Episode 20: CMAS results with Maya Lagana

Transcript

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 0:08

Hi everyone. We are taking a short break from school board candidates, this podcast recording because it is that special time of year for a lot of our education policy wonk listeners where the CMAs data has been released. And folks everywhere are diving into the data, looking at, what does this mean for Denver Public School specifically? So today to help us analyze the data, we have a special guest. Maya Laia is an independent education consultant. She worked in the DPS Central office from 2011 to 2019 and her final role there was senior Director of Portfolio Management. Welcome, Maya. Hi. Happy to be here.

Alan Gottlieb: 0:47

Thanks, Maya. We're really glad to have you, and I've worked with Maya on some reports and she's really good with data, so she's a ideal person to have on to talk about this. If you could just, I know you just recently did a analysis of the CMAs data, and if you could give us a high level walkthrough a. Of what you found in the CMAS data, specifically pertaining to Denver public schools. That'd be great.

Maya Lagana: 1:09

Yeah. Great, happy to do that. This is my favorite time of year. I know it's not everyone's, but certainly mine'cause I love spending time with data. So we'll start I think with the. Headlines that DPS did show improvement in most areas in 2025 compared to 2024. And so that is something that we should acknowledge the progress being made in the system that said performance. Still comparable or below 2019 pre COVID levels, and so we know that there's still a lot of work left to be done in making sure that DPS students are mastering grade level content. That is even more true for traditionally underserved student groups who are students who qualify for free and reduced price launch. Black students, Latino students, English learners, et cetera, all. Continue to lag behind 2019 performance. And there's large gaps between those students and the comparison groups within the district. It's also important to note that a lot of those students, free and reduced lunch students in particular, perform worse than free and reduced lunch students across the state. So those gaps exist not just when comparing student groups within DPS, but when comparing DPS performance to the state overall. And we're gonna talk mostly about CMAs today, but I wanna just name that similar trends tend to exist for our high school students when talking about PSAT and SAT performance as well.

Alan Gottlieb: 2:32

Great, thanks. And if you could talk just a little bit about, we've got, there's basically two ways we look at the estate at in Denver or in Colorado, which is status. Which is the scores themselves, and then there's growth and median growth percentile. Could you talk about how things looked with DPS of the whole and with the subgroups, with median growth percentile, and maybe even give a quick, but not too in the weeds because it gets very complicated and confusing Definition or description of what? Median growth percentile is,

Maya Lagana: 3:01

Median growth percentile is looking at all of the individual students within a school and how they performed on CMAs this year compared to students who performed similarly to them last year across the state. And so an MGP of 51st, a school indicates. Collectively, students in a school are making the same amount of progress as would be expected compared to their peers statewide. DPS had MDPs above 50 in both subjects this year to be precise. 55 in English language arts and 53 in math, which suggests that students in DPS are making more progress or more growth in their peers statewide.

Alan Gottlieb: 3:45

Okay. Now when you break that down, because I think this is really important, by subgroups, like free and reduced lunch.

Maya Lagana: 3:50

Yep.

Alan Gottlieb: 3:50

Black students, Latino students, white students, what are those medium growth percentiles look like?

Maya Lagana: 3:56

Yeah. So for the most part, subgroups within DPS are making have higher medium growth percentiles and their comparison groups statewide. For example, FRL students in DPS have an MGP of 50 compared to a. L students statewide with an MGP of 46. However, mg our FRL students within DPS are making less growth than non FRL students within DPS. So again, similar to the status conversation, our schools within Denver are still serving our more white and more affluent students. Better in the sense that they are making more growth than our low income students of color, which could lead to widening gaps in the future, knowing we already have very wide gaps.

Alan Gottlieb: 4:41

Okay. Thank you for that. Now I'm trying not to like completely lose my mind here and it's nothing you're saying Maya,'cause your data is great. But I've looked at the data too and I've, based on my 30 years of experience in, in DPS and then looking back at 2017 as well, trying to compare us to the state and say we look better is there's this, there's a Spanish thing I think from Spain in the land of the blind. The one-eyed man is king. And that's how I'm feeling here, which is that Talking about a median growth percentile of 51 or 52 or 55 or whatever sounds great. But if you are a, if you're a, if you're a struggling low income student of color in DPS and you're getting an MGP of 51 or 52, I know you have to know what their status is and how far down they began in terms of being below proficient as well. But are you ever going to catch up if you're if, or do you need a MGP of 60 or 65 to have a shot if you're in fourth or fifth grade of. Being close to grade level performance by the time you graduate from high school.

