Monthly Archives: March 2010

Education employees have their powerful lobbying interests representing them — to a lesser extent school board officials do, as well. So isn’t it about time we kids pay our dues and band together for a good education? That’s why I’m so excited about the brand new organization called the American Federation for Children. Okay, well, it’s not exactly like that. It’s not like some union that I can join or that will automatically take hundreds of dollars in dues money each year. In fact, it’s not really a membership organization at all. From yesterday’s press release announcing the new group:

No need for me to rehash my concerns about Governor Bill Ritter’s Council on Educator Effectiveness. My views hardly have changed over the weekend. But since I have to wake up on a Monday morning, the only thing better than a snow day is seeing my views validated by an important expert group like the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). They just released a report on the 16 Race to the Top finalist states, analyzing their proposals on the “Great Teachers and Leaders” section — which just so happens to be the weightiest single piece of RTT. The report, titled Navigating the Race to the Top Traffic Jam (PDF), uses traffic signal lights to describe whether a state deserves to Go forward on its reform plan, to Proceed with Caution, or to Stop and try again.

Ed News Colorado has a story about yesterday’s first meeting of Governor Bill Ritter’s Council for Educator Effectiveness: Thursday’s session, held at the Lowry headquarters of the state Community College System, was the usual first-meeting mix of introductions, setting expectations and deciding on a future meeting schedule. The introductions gave some hints of how individual members are approaching the 18-month assignment. “It’s always the adults who find it hardest to change.” – Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien, who welcomed the group but isn’t a member

Ed News Colorado reports from yesterday’s State Board meeting about the state of school buildings: Colorado schools have $17.8 billion in maintenance and renovation needs over the next eight years, according to a statewide schools facilities study released Wednesday. The study, required as part of the 2008 Building Excellent Schools Today law, was the first-ever comprehensive structural review of 8,419 buildings, from large classroom buildings to sheds. The $17.8 billion estimate covers only what the study calls Tier I buildings – basically those used for instruction. The study found those buildings need $9.4 billion of deferred maintenance work between now and 2013. An additional $13.9 billion is needed for energy and educational suitability projects. A final $3.9 billion in work is estimated to be necessary from 2014-18.

I’m pretty partial (OK, I’m very partial) to the School Choice for Kids website (or Opcion Escolar Para Ninos, en espanol) as an invaluable source of information for parents in Colorado who want to exercise their educational options. But it’s not the only source out there. Denver’s Piton Foundation and 9 News have teamed up to create the Colorado School Choice / Escuela Para Mis Hijos site. The site provides some different information than is available on SCFK — with special emphases on schools’ academic growth ratings and student demographics. Click the play button below (or follow this link) to listen to my Education Policy Center friend Pam Benigno discuss the newer site with Van Schoales of the Piton Foundation on an informative 18-minute iVoices podcast:

Are great teachers just born that way, or is there a proven method to train many instructors to become much more effective? In one of the most fascinating (and longest) education articles out there, Elizabeth Green wrote in the New York Times Sunday magazine about “Building a Better Teacher.” The experts she talked to suggest that the answer may be the latter, that there are specific methods and techniques (and a new vocabulary of teaching terms) that can be used more successfully train high-quality instructors. However, over at Education Next, Harvard’s Paul Peterson says one of Green’s key conclusions is misguided: …She says we will need millions of additional teachers to cover baby boom retirements, and wonders how we can find enough good ones. The answer is that we can’t–not even with more effective education schools or elaborate merit pay programs or by ruthlessly dismissing ineffective teachers.

The Denver Post‘s website yesterday published an opinion column by Alliance for Choice in Education executive director Norton Rainey, decrying the “unsurprising” but disappointing defeat of House Bill 1296: HB 1296 would have provided low-income families with an annual $1,000 tax credit for enrolling their child in a private school. The bill would also have provided a grant of $1,000 to any public school that loses a student to a private school as a consequence of the tax credit. The legislation would have given low-income families a financial incentive to send their child to a private school, reduced public school class sizes as more children took advantage of the tax credit, and provided public schools with a $1,000 grant to help them give the children that remain a better quality education. What’s more, HB 1296 would have saved the state millions of dollar, according to the official fiscal note prepared by Legislative Council: $4.9 million in savings for the first year, $6.9 million in the second year, and as much as $26 million by 2022. [link added]

I pause from my regularly scheduled juvenile opining to acknowledge the passing of someone who gave many years of service to the state of Colorado — including many on behalf of public education. He and I wouldn’t have agreed on every issue, but there’s no doubt he was independent in thought, well-informed in his views, and passionate in his work. I’m talking about former Arvada state senator Al Meiklejohn, who died Monday at age 86 and will be put to final rest today. As reported in this week’s Denver Post obituary, Meiklejohn served six years on the Jefferson County Board of Education and “constantly pushed for public-school reform and better salaries for teachers.” For his service he has a Jeffco elementary school named after him. You know Senator Meiklejohn was a man of influence and stature when in the week of his death he has received such high praise from two very different sides of the education spectrum.

It’s March — which means, if you like basketball as much as I do, there’s a really big tournament coming up. And after a team wins two games in that tourney, then they become part of the cleverly named “Sweet Sixteen.” But what about states that filled out applications for competitive federal K-12 grant money? How does it work out for them? Well U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a big basketball fan, too, and was once a good college basketball player. No doubt about that. So in one sense I understand why this morning Duncan announced 16 states are finalists for the first round of Race to the Top money. Colorado, which asked for $377 million to implement reforms, is among them. Since no one knows exactly how many grant awards will be distributed, it’s hard to say how this all will play out and whether states will even get the amount they asked for. But Colorado hasn’t helped itself with a consensus approach, which among other things has created a council to study how to tie teacher tenure and evaluations to student academic growth, rather than actually try to fix the law itself. And today Ed News Colorado […]

The Denver Post followed up its Sunday story on local school district expenditures with an editorial today that says “Shine the light on school spending”: A bill now advancing in the General Assembly would require school districts to make budget information available online, including discretionary spending. House Bill 1036 argues that districts ought to take advantage of technology to allow for greater transparency. We question whether a mandate is needed, but agree with the intent and urge districts to use the technology on their own. As my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow noted in his recent report “What Should School District Financial Transparency Look Like?” (PDF), HB 1036 is a small step forward but a relatively weak mandate.