Category Archives: Denver

Update, 4/8: Denise at Colorado Charters offers more specific reasons why so many Denver families are exercising public school choice. Interesting news today from the Denver Post today under the headline “53 percent of DPS students opt out of assigned campuses.” Colorado has one of the nation’s very best, parent-friendly open enrollment laws — in effect for nearly two decades — which allows students to transfer to a public school outside their zone of residence under certain basic conditions. Individual districts approve the specific parameters of their own open enrollment policies. What the Post article highlights is the continuation of a steady upward trend in the share of families exercising public school choice. Ten years ago about 3 percent of Colorado public school students were enrolled in a district outside their residence; today it’s closer to 8 percent. You can check out the state department of education data for yourself.

Last Thursday a couple of my Education Policy Center friends took part in the Colorado Coalition of Cyberschool Families Day at the Capitol event. Although a bit cold and windy in Denver, it was a great time to see hundreds of students, parents and teachers show up and make a statement about what public school choice and virtual learning means to them. The day’s proceedings began indoors down the street from the Capitol, as students had the opportunity to work with teachers on fun projects and parents could listen to some informative presentations. One of the first speakers of the day was our own Ben DeGrow, who shared with the audience Colorado’s background with public school choice, how parents can help make school choice “work” and some of the parent-friendly resources from the Education Policy Center. Including, I’m told, this little blog of mine. Thanks for the plug! Later everyone marched down to the west steps of the State Capitol for a rally with speeches from cyberschool parents, students and leaders, as well as a couple legislators, along with award presentations to some deserving online students. And then to top it all off, a great lunch! Special thanks go to […]

Here we are waist-deep into Colorado’s legislative session (at least I’m waist-deep, most big people are probably more like knee-deep). Pretty soon I may not be able to see the forest for the legislative bills. But there’s one policy idea from more than 1,000 miles away that has my attention right now. A few days ago Education Week reported that Georgia lawmakers have introduced a “parent trigger” bill (SB 68). “Trigger?” I hear you say. “Whoaaaa, horsey!” (Some of you old-timers might get that one.) Calm down. Don’t get your saddle in a bunch. The bill doesn’t have anything to do with guns or Second Amendment issues, or you might see the Independence Institute’s Dave Kopel writing about this rather than yours truly. The good folks at the Heartland Institute, who have widely promoted the parent trigger concept, explain it well:

You think school choice just means a state voucher program or public charter schools? Think again. We are living in an age of all kinds of creative school choice ideas. First you have our own Douglas County School District, which is moving forward to create a local voucher program — among several other school choice enhancements. Today in the Colorado legislature we have a big hearing on House Bill 1048, which would provide tax credit relief for parents who switch students to private or home schooling. As a state school choice policy with a twist, Matt Ladner and the Goldwater Institute are touting the idea of Education Savings Accounts, something reportedly being considered as a reform idea by Florida’s new governor Rick Scott. Then there’s the Foundation for Educational Choice, which has researched and promoted the idea of school passports as a way to radically re-think federal education stimulus spending. Writing today on the National Journal’s Education Experts blog, Colorado’s own State Board of Education chairman Bob Schaffer offers up another idea for a school choice initiative using federal dollars but crafted at the state level:

So what does my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s brand new op-ed in the Colorado Springs Gazette have to do with President Obama’s State of the Union address last night? Piqued your curiosity at all? Maybe just a tad? A couple weeks ago I told you about what’s going on in Falcon School District 49 near Colorado Springs, and the beginnings of their creative attempt to restructure the school district. Well, the Falcon board voted to move forward with the innovation plan — a decision Ben lauds and highlights in his Gazette op-ed. You can find out more about Falcon’s innovation plan by listening to an iVoices podcast with school board member Chris Wright, or by visiting a new page created on the district’s website. A main tenet of the plan is moving greater autonomy from the central administrative office to the schools in the different innovation zones. To get there, the district plans to request Innovation status from the State Board of Education — a step empowered by the creation of Colorado’s 2008 Innovation Schools Act. But what was the genesis of the groundbreaking piece of legislation? A high-need school with a bold principal (Kristin Waters, now helping […]