Maya Lagana: 5:44

Alan, I think you're touching on something that's really important is that while those students might have had an MGP above 50, they only saw one percentage point increase in proficiency. Right? Which means still fewer than one in four free and reduced lunch students and DPS is reading at grade level. So while MGP. Is an important measure of the work schools are doing. It's not enough to measure how students are moving towards proficiency. Colorado used to have a measure that went along with median growth percentile called adequate growth percentile, which as I understood it, was what growth percentile with students need to have in order to reach proficiency within three years and. You used to see many schools that needed to have a, at their adequate gross percentile would be something like 90 or 75 depending on where their students were starting. And that measure, is no longer. Made available. I don't know if CDE still calculates it and just doesn't release it. But it is not something we have anymore. And so I think something that allowed both schools, families and the general public to understand what amount of growth is needed to get students to proficiency would be a really large improvement for our system and transparency.

Alan Gottlieb: 6:57

And do you know why they stopped? Seducing that publicly.

Maya Lagana: 7:01

They were never, they never gave a reason. I know there was a lot of criticism of it from schools and others that because the targets were so high, they were almost mathematically impossible in some ways given the comparative nature of median growth percentile. But that CD never gave a public reason. But my guess is it was partially almost discouraging for folks'cause it was so challenging to reach.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 7:23

Those are the types of things that drive me crazy is when you have the data that you need to make really informed decisions, either as a school or as a parent, but then it requires you to hold schools and students and educators and the ecosystem to a higher standard when we realize just how much work we have to do. Instead of digging in and really figuring out how to get there, it's the standard's too high, it's too hard to get there, so let's just ignore it. But I don't want, I don't wanna be the negative one here. I do wanna highlight some of the positives, but Maya, I interrupted you. Go ahead.

Maya Lagana: 7:56

No, I was just say, I know the legislature when they directed the state to consider changes to accountability moving forward, the school performance framework and it's associated. Levers, they was a directive to think about a new way to measure growth towards proficiency, but CD has delayed that numerous times for various reasons, be it the change in testing conditions or on SAT as they've moved online or given the COVID disruption. So hopefully it is coming, but I haven't heard anything about timing.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 8:26

And I'm gonna go a little bit off script here, Maya, and this isn't something that necessarily isn't the data, but I really wanna just get your perspective as somebody who's been in this space for a while. A lot of critics would say these standardized tests are bias and that's not the best way to measure how students are actually doing. There's a, we could take a more whole child approach to things. What would you say to those sort of critiques that this isn't the best way to measure how students are performing academically?

Maya Lagana: 8:54

I would say two things. One, I don't think that standardized tests are the be all, end all, and we should certainly think about how to look at multiple metrics of performance. On a recent podcast of yours, and I don't remember which one it was, you all talked about how the D-P-S-S-P-F used to have more metrics beyond just standardized tests. And now that we've moved to the state SPF, it's become almost. For K eight schools exclusively focused on CMAs, so I fully agree that there are other things that matter about schools, and I think that right now we know this is the best measure. We have to look across schools and ensure students are mastering grade level content that they will need to succeed in life. I would love for my student, my middle schooler, who's in a DPS school to. Learn to run science experiments and learn coding, but if he doesn't know how to read and do math at a level that is sufficient, he can't do any of those other things well. And so CMAs and SAT are critical pieces of understanding how schools are preparing students for success. Beyond school. Even if they aren't the only thing that matters.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 10:06

Yeah. And I think for me, you and I have had multiple conversations over the last year because our children both went, are going into middle school and we were dealing with the fun choice process. When I was looking at data for schools, I was actually in many ways more interested in the growth, particularly for black and brown students because one of the important parts of the school that I chose for my child was. It was a school that had racial and ethnic diversity, but also was serving black and brown students, either well at that point in time, or I had confidence that they were heading in the right direction over time when it came to growth. And so I'd be curious to hear your perspective as we look at bright spots across DPS. Are we seeing that there are schools that are doing well, maybe serving specific subgroups better and, actually, I'll just stop there. Are we seeing that there are some schools that are doing better or are we seeing overall schools are more or less staying the same?

