Category Archives: Denver

Last week a couple of my Education Policy Center friends had the privilege of visiting an innovative Denver charter school that’s serving kids close to my age: Rocky Mountain Prep. This new school is following in the footsteps of successful forebears that serve high-need student populations — placing a foundational emphasis on high expectations with competent, caring and dedicated teachers. But at the same time Rocky Mountain Prep is also pioneering a blended learning model for delivering instruction to enhance the number of students who can be effectively reached. Currently, the southeast Denver school serves students in pre-kindergarten through 1st grade, but is slated eventually to go through 8th grade. Classrooms use a rotation model in which some students at a given time will be learning on specialized software (including Dreambox), receiving small group instruction, or more focused attention on areas identified where they are struggling. Special grant funding enables a teaching apprentice, rather than an aide, to join the classroom’s lead instructor. The idea enables class sizes to be a little larger while maximizing the impact on student learning during these important formative years.

Can you believe it’s been a whole year since the launch of the Colorado School Grades website? My friends at the Independence Institute are proud to be one of the 18 sponsoring partners of this helpful resource. The passing of 12 months means a whole new set of data, and a lot of curious parents searching through the user-friendly Colorado School Grades site to see where their child’s school rates. Grades are assigned to all Colorado public schools based on objective measures of academic achievement and academic growth. Congrats to the top-rated schools at each level for this year:

The concept of time is the topic of 100 proverbs and cliches. In the world of education reform, it definitely doesn’t feel like time is on our side. Every year of delay in debating, approving and implementing important policy changes — including expanded parental choice — is a year many students will not get back. But what about just making sure they are spending more time in school? Colorado is one of five states taking part in a three-year pilot program to keep thousands of students in school longer: Spending more time in the classroom, officials said, will give students access to a more well-rounded curriculum that includes arts and music, individualized help for students who fall behind and opportunities to reinforce critical math and science skills. “That extra time with their teachers or within a structured setting means all the world,” said Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. “It means it allows them to continue the momentum they had the day before. It means they don’t slip back over the summer. It allows them to really deliver.”

I have a (sort of) happy ending to a story shared here back in April. Though she had to wait nearly a whole year, Denver teacher Ronda Reinhardt finally was able to exercise her right and revoke her union membership. In many Colorado school districts (including Denver), a teacher who wants to exercise her right to leave the union can only do so during a brief window of time and under certain conditions. These opt-out periods vary from district to district. As Ronda’s experience highlights, many teachers don’t know about the restrictions until they want to quit and find out it’s too late. Tim Farmer from the Professional Association of Colorado Educators (PACE) shared the account of Ronda finally being able to exercise her choice:

I’m still recovering from all the election excitement. Rather than try to rehash all the interesting results for the world of education reform, I’m going to do the lazy, little kid thing and point you to a few pieces to digest the information and analysis for yourself:

When you’re a Colorado reporter looking for a somewhat different point of view on major local school tax increases, where do you go? Karen Auge shows that she read my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s concise new paper “Colorado K-12 Tax Hikes Challenged” in her story’s third paragraph as she covered the issue in yesterday’s Denver Post: The Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank generally opposed to tax hikes and government growth, said per-pupil spending in districts asking for tax hikes has gone up, even as real income has decreased. [link added]

Last week my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow came out with a short, fun, and kid-friendly paper called “Colorado K-12 Tax Hikes Challenged.” The paper looked at five large school districts asking voters for more tax funds on this fall’s ballot: Jefferson County, Denver, Cherry Creek, Aurora, and St. Vrain Valley. DeGrow acknowledged that these school budgets have faced more pressure than they are used to — mostly because per-pupil revenue growth has slowed down, but not actually dropped. Yet the household budgets of citizens in these communities have been hit even harder during the recent economic downturn. The paper concludes by offering “a different approach” that focuses on more productive spending. Looking at one of the five districts, Denver Public Schools, a new report by EAG News makes some specific suggestions for spending reductions to inefficient salary structures and union perks. The total estimated annual savings would be $37.5 million, including the following proposals:

From Todd Engdahl’s story yesterday in Ed News Colorado, at least 23 school districts in the state are going to local voters this year to ask for one or more tax increases–mill levy overrides for various operating costs, and/or bonds or BEST matching grant requests to pay for capital construction or renovation projects. (In the unusual case of Aspen, voters will decide on a sales-tax increase to fund schools.) The proposals follow one year after a historically-high 26 out of 38 local school tax proposals went down to defeat. Notably, this year five of the state’s nine largest school districts, cumulatively enrolling more than one-third of Colorado’s public K-12 students, are seeking voter approval of various tax increases. Some of them represent significant amounts (descriptions from Ed News in quotes): Jefferson County: “$99 million bond for a variety of building upgrades; $39 million override to maintain class size and protect some programs.” Denver: “$466 million bond for maintenance, technology, renovation and upgrades; $49 million override for enrichment, student support services and other programs. DPS also is an alternate for a $3.8 million BEST grant to renovate South High School, and some of the bond issue would provide a match.” Cherry […]

Stop for a moment and picture a classroom of 20 little Eddies and Edwinas (girls, I know, yeck). The nice teacher one day gets up in front of the room and hands out permission slips for a field trip. “Field trip? Yay!!!” we shout. “Where are we going? The zoo? The science museum? The fire station?” After she finally gets our class settled down, the teacher says: “No, this is going to be a great new kind of experience. We’re going to go hang out with Occupy Denver! ….” Huh, what? This imaginary scenario must take place in Denver Public Schools (DPS), because of some very real new language being used to evaluate teachers. High-achieving DPS instructors may want to keep their “distinguished” rating by encouraging students “to question and challenge the dominant culture” and “to work for social justice”? The newly-revised evaluation framework makes these items a priority for DPS teachers in 2012-13. Perhaps now you can understand what would upset my Education Policy Center friends so much:

When Colorado passed the first-of-its-kind Innovation Schools Act in 2008, observers knew that the law was primarily tailored to transform the most challenging campuses in Denver Public Schools (DPS). And so it largely has played out. No one else has matched the 24 DPS schools who have taken advantage of the Act’s process to transform existing public schools by setting them free from many state laws, board policies and bargaining provisions. But if the state’s second-largest and most heavily urbanized district takes a look in the rear view mirror, they may begin to see a different district creeping up behind them: Falcon 49. Now, in one sense, Falcon cannot catch up, because there aren’t even 24 schools in its boundaries. But as a share of schools with officially approved innovation status, the El Paso County district is now clearly past DPS and behind only tiny Kit Carson, with its only two schools recognized under the Innovation Schools Act. Two months after granting innovation status to six Falcon schools, on Wednesday the Colorado State Board of Education unanimously approved innovation plans for two more Falcon schools–bringing the total to eight. In addition to the positive potential unleashed by achieving freedom through […]