A School Makeover in Mapleton

A school district outside Denver has galvanized students and parents with a daring experiment in public school choice

by William C. Symonds

This spring, Charlotte Ciancio, the feisty superintendent of Mapleton Public Schools, held a series of open houses for parents in her district, which serves 5,800 students just north of Denver. In previous years, Ciancio's meetings had attracted only a handful of people. But this spring, more than 1,000 people packed the sessions. The reason: They were eager to learn about what may be the nation’s most radical experiment in public school choice.

Few school districts have ever gone as far as Mapleton has over the past two years in providing choices for students. Take high school. For decades, once students finished eighth grade in Mapleton, they automatically went on to Skyview High, a sprawling, traditional comprehensive high school. No more. The old Skyview is being phased out, and will no longer exist after its last class graduates next year.

In its place, Mapleton has created six small high schools scattered around the district. From now on, every eighth grader must choose among these six schools. There's no such thing as a default option. And this fall, similar choice will be extended to elementary and middle-school students, as well. In all, Mapleton now offers parents and students 17 schools, up from just seven before the reform began.

BACKED BY THE GATESES.

By the standards of U.S. school reform, this is revolutionary change. And it's a revolution that's being financed by Bill and Melinda Gates. Their foundation is backing all of the high school "models" that have been brought into Mapleton. Those include two small schools affiliated with the Big Picture Co.; Welby New Technology, which is modeled on Napa Valley's famed New Technology High School; and Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts (MESA), based on a model that grew out of Outward Bound. Then last December, the Gates Foundation gave Mapleton a $2.7 million grant to help it manage all this change.

Tom Vander Ark, who heads the Foundation's education initiative, is a big fan of Mapleton and its passionate superintendent. After six years of trying to fix high schools, Vander Ark is convinced that one size doesn't fit all. He believes school districts should strive to provide students with a "portfolio of choice" in schools. "Mapleton is a good example of a district that's seeking to create really interesting, high-quality options for its kids," he says (see BusinessWeek.com, 2/27/06, "Campus Revolutionary").

Ciancio is betting that choice will transform Mapleton from a struggling district into a star. "Our schools have been an embarrassment for a long time," she concedes. Last year, before the high school reform was implemented, just 12% of Mapleton's ninth and tenth graders scored proficient in math on Colorado's standards-based test. (The goal set by the No Child Left Behind law is 100% proficiency). And for years, more than half the students who start ninth grade have dropped out or left the district before graduation (see BusinessWeek.com, 11/21/05, "America the Uneducated").

EARLY DAYS.

But now Ciancio vows that every student who starts high school will graduate. And in addition to earning their diploma, she promises they'll be ready to go to college. And not just any college: Her aim is to push the average score earned by Mapleton juniors on the ACT exam from a lowly 15 last year to 23—good enough to get into competitive Denver University.

It's far too early to judge how much of a chance Ciancio has to pull this off. Most of the new high schools only opened last fall. So there hasn't been time to get a reading on what this will mean for test scores, let alone graduation rates. Indeed, students, teachers, and administrators are still on what amounts to a shakedown cruise. It hasn't always been smooth. Mapleton already had to jettison one of its new high schools—called Expeditionary Learning—in favor of a different model.

Ciancio hardly has the makings of a revolutionary.