Category Archives: Denver

Update, 8/3: Further highlighting how the attempt to enjoin the Douglas County voucher program would disrupt families’ lives, Denver 7 News has a great story — including an interview with Diana Oakley, who was featured in the recent Independence Institute video on Douglas County vouchers. In fact, if you watch the video of the 7 News report, you might even see a little unattributed footage from that video…. Yesterday I pointed out that hearings for the Lobato school funding lawsuit were officially underway. And yesterday, the team at AM 850 KOA’s Colorado Morning News released the first of their two-part dive into Douglas County’s voucher debate. Why? Because Colorado’s second big “edu-trial” of the week starts today, with a Denver District Court judge set to consider a motion for a preliminary injunction against the Douglas County voucher program. I’m still wondering what took so long to try and disrupt families’ lives with the threat of an injunction if it was so urgent for the ACLU & Company. Being young and all, nor do I get why so many groups and people want to take educational choices and opportunities away from kids and families. I’d like to think they have a […]

(H/T Adam Emerson, RedefinED) From yesterday’s Boston Globe, the innovation school idea is starting to take off in Massachusetts: “It’s really catching fire,’’ said Paul Reville, the state’s education secretary. “I would predict innovation schools in a relatively short period of time could surpass the number of charter schools in the state if the growth continues at the rate we’ve seen recently.’’ … Innovation schools and the state’s 56 independently run charter schools are similar in that decisions about curriculum, staffing, and budgeting are made by a school-based governing board with the goal of crafting programs that meet the specific needs of their students. But unlike charter schools, which report directly to the state, innovation schools must negotiate the extent of the freedom to make their own decisions with the superintendent and School Committee, and are bound by most provisions of the district’s teachers union contract.

This week one of my Education Policy Center friends was privileged with the opportunity to visit a Denver charter school that fills a niche for 16- to 21-year olds who have dropped out and/or been neglected by the system. Life Skills Center of Denver is an alternative education campus that uses computer-assisted instruction in a teacher-guided laboratory setting to help high school students get remediation in lagging math and reading skills with the goal of graduation and success in life. In 2007, after four years of operation, Life Skills was in danger of having its charter revoked and being shut down. The State Board intervened to save the school after the DPS board’s vote based on legitimate concerns with poor results that showed up on testing measures. As Denise at Colorado Charters noted back then, new principal Santiago Lopez had already taken steps to improve the school. And Alan at Ed News Colorado came around to seeing Life Skills as a “special case” that deserved to stay open: If DPS had a viable alternative for these kids, one that was being drained by the existence of Life Skills, I’d favor shutting down the school. But these are kids DPS has […]

The warm weather here in Colorado and the lure of the swimming pool are the main reasons why readers here just get a quick update for today. Ed News Colorado’s Charlie Brennan reports that ideas for 11 new schools (eight of them charters) were pitched this week to the Denver school board. The public charter sector in Denver is brimming with activity and opportunity for greater growth. Highly successful West Denver Prep and KIPP Sunshine Peak were among those proposing expansions to the board. Other proposals were two all-boys (Yippee!) charter schools — Miller-McCoy Academy and Sims-Fayola International Academy.

Even when you’re forever 5 years old, time flies. I can hardly believe it was last October that I cried to learn my edu-crush Michelle Rhee was leaving her important superintendent job at D.C. Public Schools. Or that it was only a couple months later we all learned she was starting the new national group Students First. As Ed News Colorado reports, yesterday Rhee was in Denver to keynote a luncheon event for a fantastic local organization known as ACE Scholarships. I’ve heard from one of my Education Policy Center friends who attended that she gave a great speech. But then again, you can see some of it for yourself, like this clip on how she changed her mind (SMILE) about private school choice:

A few weeks ago I posted some thoughts about Colorado’s implementation of the educator effectiveness law (SB 191) — including a video from Step Up Colorado — that prompted a lengthy and thoughtful comment from an area teacher who is part of the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ)’s New Millennium Initiative (NMI). Then someone else from CTQ reached out to my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow to notify him of a report, co-authored by Denver-area teachers, with thoughts on SB 191 implementation. I thought it fitting to dig in and follow up, seeing as how it was just last week Ben shared his thoughts before the State Board of Education on this very topic. Anyway, the CTQ report Making Teacher Evaluations Work for Students: Voices from the Classroom was released earlier this week. Some of the 21 teachers’ main points include:

