Category Archives: Independence Institute

Last December I suggested to you four education reform books as stocking stuffer ideas. One of the books on the list was an important volume edited by Frederick Hess and Eric Osberg, titled Stretching the School Dollar: How Schools and Districts Can Save Money While Serving Students Best. In September my Education Policy Center friends have been busy briefing school board candidates from numerous Colorado districts about a broad range of reform issues. At the forefront of nearly all local officials’ minds is the fact that once plush and growing revenues for K-12 education have faced some modest cutbacks, forcing many to re-think how schooling can be done more productively. Stretching the School Dollar is an immensely practical resource for aspiring school board directors and the leaders they hire. In that light, it’s exciting to see The Education Gadfly report that the book has been nominated as a finalist for the Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network’s “Most Actionable Research” award. “Most Actionable,” indeed!

I’ve been told (no, really, I have!) that for a little kid blogging about education policy, I have a lot of appeal. Embarrassing: at first I thought it had something to do with bananas. But you know I was so much younger then. Anyway, I don’t want you to slip up before I get to the main point of my post for today. It’s about a different kind of appeal, one I knew had to be coming but am so glad to see it finally happen. I’m talking about an appeal of last month’s sad district court decision to shut down the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. Last Thursday, September 8, the paperwork was delivered to the Colorado Court of Appeals. First, from an Institute for Justice press release: “We are confident that the Court of Appeals will correct the trial court’s decision, which ignored or attempted to rationalize away existing Colorado and U.S. Supreme Court precedent that clearly authorizes the scholarship program,” said Michael Bindas, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, which represents the Oakley, Doyle and Anderson families in defending the Choice Scholarship Program.

Colorado teachers have options. That’s why I’m interested by stories like a new one from Fort Wayne, Indiana, where local teachers decided to secede from the state and national teachers union (H/T Education Intelligence Agency Communique): President of the Northwest Allen County Education Association Alan Bodenstein told NewsChannel 15, they’ve been talking about it for about a year. He said it came to a “perfect storm” of a lot of different issues that finally made them vote on it.

Yesterday was Labor Day. Which makes it a coincidence that my Education Policy Center friends decided to publish this report today, titled Nine Key Changes at the Bargaining Table: Of Colorado’s 178 school districts, 41 have a formal bargaining relationship with one or more employee unions. Because Colorado has no defined public-sector labor law, the greatest opportunity to reform restrictive policies and interest group privileges comes at the local school board level. Recent bargaining reforms in other states show the fiscal benefits that may be realized from adopting this approach. The few high-quality academic studies of the question all show that restrictive bargaining policies have a negative impact on student learning.

Little Eddie is busy beating the heat, so no long, clever and insightful entries for today. In the meantime, chalk another one up for the positive effects of school choice. Matt Ladner points us to a new study on one of the nation’s major education tax credit programs: A careful analysis of test score gains by David Figlio of Northwestern University has found a modest but statistically significant gains for Florida tax credit students. The data in this study are messy, and Dr. Figlio admirably goes about sorting through the various issues in an even-handed fashion.

It’s been a couple weeks since I chimed in on Colorado’s Lobato school funding trial — in particular on the dubious $115,000 taxpayer-underwritten study proclaiming that our state’s K-12 education system is inadequately funded. Well, believe it or not, the District Court hearing is still going on. After the case seemingly has dropped off most of the local media’s radar, Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl continues the fine work of providing daily updates from the courtroom, including the latest: “There’s no consistent relationship between school resources and school achievement,” Hoover Institution scholar Eric Hanushek testified Thursday in the Lobato v. State school funding case. Hanushek, a nationally known researcher on the economics of education, is the key expert witness for the state as it seeks to counter the plaintiffs’ claim that Colorado’s school funding system doesn’t adequately meet the education requirements of the state constitution. Questioned by Senior Assistant Attorney General Carey Markel, Hanushek added, “Money certainly matters; you can’t run a school without money.” But, he added, “How you spend money is more important than how much … In general, you can’t expect any large achievement gains without changing the way you spend.”

My Education Policy Center friends told you the judge’s decision last Friday to put the brakes on the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program would create a lot of chaos for families. That’s the question of the hour: What are the more than 300 students who had received scholarships (and some had already started schools) going to do? Just like families make different choices based on their students’ educational needs, so many of their fallback scenarios will be different. FOX 31 News highlights one Castle Rock family: Two of Becky Barnes’ kids were enrolled in the voucher program. Now unable to pay their private school tuition she is working hard to get them enrolled in public schools. Her first grader will go back to the neighborhood school. Her 7th grader will attend cyber school. Other families are choosing to stay at their private school and pay the tuition. Becky Barnes is one of three parents whose emergency education plans were documented today in an article by Karin Piper. Another parent was Diana Oakley, mother of Nate Oakley, for whom things seem to be working out at least for now:

Welcome to Week 2 of 5 in Colorado’s ongoing school finance adequacy lawsuit, familiarly known as Lobato v State, or just the Lobato case. A report this morning from Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl highlighted some of Monday’s key plaintiff testimony: One of the main plaintiffs’ witnesses in the Lobato v. State school funding lawsuit testified Monday that his study projects Colorado needs to spent $10.3 billion a year on K-12 schools, an increase of $3.6 billion. Justin Silverstein is vice president of Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, a Denver-based research and consulting firm that produced a 96-page study projecting the funding Colorado school districts would need to support the demands of state requirements such as new content standards, tests and teacher evaluation systems. The firm was paid $115,000 by the plaintiffs for the study. [link added] I think I just overheard one of my Education Policy Center friends ask where they could get $115,000 to conduct a study and write a report. But I digress. Anyway, the lead sentence of that story caused me to do a little back-of-the-envelope math. $10.3 billion minus $3.6 billion = $6.7 billion. Diving deep into the murky waters of school funding statistics — where […]

What is it about our neighbors to the west? A couple months ago I brought your attention to Utah’s new law providing accountability to the use of teachers union release time. But there’s more going on in the Beehive State that has captured our attention here. Within the past month my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote not one but two articles for School Reform News on two other Utah issues. Both are worthy of attention and may be instructive here in Colorado. First and foremost is an article titled “Utah passes first ‘high-quality’ digital learning law; districts seek guidance”:

Update, 8/3: Further highlighting how the attempt to enjoin the Douglas County voucher program would disrupt families’ lives, Denver 7 News has a great story — including an interview with Diana Oakley, who was featured in the recent Independence Institute video on Douglas County vouchers. In fact, if you watch the video of the 7 News report, you might even see a little unattributed footage from that video…. Yesterday I pointed out that hearings for the Lobato school funding lawsuit were officially underway. And yesterday, the team at AM 850 KOA’s Colorado Morning News released the first of their two-part dive into Douglas County’s voucher debate. Why? Because Colorado’s second big “edu-trial” of the week starts today, with a Denver District Court judge set to consider a motion for a preliminary injunction against the Douglas County voucher program. I’m still wondering what took so long to try and disrupt families’ lives with the threat of an injunction if it was so urgent for the ACLU & Company. Being young and all, nor do I get why so many groups and people want to take educational choices and opportunities away from kids and families. I’d like to think they have a […]