Strive Preparatory Schools

During our strategic planning process, we established three main goals for our network and students:

1. Our students deserve a just world that they help create. STRIVE Prep’s role in creating this world is to run great schools. Our schools are places of dignity for all - students, families, and staff.

2. Our students deserve a standards-based education intended to develop leadership, problem solving skills, and creativity. Students are empowered to use their voices and hard work to lead now and in the future.

3. Our students are self-motivated and they persevere in the face of challenges. They understand that taking risks and making mistakes are essential to learning. A growth mindset is vital to every part of our work.

By defining the three main goals for our students, we we are able to establish four strategic priorities in order to attain these goals:

1. Align the academic and cultural model to our core beliefs, vision and mission.
- Define and communicate with exceptional clarity STRIVE Prep’s core beliefs, mission, values, and role of center.
- Build and implement an integrated working group structure to redesign middle school culture in alignment with our newly defined beliefs.
- Support effective implementation of common network curriculum.
- Determine if we are prioritizing concurrent enrollment and/or AP and make the necessary related programmatic changes.

2. Build K-12 culture that expects acceptance to 4-year colleges and supports and celebrates alternative choices.
- Significantly strengthen college advising structure, as well as Individual Career and Academic Plan (ICAP) implementation.
- Subject to budgeting, significantly strengthen alumni support program.

3. Attract and retain a talented and diverse team in an inclusive environment.
- Assess teacher performance pay, compensation, and evaluation and benefits.
- Subject to budgeting, develop and implement a clear instructional leadership pipeline program to include trainings for teacher instructional coaches, grade level leads, APIs (Academic Performance Index), and principals.
- Evaluate the effectiveness of prior Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices and determine how to continue to embed DEI practices in the fabric of our ongoing work.
- Significantly strengthen teacher and leader recruitment efforts (i.e. diversity, specific subjects).

4. Ensure financial health and sustainability.
- Build a 3-year mission-aligned plan for future school size, staffing, facility needs, and change management implications.
- Build a 3-year, mission-aligned plan for elementary school growth.

Currently, our leadership is prepared to make the necessary changes in order to meet our strategic priorities. We have planning in place with regular check-ins to ensure we are on track in achieving our goals.

In the 2019-2020 school year, we began implementing Mastery Practices training to all of our teachers and school-based staff in order to leverage strong content internalization to review and respond to student mastery during each lesson. In doing so, we’re working to align the academic and cultural model to our core beliefs, vision and mission.

Our network has also partnered with Promise54, a national leader in internal DEI practices, for an 18-month talent and equity cohort program with eight Denver K-12 education organizations. The scope of work will include creating a 2-year implementation plan while administering three surveys to assess progress toward our DEI goals in May, November, and May in order to attract and retain a talented and diverse team in an inclusive environment.

STRIVE Prep has made significant strides towards offering a high-quality public education in Denver:

- 85% of STRIVE Prep students graduate on time, compared to 70% of all Denver Public School (DPS) students, and 81% of Colorado students.
- 89% of STRIVE Prep students in the graduating class of 2019 were accepted to a four-year college or university.
- 100% of STRIVE Prep students in the graduating class of 2019 were accepted into a two or four-year college or university.
- 72% of STRIVE Prep graduates matriculate into college, compared to Colorado’s average of 57%.
- In 2017-18, there were only 7 secondary schools measuring green or blue on the DPS Framework who served above the district’s average of high poverty students, 3 were STRIVE Prep schools.
- STRIVE Prep - RISE, one of our high schools, was named the #1 high school in DPS on the 2017 School Performance Framework (SPF) and in 2019-20 achieved the English Language Proficiency Act (ELPA) Excellence Award from the Colorado Department of Education.
- Since its founding, STRIVE Prep - Ruby Hill has been rated Green or Blue on Denver Public Schools School Performance Framework (SPF) and remains one of the best elementary schools in Southwest Denver.