Maya Lagana: 11:02

There is a, wide variation when you look at different schools and how they're doing with students. I think. There are schools who serve predominantly low income students and students of color who are getting much stronger outcomes for those students. There are diverse schools that are getting high outcomes for all kids, and then there's schools, where the overall outcomes hide really large achievement gaps. It spans the gamut from that perspective. And those schools exist. Those bright spots exist across governance types. They're district managed schools that are getting really strong results. For students of color and low income students. There are innovation schools. There are charter schools, and so I think that tells us that governance is not the only factor. One thing I would say, Alexis, about how you were looking at growth, right? I think to our earlier conversation, growth can also be really volatile, right? So there are, you'll see schools that will have a meeting growth percentile of 75 1 year and then 35 the next year. And so that's why, while growth is really important, I also think looking at proficiency rates matter because. You can have that one year of high growth, but that doesn't necessarily move proficiency. You need multiple, continued years of high growth in order to truly move proficiency. Absolutely. That's a great point.

Alan Gottlieb: 12:11

Yeah. I remember Rich winning who actually did, I think he used to work for CDE and he designed this, the the growth, the Colorado growth model. I don't remember if it was Rich or somebody in a briefing he was doing at CDE once said, growth is great to measure. But if you are in an Olympic sprint race, and, you do it four years later and you, your time, you, your time is better, but you'll lose by more slightly. You know what good is? What good is your growth done? You if you're not able to actually perform against the standard as well as you did four years ago. So I wanna take I'm sorry to do this. I warned these guys I was gonna do it, but I need to take like the podcasters. Prerogative and just go on a rant here for a minute. And the reason I wanna do this is I want it to prompt a kind of a more philosophical discussion because I think these numbers really do raise some profound issues about urban public education in Denver and probably urban public education in the country. And I haven't written this down, so pardon me if I just go off on a tangent, but I'm gonna try and be concise here. I, I, as I said, I, and I will admit, I used ai. I went back and looked at some scores from 20 17 20 19 and then, when they started up again and I think 2022 after the pandemic. And what's so depressing to me is I really see. No progress for low income kids of color in Denver public schools, basically ever. And I know some people aren't gonna like to hear that, and I want to make clear that I am not blaming the students. I'm not blaming the teachers. There's something systemic that's just not working. In 2017, the gaps between low income kids and non low income kids, and white kids and kids of color were. 10 percentage points lower than they are now. So they've gone up. People tend to start at the pandemic and say everything got went to hell during the pandemic and we're starting to recover. But the fact of the matter is DPS plunged before the pandemic plunged further during the pandemic and is now, maybe slightly recovering toward the pandemic, but is still way behind where it was eight years ago. In. In terms of gaps in proficiency. So I think that's deeply troubling. As I said before, I've, I, I've been following DPS for 30 years now, and back in the day when I started, they used the Iowa test of basic skills as a very different kind of, norm is I think it's called norm reference as opposed to criteria and referenced test, a very different kind of test. But the fact of the matter is that the entire time I've been following Denver public schools, low income kids of color, have not been close to getting the education they need to in large numbers. Succeed post high school. In this society, it's just consistently serving kids poorly. The gaps are huge. The proficiency levels are minuscule, and nobody really wants to talk about that. They want to celebrate the small victories, which I think is actually. Both condescending and damaging to the future prospects of these students. So I am incredibly pissed off and discouraged and disheartened whenever these test scores come out and even the modest gains that were made I. Steady and modest gain that were made during the Bennett and Bosberg years have been wiped out, and those were also probably insufficient to ever get us in any reasonable period of time toward where we wanna be. So I, it raises the question for me, can urban public education. Even do its job, can Denver public schools even do the job? It is assigned, and I am not a proponent of vouchers and I'm not a proponent of education savings account and all these other ways that people can get ripped off by people who don't like public education. I am a proponent of figuring out what the hell is wrong and how do we fix it, and is it fixable After 30 years of watching, and I'm beginning to think it's not fixable.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 15:55

