Category Archives: Educational Choice

I’ve got to admit, Little Eddie’s faith in judges’ ability to fairly decide education issues is beginning to fray. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I’ve moved past fraying, and that my confidence has fully fallen apart at the seams like the blanket I’ve been dragging around with me since infancy. Back in June, the Colorado Supreme Court made a dangerously broad decision to strike down the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. Not long after that, a retired Colorado Court of Appeals judge handed Thompson School District perhaps the most heavily flawed “legal” document I’ve ever seen after a questionable (and expensive) non-binding arbitration process related to the district’s negotiations with its local teachers union.  Then, a Larimer County District Court judge contorted herself into a logical pretzel in order to force Thompson to abide by the terms of a contract that the board has voted down three separate times in one form or another.   But as frustrating as judges have been in Colorado this year, our problems are small compared to a jaw-dropping 6-3 Washington Supreme Court decision that charter schools are unconstitutional. I actually had to read that headline twice to make sure […]

What a week! My mom and dad moved me to a new house last weekend. This one is a long way from the Capitol, which they say is to keep me from sneaking in there and playing edu-politics when I should be doing my homework. On top of that, I attended an awesome student-based budgeting event yesterday with my Education Policy Center friends. So did a whole bunch of other people from around the state who are interested in empowering school-level decision-making. All of which is to say that yours truly is a bit tired today. Fortunately for me, I ran across an awesome Heritage Foundation video this morning about New Orleans’ (nearly) all-charter system and the results it has achieved since Katrina. The video offers a very human side of the story through interviews with school leaders and students in the city. I bet you’ll love it as much as I did.

The Pope is Catholic. The sun rises in the east, and sets in the west. The grass is green, the sky is blue. And certain parties will sue groundbreaking educational choice programs that promise to help give kids more opportunities. Two months ago, an ACLU-initiated case against the Dougco Choice Scholarship Program prevailed in the short term, while opening the door to a potential major national victory. A few weeks later, a similar program in North Carolina survived a legal assault. Before that, the ACLU’s efforts to take away tax credits for K-12 scholarship donations was smacked down in New Hampshire, while the union and school board association in case in Florida has stumbled but lives on in the form of distorted arguments about the Sunshine State’s tax credit scholarships.

It’s Friday again, my friends, and that means it’s time for a more colorful look at education policy as we head into the weekend. I really wanted to highlight the American Federation for Children’s “Education Revolution” video, which was released a couple months ago but only just made it to my desk. But you’ll have to watch that on your own. We have colorful interactive maps to play with! The Center for Education Reform (CER) recently released its 2015 Parent Power Index. It is absolutely stuffed with colorful, clickable goodies that are entirely too much fun to be considered education policy. But I’ll leave you to play with the report on your own time. We have important business to discuss! If you’ll remember, Colorado came in 12th in the country last year, which was a very slight improvement from 13th in 2013. At the time, CER described Colorado this way: Parents here are an active lot but have often been rebuffed at the legislative level when trying to expand their choices. That said, there is a strong charter law here. Many elements of digital learning are offered. The citizens of Colorado get to vote in school board elections when they […]

It’s often been said “you can’t argue with success” (or Success). But that doesn’t stop some from trying. Last year, I pointed out the collective jaw-dropping that took place when test results came back from students in the Harlem Success Academies, a New York City charter network that overwhelmingly serves poor and disadvantaged families. Just to revisit for the record: Seven out of the state’s 15 top-scoring schools on math proficiency tests this year were Success Academy charter schools….An astounding 93.9 percent of Success students passed the Common Core math exam and 64.5 percent passed the English proficiency test…. After a closer look at the results, all that critics and skeptics were left to stand on was the suggestion that the astounding, off-the-chart scores for poor kids in the Big Apple must have been some kind of a fluke. With the release of the latest achievement scores, as reported by Reason blogger Jim Epstein, that line just became a lot harder to defend.

