Category Archives: Independence Institute

Can you believe it’s been a whole year since the launch of the Colorado School Grades website? My friends at the Independence Institute are proud to be one of the 18 sponsoring partners of this helpful resource. The passing of 12 months means a whole new set of data, and a lot of curious parents searching through the user-friendly Colorado School Grades site to see where their child’s school rates. Grades are assigned to all Colorado public schools based on objective measures of academic achievement and academic growth. Congrats to the top-rated schools at each level for this year:

Recently I told you about my Education Policy Center friends’ visit to Liberty Common High School in Fort Collins — which principal just so happens to be outgoing State Board of Education chair Bob Schaffer (whose farewell dinner earned a nice tribute in the Colorado Statesman). Well, if you’re going to make the 2-hour round trip from Denver, does it not make more sense to visit two great schools in one fell swoop? I might say visiting Ridgeview Classical Academy — a rigorous K-12 charter school — was a no-brainer. But the truth is you need all the brains you can get to succeed there. Talk about a place where knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and academic work are neither repressed nor scorned, but embraced by students as part of the school culture? How many other high schools you know would see as the norm three sophomore-level students solving advanced geometry proofs as an elective activity?

I love lists, I love education, and I love to tell people about things. So it should be no surprise that my attention was caught by yesterday’s news release from Stanford: “Hoover Institution Education Experts Identify News Media Hits and Misses in 2012 Education Coverage.” The Koret Task Force on Education named five stories that were well-covered and five that were neglected. First, the hits: Charter schools Teachers’ unions Special education Pre-Kindergarten education No Child Left Behind Next, the misses:

When confronted with the question of how well our schools are doing, too often we lack the full context needed to compare and understand what knowledge and skills students are acquiring to be strong citizens, competent workers, and trailblazing entrepreneurs for the next generation. Last year I told you about the Global Report Card, which found an effective way to compare the performance of school districts across America with national and international benchmarks. This week the George W. Bush Institute launched GRC version 2.0 with fresh data from 2009. Taking a look at the data, Atlantic senior editor Jennie Rothenberg Gritz asks “How Does Your Child’s School Rank Against the Rest of the World?” She examines a couple districts as an example to frame the question:

Not many students can say their principal has served in Congress and chairs the State Board of Education. Perhaps even fewer can say their principal also has been a great champion for parental choice and positive educational transformation. In fact, that’s probably a unique distinction that belongs to the chartered Liberty Common High School in Fort Collins, Colo., in its third year of operation under the direction of Bob Schaffer. Another distinctive source of pride for Liberty Common, its inaugural junior class (2011-12) earned the highest ACT average scores in the entire state of Colorado. To see firsthand the source of the school’s success, my Education Policy Center friends two days ago joined a small group from Jefferson County Students First on a morning tour. The academic rigor and emphasis on core character values were evident throughout the building. Fairly unique, Liberty Common High School students are initiated into one of five different “houses” with a character trait as theme. The system promotes camaraderie among different grades and helps the students embrace and convey the school’s core values that ought to serve them well later in life.

A new Cato Institute education blogger, Jason Bedrick, highlights the work of the Independence Institute’s Education Policy Center in a posting today with a message that certainly needs to be repeated: “Public schools cost more than Americans think.” Bedrick cites Ben DeGrow’s recent interview with 9News disputing Colorado school funding figures, and makes a couple salient observations: Bedrick attacks the news report’s underlying notion that “the amount of money spent per child in the public schools is a matter of political opinion to be legitimately debated rather than an empirical fact” — don’t take the dollar figures someone states at face value; check out the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) data! Bedrick also believes reporter Nelson Garcia was asking the wrong question: “He wanted to know the amount of state tax dollars that public school districts receive per pupil. The more relevant question is what is actually spent per pupil, including local and federal sources of funding.”

According to a school district dispatch yesterday, Douglas County’s visionary, cutting-edge work in performance-based educator pay and evaluations has received a key nod of community support: The Castle Rock Economic Development Council (EDC) has endorsed the Douglas County School District pay-for-performance program. “We know excellent schools are one of the top reasons that companies choose to locate in Douglas County,” said Frank Gray, President, Castle Rock EDC. “We applaud DCSD for their ongoing commitment to excellence and we believe pay-for-performance will continue to improve our schools.” The Douglas County Pay-for-Performance plan is something that my Education Policy Center friends and I are keeping a close eye on. District leaders are working hard and quickly to break the mold and upgrade how educators are evaluated and compensated, including a system of market-based differential pay based on teacher job descriptions. Except a more detailed report in the months ahead.

With so much going on in Colorado’s world of education reform — and all sorts of new and shiny things taking place — it can be easy to forget the state is in the middle of a large-scale change to teacher evaluations. The highly-charged debates over SB 191 in 2010 seem like a distant memory. Yet the long process of implementing a new evaluation system focused on educator effectiveness grinds forward across Colorado, with bill sponsor Senator Michael Johnston insisting there is no reason to delay further. A couple of new reports from different sources give reason for ed reformers to keep their fingers crossed. A Center for American Progress report by Patrick McGuinn unpacks the challenges facing state education agencies as they try to bring new evaluation systems to life on a large scale. The report specifically cites Colorado’s work to multiply the number of qualified trainers and the unique partnership between CDE and the Legacy Foundation — concluding that a lot of careful thought and planning has to be given to any state contemplating similar reform.

I’m on pins and needles today. Not because all the turkey and football is only three days away, but because this afternoon is an important hearing that could affect the future of school choice in our state. The Colorado Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments concerning the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program and the injunction issued by a Denver judge in August 2011. My friends from the Education Policy Center and from Great Choice Douglas County will be on hand for the hearing. But in case we all need to be reminded, the ultimate direction of this case will have a significant impact on plenty of real students and their families:

In a recent column for Forbes magazine, communications expert Nick Morgan gave Colorado some great kudos with his recognition of “The Best Speech About Education–Ever.” He was praising this great speech our state senator Michael Johnston made last month in Connecticut about “what’s possible and what’s next.” Watch the speech, and you’ll see why Johnston’s passion, knowledge and experience make him the leading voice on education in the Colorado state legislature. Sometimes we see eye to eye, and sometimes not. But his influence in several reform debates is difficult to dispute — whether it has been carrying the SB 191 teacher evaluation overhaul, defending Colorado’s embrace of Common Core standards, or even agreeing to sign on as sponsor of a parent trigger bill not popular within his own party.