Perhaps you saw this week’s news that Colorado state senator Rollie Heath and several advocacy groups are “pushing ahead” with a proposal that would take more from wage-earners, investors and consumers all over the state to finance K-12 and higher education: The plan would raise state personal and corporate income tax rates to 5 percent from the current 4.63 percent. The state portion of sales taxes would go from 2.9 to 3 percent. The additional revenue could be used only for public schools and the state’s higher ed system and couldn’t be used to supplant existing funding. The measure sets 2011-12 spending for schools and colleges as a floor…. The most interesting part of the story is not the predictable 5-year, $3 billion proposal itself, which so far has had trouble gaining traction among education establishment and business groups. Instead, not only did Senator Heath proclaim the tax increase proposal was “for the children,” but he also propped a classroom of Douglas County 4th graders behind him to drive the point home. As Kelly at WhoSaidYouSaid points out, there is a little problem with that:

As usual, I’m taking the weekend off for extra Lego time and lots of playing outdoors in the beautiful Colorado sunshine. Since tomorrow is an important anniversary, I decided to observe it today. On May 7, 2008, I began my three years of blogging here as a 5-year-old with a post titled “Denver Parents Want More Successful Schools to Choose From.” (Interestingly, FOX 31 News ran a special story last night about one of the area’s most successful and well-known charter schools, which has grown since 2008: Denver School of Science and Technology.) Last week the prolific education reform blogger Matthew Tabor posed the question: “What makes you feel old as a teacher or blogger?” I’m not really sure how to answer that, other than I feel kind of old for… well, my age. Time doesn’t really fly when you can stay 5 for this long. Let me tell you. But what better way to mark this commemorative 3rd anniversary Ed Is Watching post than to give a shout-out to Teacher Appreciation Week — which ends today. For all the arguing I do about the need to improve educator effectiveness in our system, it needs to be repeated clearly from […]

Denver’s Professional Compensation System for Teachers has received a great deal of attention through the years from those interested in education policy and reform. (Just Google “ProComp” if you want to see what I mean.) So it’s certainly no surprise to see the Denver Public Schools celebrate ProComp’s fifth birthday. Somehow, ProComp has caught up to become the same age as me: This may mean a challenge to my self-proclaimed position as Colorado’s #1 Education Reform Five-Year-Old! Anyway, not long after the system went into full effect in Denver, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote an issue paper titled Denver’s ProComp and Teacher Compensation Reform in Colorado. He took the opportunity to credit the district for the extent of improvements made, given the binding power of a union bargaining contract, while pointing out areas where improvements could be made. As Charlie Brennan noted in today’s Ed News Colorado story, DPS’ leading partner in developing and implementing ProComp has more doubts now to express about how the pay reform has turned out — but not for the same reasons: [DCTA president Henry] Roman, who attended Monday afternoon’s event, offered a tempered endorsement of the program – in which he […]

Last fall a story about a report on teacher pay reform made the front page of the Denver Post: “Offering teachers bonuses for student growth didn’t raise scores, study finds.” Yes, the front page. Back then I shared a fresh reaction with insights from national experts like Rick Hess concerning what the study actually did or did not say about the Nashville incentive pay experiment. Well, a conversation of that report in the context of teacher pay reform research shows up in a newly released issue paper from my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow, titled Pioneering Teacher Compensation Reform: K-12 Educator Pay Innovation in Colorado. The focus of the new paper is on Colorado’s significant number of local school districts and charter schools improving their teacher pay systems by moving rewards and incentives away from seniority toward measured performance. The star of the group? If I had to pick one, it definitely would be Harrison School District 2 for its Effectiveness and Results (E and R) program — currently in its first full year of operation. Harrison’s program definitely is not an MPINO (as coined by Stuart Buck and Jay Greene). It will be very interesting to see the […]