Denver Public Schools is seeing green — literally. As Superintendent Alex Marrero hailed the district’s new “accredited (green)” rating as “a significant milestone” last week, he asked teachers to wear green and even changed the district’s website’s color scheme to match.

But there are lies, damned lies and statistics. And nobody has this down better than DPS, which is spinning a modest bump into a pom-pom parade.

The Colorado Department of Education has given DPS its preliminary annual “accredited” rating for the second time in the decade since launching its current Colorado Growth Model. This means DPS is no longer subject to a districtwide improvement plan.

The district’s score is 57.6%. That’s just 0.8 points better than previously in 2019. A district needs only 56% to enter green territory.

The department averages schools’ performance in academic achievement, academic growth and (for high schools) postsecondary readiness. The overall rating is based on averaging schools’ Percent Points Earned from those categories.

While DPS brags about 57.6%, the median school improved only 1.3 percentage points year-over-year, but the data is riddled with outliers.

Nearly one in 10 schools saw their scores surge or plummet between 20 and 54 percentage points from 2024 to 2025. No school leaps 54 points overnight thanks to suddenly better teaching or collapses 38 points because teachers forgot how to teach.

Sure, DPS deserves recognition for finally going green. But let’s be real: After six years of going in circles and taking longer to recover from the pandemic, they’re merely back to the same mediocrity they reached in 2019. And while the district claims green is “coveted,” the blue “accredited with distinction” rating is what they should be targeting.

DPS is still just “approaching” standards in academic achievement and postsecondary readiness, the categories parents care most about. High schools only averaged 43.1% for achievement, according to the state’s dashboard — a drop from 56.9% among middle schoolers. The one area that meets expectations is “growth,” and how that metric is calculated appears fuzzy at best.

Of schools with rating changes, 118 stayed the same, while only 18 improved and 26 actually declined, according to the district’s own summary. Even after this supposedly triumphant year, four in ten DPS schools remain stuck in yellow, orange or red status — meaning they’re still on improvement plans or worse.

“A color rating doesn’t reveal specifics about how schools improved or declined,” Priscilla Shaw-Rahn, a veteran DPS master teacher, told me. “It’s not clear, especially in my school that is orange, what the path forward is.”

Much of the data is murky — eight closed schools still counted, while some “Pending AEC Framework” schools were included and others with 0% points are excluded. And teachers themselves aren’t invited to examine the data or help shape schools’ Unified Improvement Plans.

“If teachers never get to dive deep into the data and take part in shaping the (Unified Improvement Plan), how can we truly know what changes will improve a school?” added Shaw-Rahn, author of the book “Restoring Education in America.”

If teachers were given the data, they’d see it tell a sobering story. Despite all the green confetti, Denver’s Black and Hispanic students — supposedly the focus of district equity policies — remain far behind. Only 26% of K-8 students can read at grade level, with just 18% proficient in math. Among high schoolers, it’s 42.3% proficient in reading and writing, alongside 21% who meet math expectations.

One- to three-point upticks from 2024 are improvement, but they don’t justify a full-blown victory lap when three-quarters of Black and brown kids still can’t meet basic standards.

Yet Marrero keeps cheering anyway. “Earning an Accredited (Green) rating is a significant milestone for DPS, and we’re proud of the collective progress our community has made,” he gushed.

In fairness, he added a caveat: “While this achievement is worth celebrating, it’s just the beginning. We know there’s more work ahead.”

Ain’t that the truth. But throughout last week, the district’s website blared on every page: “Denver Public Schools has been rated Accredited (Green) by the Colorado Department of Education! Learn more.” They’d even re-painted the entire site from blue to green. (By Monday morning, it was back to normal.)

It all calls to mind Marrero’s line last year about DPS “getting better at getting better.” In reality, it’s like bragging your diet is a success after one decent weigh-in. Come back in a few years and show parents sustained results before you call in the cheer squad.

Green-shirted teachers and a green-washed website don’t make modest recovery look spectacular. They definitely don’t mean kids are reading at grade level. But it’s all part of a pattern.

Marrero is the same superintendent who declared “victory” after a federal judge dismissed his immigration lawsuit against the Trump administration. He’s the same guy who claimed to be “accelerat(ing) the trajectory of our most marginalized communities” while minority students are kept far behind, and who boasts of “historic” 79% graduation rates as “our best” — even as high schoolers aren’t meeting expectations but are still being sent out the door with diplomas.

For someone who loathes Trump and fancies himself a presidential foil, Marrero sure likes to channel him, right down to marketing gimmicks. He never misses a chance to slap a “W” over an “L” — or on mediocrity.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.