$4.6 million dollar grant to Denver Public Schools

The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation funded a  $4.6 million dollar grant to  Denver Public Schools .

The second phase of its performance-management and accountability work, which has the goal of boosting student achievement.The grant announced Monday is the foundation’s largest performance management grant they have received . Janet Mountain, executive director of the foundation, said DPS is considered a “go-to district” for its work developing a school-performance framework, merit based pay for principals aand teachers and  data systems and  a central office performance management programs.

On the same day that DPS landed a grant to help improve teacher effectiveness, the Colorado Legacy Foundation released a paper called “Improving Teacher and School Leader Effectiveness: Designing a Framework for Colorado.”In February 2008, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation and the Dell Foundation gave DPS $4.75 million to improve data collection related to issues including individual school performance and transportation .”We were very successful in accomplishing those goals,” DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg said.

“The Dell Foundation agreed to continue working with us on the next phase of the performance-management work.””It is really focused on how we get accurate, timely data to teachers in a very user-friendly way, that will enable teachers to understand and best meet the individual needs of each of their students,” Boasberg said.