There’s a lot of attention on the school board politics in Jeffco these days. Dealing with it sometimes is a necessity. But to me it’s a shame, given the pockets of great need for students in the Jefferson and neighboring Alameda articulation areas, just west of Denver. Last November I first highlighted the significant positive efforts for change, then followed it up with anticipation of an important March 5 Board vote to approve a hopeful plan of action. The Board ended up approving it unanimously! Since that time I have been watching off and on (there are a bunch of things out there that Ed Is Watching), but have been remiss about providing an update. Yesterday, the good people at Chalkbeat Colorado published a piece about some specific efforts to upgrade academic standards at Jefferson High and surrounding schools:

You know what’s way more fun than debunking silly arguments about charter schools? And almost as exciting as celebrating fair funding for charter students in two of my favorite districts? New research showing huge improvements in New Orleans, which has the nation’s first all-charter system. Well, almost all charter. Over 90 percent of the city’s students are enrolled in charter schools. For those roughly 40,000 kids, things are looking pretty bright. A new Education Next study by Douglas Harris finds some fairly staggering academic gains in the wake of sweeping reforms that followed New Orleans’ near-total destruction in Hurricane Katrina. Here’s a quick overview of those reforms from the study: What happened to the New Orleans public schools following the tragic levee breeches after Hurricane Katrina is truly unprecedented. Within the span of one year, all public-school employees were fired, the teacher contract expired and was not replaced, and most attendance zones were eliminated. The state took control of almost all public schools and began holding them to relatively strict standards of academic achievement. Over time, the state turned all the schools under its authority over to charter management organizations (CMOs) that, in turn, dramatically reshaped the teacher workforce … […]

One of the harder lessons I’m learning in my youth is that quite often tall tales can spread life a wildfire before the truth has a chance to catch up and extinguish it. Thanks to lots of help from Complete Colorado, I’ve already pointed out the fact-challenged / math-challenged nature of the Jeffco school board recall. That’s the “wildfire.” And some of the big people who really follow closely the K-12 educational goings-on just west of Denver — namely, Jeffco Students First — have posted a concise one-page fact sheet that effectively extinguishes some of the more egregious misinformation floating out there against reform-minded school board members. The icing on this cake of tasty, truth-restoring goodness is a brand new 90-second video of a Jeffco mom thanking the school board for listening to families like hers that have kids who need different options to learn and thrive. Time to cue up Jennifer Butts:

Hello, fellow education policy explorers! It’s 4:15 on a Friday afternoon, and your favorite little edu-wonk has quite a few things left to accomplish before he heads into a fun-filled weekend. Unfortunately, that means we aren’t going to have time for an in-depth conversation today. But never fear!  The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has swooped in to save the day with a new video about the importance of allowing families to access educational opportunities their kids need. The video is all about a little girl named Mia, whose dyslexia has made school particularly tough for her. Unable to find the help she needed in the public schools, Mia’s mom eventually placed her into a private school. Mia’s finally getting the necessary support to overcome her learning disability, and she’s thriving in her new environment. Yet Mia’s mom makes clear that while their family was fortunate enough to have the resources to access quality private education, many other families are not so blessed. For kids like Mia whose families can’t access high-quality private educational options when they need them, the outcomes may not be so uplifting. School choice matters, and I don’t just mean that in the abstract or on […]

I think it’s great to see people stand up for minority kids. My policy friend Ross Izard’s recent profile of Arrupe Jesuit High School was a reminder of just how powerful those efforts can be, particularly in the context of using educational choice to provide opportunities these kids otherwise would not have. Some of you may also remember Ross’s other article on testing and teacher tenure, in which he cites the Vergara decision knocking down California’s tenure law. In that decision, the judge commented that tenure’s tendency to keep not-so-great teachers in front of kids who most need great ones “shocks the conscience.” Tenure reform is a critical part of correcting this problem and making sure every kid reaps the benefits of having a great teacher. But maybe minority kids don’t need all those fancy, newfangled opportunities or consistently fantastic teachers. Maybe they just need some more “ethnic studies” classes. So goes the thinking at NEA headquarters.