Denver Public Schools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Denver County School District 1 Denver Public Schools |
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| Type | School District, Government Owned |
| Founded | Denver, Colorado (1859) |
| Headquarters | Denver, Colorado |
| Key people | Michael Bennet, Superintendent |
| Industry | Education |
| Employees | 13,087 |
| Website | www.dpsk12.org |
The Denver County School District 1, more commonly known as the Denver Public Schools, is the public school system in the City and County of Denver, Colorado, United States.
The first school was a log cabin on the corner of 12th street between Market and Larimer streets that opened in 1859. Currently, DPS operates 73 elementary schools, 15 K-8 schools, 17 Middle Schools, 14 High Schools, and 19 Charter Schools. They also operate other school programs including the Denver School of the Arts, the Center for International Studies, Emily Griffith Opportunity School, DPS Online High School, an International Baccalaureate program, a Highly Gifted and Talented Program, and CEC Middle College of Denver. DPS also operates the Balarat Program, an outdoor education, western history, and environmental studies program at a 720 acre site in the mountains northwest of Boulder [1].
In total, DPS educates approximately 73,000 students. The ethnic/racial composition of these students are:
- American Indian: 1.2%
- Asian: 3.1%
- Black: 19.1%
- Hispanic: 57.3%
- White: 19.3%
The graduation rate of DPS students is 76.9% according to DPS' website. [2]. Other sources report far lower graduation rates, for example with a rate of 42.6% being reported for the year 2002 [3] by Harvard's Civil Rights project. The difference is explained in that the numbers reported by DPS use a cohort system that tracks a specific group of students from 9th to 12th grade (including students that leave the district) whereas the other statistics only report students that graduate within DPS. Thus, 76.9% of DPS students graduate from high school, but only 42.6% of DPS students receive a diploma from DPS.
Although Denver is about 40% non-Hispanic White, minority groups represent double the regular Denver population. The reason for this has been white flight over the past few decades and extremely strong Hispanic school-age growth due to relatively high birth rates which has been the case all over the country. Although Denver has a Hispanic percentage of 34%, they are a majority in the public school system. In addition, Denver's African-American percentage overall is half that of Denver Public Schools.
There are 13,087 employees of DPS. 4,555 of them are teachers. [4]