Thanks Alan comments? Yes, many and may I'll turn over to here in just a second. Maya and I were both working at under the Boberg administration at the same time. And so I, I certainly think one of the reasons that I love having the podcast is that we can provide more of that historical perspective. Especially Alan's, you've been in this game so long, like it's really nice to hear. How you've seen things over time and for students who have seen multiple superintendents, but I actually agree with you and the Bennett Boberg apologists out there might be clutching their pearls, but even with the growth that we saw under both of them, it would've taken, so many years to get to where we needed to get for low income students of color. And then. I'm not surprised that we are seeing so much positive news because I think the average denverite, they're not gonna care as much about what happened post COVID. They saw the headlines like, students are significantly worse off because of COVID and learning loss. Learning loss was the big buzzword for a while there. And in some ways, I think a lot of folks are just gonna be able to take a deep breath, a sigh of relief great, we are back to where we were before COVID. But that's not what the standard should be is 2019. It should be our black brown students, low income students, English language learners, are still nowhere near where they need to be in Denver public schools. And I will say kudos to Alex Murro, kudos to his team for. Getting us back to a point where we were before COVID, like that is not an easy feat. And I would say credit to any district that has gotten us there, but until we are able to talk about really drastic policy change that changes what public education looks like in the United States, I have very little confidence that we'll be able to do a system level change, which is why. For me, I believe in a different model of schools and for parents to be able to choose what type of school model works best for them. I could talk a lot more about this, but Maya, we only have you on for this podcast, so would love to turn the floor over to you.

Maya Lagana: 17:52

Yeah. Alan, I think you're right on some level, and I think the reality is it's not just Denver, right? I think we'd all see the headlines everywhere. If any major urban school district had solved this puzzle it would probably be the only thing that would get some of the headlines talking about education, public education again. But we haven't. And so I think that is true, that it does in some ways feel. Unmanageable at scale. But what we also do know is that we have seen schools that have done it consistently. And so I think the question then becomes how do we scale some of those things? And it doesn't have to, it's not that every school should look like a. Denver or DSST or Rocky Mountain Prep Creekside both get great results for our low-income students of color pretty consistently. And I'm not saying every school should look like that'cause, much like Alexis, I believe there should be a wide range of options. But what are they doing that we could learn from, that we could share? And I think one of the. Things that the Boberg administration did try to do was share some of those best practices across governance types and across school models in a way to try and scale best practices. Again, not fully successfully, but how do we, at least attempt to do that because I don't think we're even trying to share best practices across school models and governance types anymore because in part because we're trying to spin this narrative that everything's going great, so we don't need to learn from others. When I, when you dig into the data more deeply, is not actually the case.

Alan Gottlieb: 19:18

Now, where do we go from here? What do we do to try and move this needle in a meaningful way? I know my good friend not trying to put words in his mouth, but Tony Lewis, who runs the Donald K Foundation or is at the Donald K Foundation, he did. They like to have a non-hierarchical management structure there these days. So he doesn't run it anymore, but he's pretty much just given up on even trying to fund anything, having to do with public education and is trying to create basically a shadow system that puts a lot of resources in the hands of parents to choose. And this isn't not vouchers, but it's out of school experiences for their kids. They're gonna help them. They spun off a nonprofit called Reschool, which is really trying to look at that because he concluded that. This isn't fixable. I don't know whether it's fixable or not, but I haven't seen a lot of evidence in my years following this, and it's approaching a third of its century, so that's really depressing. But the. That that it is fixable. So I really am struggling with where do we go from here and how do we approach this? Yeah. I agree that schools like DSST are doing really impressive things. Rocky Mountain Prep Creek side people try to write that off. Who don't like charter schools by saying those. They cream the kids. They, they may have a significant number of low income kids of color in their schools, but they cream those kids. Those are the families that are who don't have the challenges that make it impossible for them to actually seek a choice for their child. And therefore it's not a valid comparison to a school where it families just put their kid in the neighborhood school because it's the closest school. And to that, I say, so you're basically trying to deprive families who have the ability to make a choice for making a choice. And that's that old crab in a bucket argument, which is if somebody's starting to show signs of having progress, they need to be pulled down back into the mass because otherwise you make the mass feel bad, which doesn't make any sense to me either.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 20:59

