Search Results for: "douglas county"

Court briefs are terrifying to kids like me. They are long, complicated, and governed by a system of rules in which words like “pagination” and “certiorari” are commonplace. And, in a cruelly ironic twist, they are anything but “brief.” Worse still, they have absolutely no pictures. To be honest, I look at most legal briefs as potential stockpiles of spit wad ammunition, not worthwhile entertainment reading. That said, when someone files a legal brief aimed at supporting increased educational choice, it’s hard not to take notice. Such is the case this week. Back on August 4, my friends at the Independence Institute and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice filed an amicus brief on behalf of Douglas County School District in the ongoing litigation over its pilot Choice Scholarship Program. As you may remember from one of my previous posts, the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear the case after an appellate court overturned a lower court’s initial ruling against the program. As David Kopel, the brief’s filing attorney, outlines in a recent blog post, this particular amicus brief is heavily focused on Choice Scholarship Program’s design and the empirical evidence on voucher programs in general.

For some people, the term “productivity” doesn’t belong in K-12 education discussions. They think it’s too scary because it sounds like businesses that make money by selling goods or services. And we know that while education could learn a few more things from the competitive world of independent businesses, the two spheres don’t perfectly equate. But let’s not freak out here. We’re talking about large sums of public tax revenues in K-12 education. Having a good way to measure how effectively that money is being spent recognizes an important reality. It’s not the be-all and end-all of the K-12 world, by any means, but it does provide a valuable indicator. Come on now, don’t think it’s just me harping on about measuring “productivity” in education. Ask the Center for American Progress (CAP), which just released the 2014 update of “Return on Educational Investment: A District-by-District Evaluation of U.S. Educational Productivity”:

Seeing as how it’s been at least a couple days since I’ve mentioned Douglas County, it seemed like the perfect time to make sure you all also saw my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s new op-ed in the Colorado Observer: There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things,” Machiavelli wrote in his 500-year-old classic The Prince. The Florentine political philosopher keenly recognized the challenges of undertaking any kind of major reform project. A conservative area like Douglas County is no exception, where the grievances of displaced interest groups have helped to forge a focused and empowered political opposition. In 2011, two years after reformers swept a majority of seats, Dougco’s school board became the nation’s first to adopt a local private school choice program. The action triggered a costly (but privately funded) lawsuit and the beginnings of a resistance.

It’s Friday, so instead of making you read a lot, kick back and enjoy this 4-minute video from Reason TV, explaining how teachers unions’ influence on education politics works like a well-oiled machine:

Summer vacation is almost over (for some students, it already is). Any reason why I can’t write about Douglas County again? That’s what I thought. So here goes… Education Week‘s Stephen Sawchuk reported last week from the annual the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention that members sounded off on a local Colorado issue: The union passed, unanimously, a special resolution pledging solidarity for AFT affiliates that it asserts have been attacked, beseiged, or had their contracts superceded, as in Detroit, Chicago, and Douglas County, Colo. Today a friend found and brought my attention to a copy of the resolution. Truth be told, it contains more Whereas‘s than you can shake a stick at, including the paragraph that honed in on Colorado’s third-largest school district:

So no more union monopoly collective bargaining agreement exists for teachers in Colorado’s third-largest school district… Now what? Change certainly isn’t easy. And the group losing its prestigious status, in this case the Douglas County Federation of Teachers, isn’t just going to walk away quietly into the shadows. The largest teachers union, NEA, already is experiencing a serious membership decline nationwide. So I’m sure national AFT leadership doesn’t want its largest Colorado chapter to set the precedent of surrendering exclusive bargaining authority, government dues collection, and taxpayer-funded personnel. In that sense, seems like they almost had to ask the state to get involved. What state officials opt to do is almost anyone’s guess. I pointed out before that while taking such a bold step may be unsettling to some employees accustomed to old patterns and relations, that in the end Douglas County teachers will have both a less filtered professional voice and more effective membership options without a master agreement. Reporter Jane Reuter’s new story for Douglas County newspapers brings home that latter point quite well:

So I hear there’s this little election going on in Wisconsin today. As is so often the case, the political happenings are closely connected to the issues of our public school system. One of the nation’s leading education reform voices, RiShawn Biddle, has written a two-part series (here and here) highlighting the dilemma centrist Democrats face regarding aggressive collective bargaining reforms like those advanced in Wisconsin by Governor Scott Walker. Biddle shines a big spotlight on the national implications of today’s likely Walker victory for the future politics of education reform. You really need to read both pieces in their entirety. But in this passage he really drives the point home:

School is out… Hooray!!! But in Douglas County, Colorado’s third-largest school district and a true hotspot of education reform, the summer months still give us plenty to which we can look forward. First, this month of June represents the final 30 days before the collective bargaining contract with the Douglas County Federation of Teachers (DCFT) expires. What happens after that, no one knows. It’s going to look much different, though, that’s for sure. Groundbreaking open negotiations kicked off there more than seven weeks ago. I applauded the bold proposals set forth by the Douglas County school board, some of which also caught the favorable attention of Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll. Previously, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow had raised the question of how serious DCFT was about embracing open union negotiations. Transparency has seemed to suit everyone just fine, even as a few hundred teachers showed up at the last session to send a statement. It’s good to listen to the voice of teachers. Especially the best teachers. And an organization doesn’t necessarily have to be recognized by a government body as exclusive bargaining agent to ensure that happens. Are the teachers in Colorado’s 137 non-bargaining districts (as […]

I’ve been told (no, really, I have!) that for a little kid blogging about education policy, I have a lot of appeal. Embarrassing: at first I thought it had something to do with bananas. But you know I was so much younger then. Anyway, I don’t want you to slip up before I get to the main point of my post for today. It’s about a different kind of appeal, one I knew had to be coming but am so glad to see it finally happen. I’m talking about an appeal of last month’s sad district court decision to shut down the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. Last Thursday, September 8, the paperwork was delivered to the Colorado Court of Appeals. First, from an Institute for Justice press release: “We are confident that the Court of Appeals will correct the trial court’s decision, which ignored or attempted to rationalize away existing Colorado and U.S. Supreme Court precedent that clearly authorizes the scholarship program,” said Michael Bindas, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, which represents the Oakley, Doyle and Anderson families in defending the Choice Scholarship Program.

Today I’m going to step back and let someone else do the talking. You’ve probably been following the developments surrounding Colorado’s groundbreaking Douglas County Pilot Choice Scholarship Program. I’ve covered it a lot here. Since the promising program was approved in March, 500 students have won vouchers worth about $4,600 to help cover the cost of tuition at a private school families have chosen to best suit their needs. In this new video produced by my friends in the Independence Institute’s Education Policy Center, it’s a story like 13-year-old Nate Oakley’s that brings to life the need for Douglas County vouchers, and the real threat created by lawsuits filed by the ACLU and other groups: After that, what more can I say? For many kids and many parents, school choice really matters. Don’t take it away.