Category Archives: Denver

Earlier this week there were some elections. A bunch of big people in Colorado voted, though not nearly as many as voted last year for President. One of the issues many of them had to decide was who would serve on the local school board. That part sure interests my friends in the Education Policy Center. Click the play button below to listen to a new iVoices podcast as Pam Benigno and Ben DeGrow discuss the fallout from the school board elections in Colorado’s three largest school districts: Jefferson County, Denver, and Douglas County. Based on candidates’ support of school choice and other key education reforms, the results for the three districts were very different: It will be interesting to see how things unfold in the near future — especially in Denver and Douglas County.

Chalk up another gold star for public charter schools as an education reform success. What am I talking about? The second half of a one-two research combination punch, released in late October but just reported by the smart people writing opinion for the Wall Street Journal: Mr. [Marcus] Winters focuses on New York City public school students in grades 3 through 8. “For every one percent of a public school’s students who leave for a charter,” concludes Mr. Winters, “reading proficiency among those who remain increases by about 0.02 standard deviations, a small but not insignificant number, in view of the widely held suspicion that the impact on local public schools . . . would be negative.” It tuns out that traditional public schools respond to competition in a way that benefits their students. Writing on Jay Greene’s blog, the venerable Greg Forster additionally notes: …Marcus also finds that the lowest-performing students in NYC’s regular public schools benefit from charter competition; in fact, while the benefits for the overall population are statistically certain only in reading, they’re certain in both reading and math for low performers.

As reported in yesterday’s Denver Post, more and more Denver families are becoming smart education shoppers and taking advantage of the choices available to them — even sometimes opting for different schools within the same household: The chaos begins in the Black household on weekday mornings around 6 a.m., when the family’s three children prepare to head off to three different Denver high schools. Keenan, a senior, attends George Washington High School. Griffin the sophomore, goes to nearby Thomas Jefferson. And Addie, a freshman, is enrolled at South. The oldest likes George Washington’s International Baccalaureate program, the sophomore likes the computer center at TJ and Addie is excited about the diversity at South. Interested? Excited? Confused? …

In what probably will be the final stop on the “A Glimpse at New Schools” tour for 2009-10, I quickly wanted to bring your attention to KIPP Denver Collegiate High School, near West Alameda and Pecos. This August the public charter school opened with a group of 9th graders who are set to be its first graduating class in 2013 before moving on to their goal of college. KIPP Denver Collegiate, conveniently located next door to the successful KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy middle school, is sharing space with Rishel Middle School (building pictured behind the famous “Knowledge Is Power” slogan from which the KIPP name derives). I was going to give you more of a detailed lowdown on KIPP Denver Collegiate, but Denver Examiner charter school columnist Donnell Rosenberg already wrote an excellent piece. All the best to KIPP’s first Denver high school as the leaders and teachers work to help students reach college ready to succeed at the next level, and throughout their lives. Other new schools featured:

If we’re going to improve learning opportunities, especially for the poorest and neediest kids in our state, one of the most important things we can do is have strong and effective leadership at the school level. Principals need to be trained not only to be great instructional leaders but also to be more like entrepreneurial managers than compliant bureaucrats. Enter the partnership between Get Smart Schools and the University of Denver: Beginning in Spring, 2010, the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business will incorporate its cutting edge MBA core curriculum with a specially-designed concentration in education, developed in cooperation with the Morgridge College of Education and GetSmartSchools, a non-profit organization designed to dramatically increase the number of high quality schools serving low-income students in Colorado’s Front Range. All elective courses will be specially designed to train future leaders of autonomous schools. Unlike traditional Principal preparation, this will give participants both the business and instructional expertise to manage and lead schools closing the academic achievement gap. Just as we need more high-quality alternative routes into the teaching profession, so we need more high-quality alternative routs into school leadership. Kudos to Get Smart Schools and the University of Denver. Maybe this […]

Interested in learning American Sign Language (ASL), but not exactly sure where to get started? Our friends at the Rocky Mountain Deaf School (RMDS) (just around the corner from my friends at the Independence Institute) wanted me to let you know about this opportunity that you’ll appreciate. RMDS is offering an ASL class for adults and children, starting next Monday, October 12, at 6 PM. The way the class is structured families can come together to learn. The one-hour class, led by experienced teachers Jeff Beatty and Valerie Sharer, will repeat every Monday for a total of six weeks. Costs are as follows:

I don’t know a lot about India, except that a whole lot of people live there and my parents love the food (Me? I’ll stick with hot dogs and mac & cheese). But then yesterday I found this story about a study of India’s education system (PDF): We find that the teacher performance pay program was highly effective in improving student learning. At the end of two years of the program, students in incentive schools performed significantly better than those in comparison schools by 0.28 and 0.16 standard deviations (SD) in math and language tests respectively….

Back in the spring, I pointed you to some important discussion about the Boulder teacher “sickout”. A month ago I mentioned how the collective bargaining contract with the school district, and teachers voted to reject the latest offer. Well, earlier this week, the Boulder Valley Education Association filed official notice with the state that the union intends to strike. Sure, as my friend Ben DeGrow pointed out, that doesn’t necessarily mean a strike will happen soon or even happen at all. But another large Colorado local union went down a similar path 15 years ago during the state’s last teachers strike. So will the parties involved learn the lessons of the 1994 Denver walkout (PDF), or perhaps even take the opportunity to promote reforms in the way teachers are paid?

From the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), Commissioner Dwight Jones is urging parents to get involved in a research study of Core Knowledge charter schools: The study is being led by David W. Grissmer and Thomas G. White, researchers at the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education. They have received a $4.9 million grant to evaluate the effectiveness of Core Knowledge charter schools in Colorado. The Colorado Department of Education is participating as a full partner. The five-year grant is being funded by the Institute of Education Sciences, part of the U.S. Department of Education. Grissmer, a principal research scientist, and White, a senior scientist, work at the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, a national center that focuses on the quality of teaching and students’ learning. “This study holds tremendous potential as a definitive work that will analyze the key ingredients of these successful schools,” said Commissioner Jones. “Because the study design requires participation from parents who win lottery-based enrollment to Core Knowledge charter schools—and those who don’t win those lotteries—I am strongly encouraging parents to participate in the study to help us all better understand the elements that make these schools effective.” [link added]

So this isn’t exactly a NEW school. But West Denver Prep, arguably the city’s most successful charter, has added a new campus and the opportunity to serve more students. Back in May my Education Policy Center friends visited the original West Denver Prep. Ben DeGrow summed up the visit: You can’t help but leave the grounds of the school on Federal near Jewell thinking that though the challenge is great, there is definitely hope to do more to improve educational opportunity for the poor children of our nation’s inner cities. And now, a little over a mile away, West Denver Prep II has completed its first month in action, reaching out to a largely poor and Hispanic population, motivated by three Core Beliefs: