Category Archives: Independence Institute

While the big school finance reform legislation at the Colorado State Capitol explores reshuffling the dollars in a 20th century system — and dashing my youthful hopes along the way — other states continue to plow ahead with the idea of course choice. Students are enabled to customize their education by choosing courses regardless of school and district boundaries, mainly through the use of digital technology. Well, count Florida among the states seriously looking at revamping a system to promote flexibility and reward student mastery, rather than just continue to fund learning based on seat time. With Utah and Louisiana already pioneering in this area, it’s great to hear redefinED’s Ron Matus talk with national blended learning guru Michael Horn about the new world where the change might lead us and speculate how it might unfold:

Update, 5:10 PM Extra audio added. So some of you may have been missing me since a couple days ago when I asked a dozen questions regarding the major school finance bill, SB 213. Many of my questions remain unanswered, and the first committee vote on the bill itself isn’t slated until this afternoon. But a couple interesting conversations sprung up around the first question I asked: To what extent does the legislation provide for true course-level choice? Especially since it won’t go into effect unless voters approve a billion-dollar tax hike this November. That’s when I saw a document handed out by state senator Michael Johnston‘s office to explain the bill. On page 3 in the left-hand column it lists “High School Voucher for 9-12” as a component of base funding in the newly proposed formula. Well, you can guess that perked up my hopes, the idea that a new school finance system might offer students breakthrough opportunities to take a portion of their funding and choose courses from private schools or other providers. At Tuesday’s nine-hour marathon hearing, dozens of witnesses came before the Senate Education Committee. Senator Scott Renfroe (R-Greeley) surprised one of them, CEA executive director […]

Update, 3/25: Happy endings don’t usually come so quickly. But just one week later, Dougco has made and received confirmation on a number of online transparency improvements to now receive an A-minus grade. If you’ve followed little old Eddie for any length of time, you know I’m a fan of the following two things: open government and the education reform pioneers on the Douglas County school board. So needless to say, when I learned that the group Sunshine Review gave DougCo a ‘D’ letter grade for transparency, I did a double-take. Huh? After all, this was the first school district in Colorado to open and advertise all its union negotiations so the public could look on. They showed that honest discussions about important but sometimes controversial policies can be held in the light of day without causing any harm or great expense. Sunshine Review didn’t seem to take that much into account. Going back even further, before the law required them to do so, DougCo and Jefferson County were the two premiere leaders in creating a searchable online database of all expenditures. And if anything, it’s even better and more user-friendly today. Not to mention all the other financial information […]

You can’t judge a book by its cover. There are many expressions like this one out there that convey a basic piece of wisdom. A beautiful building you may have driven by many times could be a filthy mess inside. How do you know? If it’s somebody’s house or private property, they would have to invite you inside for you to properly find out for yourself. But if that building is a place where tax dollars are paying officials to negotiate how tax dollars are spent and policies are made for our public schools, then there’s no reason for the doors to be locked. Citizens should be able to peer inside and know what’s going on. The Professional Association of Colorado Educators (PACE) — one of Colorado teachers’ professional membership options — today highlighted some interesting results from their latest member survey, showing that most of their members like the idea: The Professional Association of Colorado Educators recently asked member educators their views on a variety of relevant policies related to education in Colorado. One of these issues related to whether or not negotiations between school boards and union officials should be open to the public. An overwhelming 81% of […]

Recently, I raised the issue of how PERA reform could fit into the ongoing school finance reform debates. It certainly lessens the sense of a “grand bargain” — tying reforms to a billion-dollar tax increase — when such big issues are left off the table. But then I came across the information in a Friedman Foundation sequel study, Part II of The School Staffing Surge. Then, as now, we can do better than having Colorado’s K-12 education system as a jobs program, correct? As this Washington Times story by Ben Wolfgang (cool name, huh?) details:

I am going to be catching my breath all day, I’m so excited by this fantastic news from the Colorado Court of Appeals today: DENVER—The Independence Institute, Colorado’s leading pro-freedom policy voice, praised today’s decision to restore a groundbreaking school choice program previously struck down by a Denver judge. The Colorado Court of Appeals today overturns an August 2011 ruling that permanently enjoined the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. A majority of the three-judge panel ruled that plaintiffs “failed to carry their burden of proving the unconstitutionality of the CSP beyond a reasonable doubt” and that they lack standing to make their case. (A copy of the opinion is posted at https://bit.ly/WjOq3S.)

The last couple days I’ve been pretty busy playing outside, given all the snow we’ve been covered with here in Colorado. You should see the snow fort my friends and I put together in my backyard. We’ve set it up so no one else can get in — especially icky girls! If you try, beware of a barrage of icy cold snow balls!! Apparently, that’s kind of like the attitude many teachers union officials have about schools. They’re a little more sophisticated about it, of course, writing rules that keep competing professional associations outside school walls so teachers can never hear from them. An almost-hot-off-the-virtual-presses School Reform News article by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow tells how some teachers are urging Kansas lawmakers to change the policy:

The long-awaited draft of the big school finance reform bill (144 pages in all its glory) is finally here this week. You can rest assured I will have more to say in the coming days as my Education Policy Center friends dig more deeply into it. For now, I just have to say how glad I am that Colorado’s state treasurer Walker Stapleton is trying to bring another very important issue into the conversation: The fiscally conservative treasurer points out that the PERA board has released reports indicating that by 2018, 20.15 percent of the budget for teacher salaries will be directed to PERA.

A clever wag once famously said: “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch.” Some other smart-aleck might have reason to make a similar remark about K-12 education: “Collaboration is district leaders and union leaders deciding how to spend taxpayers’ money.” Except that those taxpayers too often are left in the dark. Education Week‘s Stephen Sawchuk recently offered up a glowing report on how the superintendent and then-union president of Colorado’s largest school district “teamed up to solve a budget crunch” in 2011. High praise for Jefferson County‘s Cindy Stevenson and JCEA’s Kerrie Dallman, but there is more to the story. A critic in the Ed Week piece notes, however, that the process lacked needed transparency even as negotiators rejected the ideas brought forward by parents and community members. Two years of furlough days came that hurt families, while calls to ask a little more in retirement contributions from employees fell on deaf ears. That reticent likely had something to do with anticipating what since has played out to the north in Adams 12. Last year, after cutting middle school sports and transportation without union protest, the school board there asked all the employee groups […]

Since it’s Presidents Day today, it seems somewhat fitting to write about a local teachers union president seeking some limelight with a Friday lawsuit: The Douglas County Federation of Teachers filed two lawsuits Friday, alleging that the Douglas County School District illegally didn’t consider teachers for job openings after being laid off and that it wrongly eliminated a bank of sick leave days. “This is about treating teachers fairly and professionally, and acting within the law,” DCFT President Brenda Smith said in a news release. “The teachers who were downsized out of a job are veteran teachers with 60 plus years of experience between them.”