R-5’s success raises the bar

R-5 High School’s recent triumph — earning the state Department of Education’s highest academic rating — is worthy of praise. But it also begs for examination.

If the school district can put the pieces in place to help at-risk students succeed at R-5, why is any school underperforming?

To be fair, the majority of District 51 schools, like R-5, have earned a “Performance” rating. The other ratings are Turnaround, Priority Improvement and Improvement. But R-5’s challenge is immense. As the school’s principal, Nick Steinmetz, explained, “The Performance rating is massive when you serve 95% at-risk kids, when they don’t have a place to sleep or they don’t have regular food or clothing or supportive home environments.”

When traditional high school doesn’t work our for some students, R-5 is their option of last resort. But the school has figured out a way to help them flourish.

“They really look out for the whole child and figure out how to support students,” Superintendent Brian Hill said of R-5. “A lot of the students here work fulltime jobs and they have kids themselves and families, and R-5 has found a way to support them through all of that and make sure they’re academically successful so they can graduate and be on a great path down the road. Today’s a celebration of all the hard work they’ve put in to earn that academic rating.”

If R-5 can find a way to support students in the most trying of circumstances, what’s any other school’s excuse? Or, put a better way, what can other schools learn from R-5’s ascendancy? Hill said R-5 outperforms some traditional high schools statewide.

R-5’s success should be a wakeup call for the community that “traditional” models are worth making over. Back in 2023, this editorial board called for shaking off the mid-20th century mindset that still guides education policy and defining a new “social contact.”

The old one is a vestige of a time when two-parent families were the norm; when men worked and women largely played a stay-at-home nurturing role.

Much has changed, yet we still expect families to nurture infants and toddlers and prep them for a structured learning environment without accounting for a huge shift in family dynamics.

Today’s households often have two working parents — if they can find a way to secure affordable childcare. Those who can’t may see a spouse stay home to tend to children, but at a cost. The family loses out on extra income, but society loses out on workforce capacity. Single parents are in a tougher spot. They have to work to survive, but childcare costs gobble up limited resources, potentially keeping them mired in poverty.

Children have been lost in the shuffle for decades ever since society began shifting away from the breadwinner- caretaker model. That’s why Colorado’s initiative to make early childhood education available to all families is important. Our hope remains that outcomes will improve profoundly enough to rethink at what age public education should really begin. Instead of K-12, public education should be pre-K through two years of post-secondary education, be it vocational training, apprenticeships or knocking out prerequisites for a college degree.

The R-5 experience tells us there’s plenty of room for innovation and out-of-the-box thinking to turn around students’ lives. But what if we gave students more support at an earlier stage? And why can’t the support that R-5 offers out of necessity not be provided as a matter of routine?

It’s time for a new social contract that reflects modern reality. We need a bridge to a more expansive public education model and R-5 is a key piece of evidence that D51 is capable of rethinking pathways to success.