I wanna point out one thing and we've talked about DSST, we've talked about Rocky Mountain Prep and certainly there are charter schools that are doing really good work. I don't think as a reformer speaking, as an education reformer I'm just gonna reclaim that title even though it's a bad word apparently. I don't think we hold our low performing charter schools accountable enough, and that's where I think it's, we get into these arguments, like the philosophical debates of, if you're going to be closing down traditional public schools, you need to be doing the same thing for charter schools. And I actually agree, like in some ways we need to hold charter schools even to a higher. Level of accountability because they are testing a new model. And that's something that just as a school of, how do I say this? As somebody who is very in strong support of innovative models, I also think we need to really look at, and it goes back to your point Maya, like scaling what's working, but really analyzing what models are not working and. Not taking too much time to course correct when those models aren't working. And that's not to say, I'm like saying let's close all of the bad the quote unquote bad schools that aren't serving students well. But we need to start interventions much earlier. We need to start the clock for accountability much earlier. And those are the politically untenable. Conversations that people aren't willing to have or aren't willing to engage with. And again, like I'll give more credit once again to Alex Murrow and his team. Even though y'all know I'm super critical of him that they are willing to be talking about what school closures looks like. And it's not always necessarily around accountability, but we're at least moving more in that direction that we have in the past under this administration.

Maya Lagana: 22:35

So Alexis, I totally agree with you. I think accountability for all schools, and I think the charter movement does itself a disservice when it doesn't hold. When it doesn't uphold that premise of self accountability. Yes. I think one of the things I was most proud of during my time on the portfolio management team was after our first couple of years, we worked so closely with our charters to set performance goals that the DPS board did not have to take a vote to close a charter school for low performance because they surrendered their contracts when they didn't hit those targets. And I don't know if that, I think there's become such a more. More challenging relationship between charters and the district that a lot of that trust that led us to that place has eroded. So that level of self accountability isn't there because there hasn't felt like there's been any accountability on the district side for the last several years. I think the school transformation policy is a move in that direction, certainly. But I think something that's important to call out about the school transformation policy is it's entirely based on school performance frameworks, not on any of the data we are talking about today. Good point. And six, about 60% of the school performance framework is growth. And the part that is proficiency doesn't actually look at all at the percent of students meeting grade level standards. It looks at your average scale score, which A is impossible for any family or community member to understand. And B doesn't actually tell you like our students actually mastering grade level content. And something like, despite the data we just looked at and talked about, 65% of schools or so get the highest rating on the SPF. I think there's still some work to be done on accountability, but you're right, it's a move in the right direction, and I'm hopeful the charter sector in Denver will continue to follow that. It's

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 24:18

Do you guys know that the meme or that, that picture of the three spider men, like the Spider-Man's like pointing the finger at each other and it feels that way to me with all of the different stakeholders in this space. It's like we're pointing the finger at the other, but. When, where are we doing the self-reflection? And that is something I'm worried about with Denver Public Schools, is we see so much of the positive spin and I paid to even say this, but like the propaganda we're not being as transparent as I think the Boberg administration certainly was when it came to data. And I think that's something that we're hearing consistently from all of the candidates that have come onto the podcast is. They want to make data informed decisions. They want more transparency. It's something that they're hearing from a lot of the voters. So maybe this is an opportunity to be a little bit more self-reflective as a district and talk about the hard things when it comes to the data and how students are doing. I've never seen an

Alan Gottlieb: 25:11

administration farther from doing that than this one. Yeah, this is the worst administration in terms of transparency, honesty, about data of in the 30 years that I've been following DPS,

Maya Lagana: 25:21

I've had DPS board members like ask me for disaggregated data, just ones I've known for my time in the ecosystem, because they can't get it from the district. And so I think that speaks to that. Alan, I do. Alan, I don't wanna ignore your comment you made about does this mean we all just give up on the system because I really hope that isn't what we do because I, even. Whether or not we believe the system is fully fixable, the more people that give up on it, it only leaves those who don't have the choices or the information to leave it or to know they should be leaving it. And I really, I, I don't, I, I think no matter what we do, there's always gonna be people who remain in the public school system for whatever reason. And the more people that give up on it, like the worse it is for those who remain. So I just wanna say that out loud. I totally agree.