In the end-of-the-year holiday dash, it sure looks like the Colorado League of Charter Schools has been busy. Busy standing up against the anti-charter actions of a couple local school boards. Two cases in point. The first is an op-ed League president Jim Griffin penned for the Greeley Tribune. It came out a couple days ago as the Greeley school board contemplated denying an expansion of the successful Union Colony charter school on the basis of student demographics. (The board since has officially rejected it.) But Griffin provided the skeptical Board and the Tribune itself with some clarifying insights:

This morning, Colorado’s outgoing governor Bill Ritter formally recognized some schools and school districts for outstanding academic performance. A couple observations, first about the school districts. As Ed News Colorado’s Nancy Mitchell explains and breaks down, there are five levels of rating districts can earn from the state’s Department of Education. Only 14 of 178 earned the highest (“Accredited with Distinction”), while 7 districts received the lowest (“Accredited with Turnaround”). Most districts fall somewhere in between. Many times we’ve heard during the discussion about Douglas County’s groundbreaking private school choice proposals (which passed on to the superintendent in resolution form on Tuesday night) that the district doesn’t need choice because it’s the highest-performing district in the state. But a careful look at the list shows Douglas County isn’t anywhere in the top 14 “with distinction.” Maybe — just maybe — a whole slate of expanded choices and options for families will help the district compete and rise to the top. Hmmmm. With the governor’s blessing today, the Colorado Department of Education also recognized 32 schools as “Centers of Excellence” for demonstrating the highest rates of student academic growth while serving at-risk student populations (75 percent or more). Included on the […]

Yesterday’s Denver Post featured an interesting story on a successful program at Denver’s Abraham Lincoln High School and its feeder schools to engage parents: The collaboration is focused on aligning academics and empowering parents — providing them with training, taking them to visit colleges, encouraging them to volunteer and getting them to attend parent-teacher conferences. Not long ago, it was typical for only 100 parents to attend parent-teacher conferences at the high school. This year, an estimated 1,500 parents showed up. Wow, that’s a huge improvement! No doubt parental involvement is an important contributing factor to student success. That includes the research-based findings that show students fare better when their parents actively choose the school their children attend. And even better if they make a well-informed choice. That’s one of the main reasons my Education Policy Center friends have created and maintain the very valuable School Choice for Kids website. So yeah, my first instinct would be to hesitate at my mom and dad showing up at every parent-teacher conference. (Kind of like my hesitation at having to eat broccoli and other green vegetables for dinner.) But on the other hand, odds are that kind of interaction is only going […]

This is not the week for your average, run-of-the-mill, humdrum school board meeting. Not in Colorado, not in the Denver metro area. I already highlighted the heavy attendance at Douglas County’s Tuesday public testimony on their School Choice Task Force proposals and all the attention generated from it. Then there was last night in the Denver Public Schools, as a divided Board of Education was set to weigh a controversial turnaround reform proposal affecting the Far Northeast (FNE) part of the city. According to Jeremy Meyer in the Denver Post, the Board stayed up well past my bedtime to approve the proposal on a 4-3 vote. The newly-approved proposal includes a lot of features — which are well broken down in Nancy Mitchell’s Ed News Colorado story. One piece is an expansion of the successful Denver School of Science and Technology program using shared space in the Cole Arts and Science Academy innovation school. My Education Policy Center friends alerted you to this possible development back in March on an iVoices podcast with Cole principal Julie Murgel. In its story, Ed News Colorado also published a 4-minute highlight video from the Denver school board meeting, a more balanced presentation than […]

Update, 11/9: Douglas County’s choice proposals have been noticed east of the border (the Colorado border, that is). A blogger at Kansas Education notes: …why are so many private schools religious ones? The answer. As a parent, you’re probably already paying taxes to support a school district to which you can send your child. What’s going to motivate you to pay tuition on top of that? Religious faith is one compelling reason. Let parents take some of the money spent on behalf of their child to a private school, and you’ve expanded the range of choices for those parents. Isn’t that a good thing? Most Americans like having more choices rather than fewer. Update, PM: A great resource I overlooked is this Douglas County Choice Task Force FAQ sheet (PDF). Find out why the task force exists, what it’s been up to and what’s coming next. I’d like to think it was my Friday blog post about Douglas County’s private school choice proposal that fired up everyone. While I may be just a little tyke, I’m not that naive! Anyway, let the discussion (and the good times) roll…. On Saturday the Denver Post‘s Jeremy Meyer followed up with a second […]