While white children in Denver rank 10 percentile points above average on standardized tests, Native American and African-American students rank 14 points below, and Hispanic children rank almost twenty points below, at the 31st percentile. More than two-thirds of Denver’s 66,000 students are nonwhite.
According to the Denver Parents Association, only seven of Denver’s 77 elementary schools merit an A or B grade, while 49 of the 77 schools receive D or F grades. The grades are based on results of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, using each school’s four-year cumulative average score for the period 1992-93 to 1995-96.
Spring 1996 data show the overall graduation rate for DPS to be just 60.6 percent. For Hispanic students, the graduation rate drops to 45.9 percent. Black and Hispanic students also have higher dropout rates than whites.