Alan Gottlieb: 26:11

Totally agree. Yeah.

Maya Lagana: 26:12

But we need to think differently about how we are supporting it. Certainly. And again, I don't know who has, no one has the ultimate solution. But I think it starts with great people like, and how do we create a system that people want to work in and feel celebrated in? And I don't think, yeah. That is from people I know who have worked at the district in recent years. That doesn't feel like the current,

Alan Gottlieb: 26:38

Yeah. Perception and it's a very tough needle to thread because how do you tell our truths? At the same time, not demoralize people or cause people to bail on the system. But I feel like we're so far from telling the hard truths anymore that we're just lying to the public. We're lying to the public in order to help the superintendent get his next job or look good in his Instagram feed or whatever it is. So that's not okay. We need to be telling the truth, but at the same time, we need to offer hope. We also need to celebrate. Successes, and I'm glad the district actually went out this past week and went to some classrooms where in, in a couple of schools, I think it was Force and Columbine maybe, or Columbia, I can't remember which one where kids were doing, where there were classrooms where the teachers were just kicking ass and getting amazing growth results out of their students. Good. Do that for sure. Show that there is. There is hope and that there are ways to do things, but at the same time, let's be honest about the challenges and the other like endless societal debate that's been going on. I remember this was a hot debate like the year the Democratic convention was here when Obama was first nominated about whether schools should be saddled or burdened with the entire responsibility of. Of solving societal ills or whether there are so many things outside of school that play into this, that the schools really shouldn't be held accountable for the performance of their students. And it's like such a stupid debate because it's both and yet there were like these two camps that were fighting over that. And that it's pointless. It's pointless to try and bifurcate it that way.

Maya Lagana: 28:09

It is. I, and I don't wanna go back. I think Alexis and I would both agree that nothing we did in 2018 was perfect. One of the things the Denver SPF did that we don't have anymore was have a metric that we called the similar schools metric. And you looked at where your school was situated demographically across a range of student groups and took five schools. 10 schools closest to you in demographics and how are you doing compared to those schools? And I think that really helped for families, putting context how students were doing and be transparent with that in a way that just doesn't exist anymore, which is a first step. I think some of what you're saying, Alan.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 28:45

Something I, thanks Maya, appreciate that. And I'll just speak for myself. Everything I did when I was working at Denver Public Schools was perfect. I made no mistakes. There were no problems at all. No but I think that's actually right. I think most people who we've worked with that I've run into over the years would say it certainly wasn't the perfect way. There were parts of like community engagement that could have been done better. The board, I think could have handled some of the critiques better but I do think having that SPF that was specific to DPS was something that was a really helpful tool that, that I think a lot of folks are missing now. One thing that, that I've just thought of and, but I, something I've reflected on, like on and off over the last few months in, in different conversations I've been having about the school board elections, the, like how DPS is doing previous superintendents, things like that is in so many ways. I feel like a lot of Denver leaders, whether they be elected officials, like in the legislature, city council other like civic leaders who aren't in education, they almost treat like DPS education. Issues like the third rail issue, the way that other people may treat like abortion or or other like controversial topics between Democrats and Republicans. And one thing I would really love to see is more, especially in Denver, like more Democrats and progressive Democrats like lean in and actually be willing to talk about these things. They don't have to agree on every policy or every decision that like the school board is making or the superintendent, or even like reformers, but. I, I just feel like there's not enough pressure from other system leaders to talk about how students are doing when students are also their constituents, when students are also the stakeholder within this system. So it's just something that, that I hope to see more of. And it's I think privately I try to do a little bit of that with some of my friends and and others in this space, but. But we're just silent on so many of this issues, like how many legislators in the Denver delegation are actually gonna come out and say anything about this? I'd be shocked if we get more than two or three.

