent and educational researcher. “It’s not just about what’s happening in the classroom. There are a lot of other factors that are involved.”

Zaback is part of the group Integrated Schools Colorado.

Integrated Schools is a movement of families working to address the imbalance of racial and economic power in our systems of education.

“It made me start rethinking how I might use the school choice system to choose in a different way. Because the way that we seem to be choosing doesn’t seem to have been helping close equity gaps,” said Zaback.

The ability to choose where you send your kids to school has benefitted a lot of families, but it’s also led to schools becoming more segregated.

“There are all sorts of negative consequences that flow from this; from inequitable funding to differing levels of teacher training to disparities and curriculum to mental health supports and on and on,” said Andrew Lefkowits, a Denver Public Schools parent with a podcast on addressing school segregation.

Lefkowits says public schools are supposed to be the foundation of building an engaged and informed citizen. He says districts need to be integrated so that children can learn together and create a true multiracial democracy.

“The times that we as a country have tried to do desegregation is so often on the backs of students, families and teachers of color. We believe it’s time for white people and other folks with racial, economic educational privilege to do the work in the hopes that we can move beyond the segregation into some meaningful real true integration,” said Lefkowits.

Zaback knows school choice can be overwhelming for many families. She hopes more parents will look at the educational opportunities schools offer outside of the classroom and work together to create more equitable schools for Colorado children.

“I think that data is still really good for our schools, I just don’t know if giving parents data to make decisions that results in them concentrating wealth in a small number of schools has been a very effective process,” said Zaback. “I don’t think choice has to be bad, but I think it’s on us to help make more equitable choices.”

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