Alan Gottlieb: 30:49

It would help if there was some media coverage. That's my other rant. Yeah. Is that the coverage of, and maybe people have decided test scores are irrelevant. I don't know. But the coverage of the CMAs release was pathetic across the board. There was just no analysis. There was no, there was no nothing. And that's people aren't gonna go look this up at themselves if you try and go through those CDE spreadsheets, thank you. Thank you, Maya, for having the patience and. Skills to do that. I don't remember how many rows deep those things are, but it's thousands and they're really complicated. So thank you for doing that. But yeah, but it would be nice if the media did it too.

Maya Lagana: 31:24

I think you're right. I think a little bit of, I don't. Post COVID feels like a lifetime ago, so maybe it's always been this way, but I think there's been this mindset like post COVID of being a teacher, being an educator is so hard, which it is. And I wanna like fully acknowledge that work. I was a teacher for about three years and or were the hardest three years of my life, but. We've taken that to mean thus that we can't critique what's happening in a way, and I felt that as a parent in my own kid's school, I've felt that sort of as an education advocate, it's like anytime I like want to raise a criticism, it's oh, but you don't understand how hard it is to do this work, which is true on some level, but it doesn't mean we can't call attention to the systemic issues. But I think that's some of what Alexis, our legislators and things are grappling with is like, how do I do this? Without, being seen as being anti teacher, anti educator, or anti-public school in this time when that has become such a third rail, particularly within the Democratic party. And I know there's groups in Denver, like Educate Denver, which you've been involved with historically, right? That are trying to call attention to these things, but haven't fully galvanized the right coalition around it fully.

Alan Gottlieb: 32:32

They're too gentle,

Maya Lagana: 32:33

right?

Alan Gottlieb: 32:33

Stop being so gentle. Educate Denver. Break some glass.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 32:38

No, that was Alan saying that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And look, my, I will say this, like there's something to be said about calling in, right? Like with our Educate Denver group. But I'll just say this publicly and calling this out on the podcast. I think one of the things educate Denver and the reform movement more broadly is struggling with, is finding. Like new leadership and new talent, and I've alluded it, alluded to it a little bit in previous podcast episodes, but I still think we're struggling to find our footing to find what our leadership looks like, to find like a unified message. And I think. We've heard this from a couple of other folks on the podcast too, but maybe this election is a turning point for that. With new, possibly new school board members, but also who are the leaders that are going to come out and step out publicly and be more critical of the district when they do have things to lose. And I think that's what I'm disappointed in, is. You have a lot of people who are silent because they either have business with the district, they have, they're trying to curry favor with the district. And I see a lot of, like a lack of courage from individuals. I'm not speaking for any specific group, but from individuals who have power aren't leveraging it to, what I would hope is the full extent that they could.

Alan Gottlieb: 33:48

All the parallels to what you, of what you're saying to like, what's going on nationally are amazing. And what you're saying about people here applies also to the Democratic party nationally, and people being scared to stand up to power applies nationally as well. And

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 34:02

I used to be so critical of Gavin Newsom and I'm like, he's, I don't know, just like the hair, it's like kind of the sleazy thing but maybe the Gavin Newsom approach. Is the approach we need to find like the Gavin Newsom type here in DP s Maybe Alan can start, on, on X and

Alan Gottlieb: 34:18

I don't have enough hair to be Gavin Newsom.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 34:20

There you go. American flag in the background, shouting about something or other, but I don't know. That's just, that's my rant.

Alan Gottlieb: 34:28

Yeah I don't have anything more. I've exhausted myself now and I feel better. I feel like this is a therapy session. I probably pissed off a lot of people and if I did tough just write me a letter and tell me what I did that was wrong, but I don't really care. But any final thoughts from you, Maya or Alexis before we sign off?

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 34:48

Not for me.

Maya Lagana: 34:49

No, I think I just reiterate the things we talked about, right? That there are bright spots at school levels and teacher levels, and that's great and we should learn from them, but we have to make sure that overall, as a community, we're continuing to look more deeply at the data than what is first presented to us by the district or the media, and make sure we're really understanding what's happening and all focus on how can we improve outcomes for students who need it in Denver.

Alexis Menocal Harrigan: 35:17

Thank you with Maya. It was so great having you on the podcast and catching up with you. Yeah. We will have another

Alan Gottlieb: 35:22

episode soon, everybody. And that's it for this week. We will be back with another episode very soon. Take care and bye.