Category Archives: Innovation and Reform

Update, 8/22: Intercepts blogger Mike Antonucci makes some incisive observations about the need for better-informed voters while asserting that the PDK/Gallup results are not that significant, noting he “wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot poll.” It’s late August and back-to-school season, which means it’s once again time for the new Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) / Gallup “poll of the public’s attitude toward public schools.” Right up front, let it be known that this won’t be as “Pretty Darn Klever” as my commentary on last year’s results, but a few things of interest need to be pointed out from the results. The headline and the first question featured is “What do you think are the biggest problems that the public schools of your community must deal with?” Far and away the #1 answer at 35 percent was “lack of financial support.” Coming in a distant fourth was “overcrowded schools” at 5 percent. More interesting is what’s missing on the school finance topic from the poll of 1,000 American adults. Just a few weeks ago the Fordham Institute released its own national survey (with a nearly identical sample size). The question of what approach local school districts should take to meet existing […]

As I told you a couple months ago, the nation’s largest voucher program — enacted by Indiana in 2011 — is growing quickly in both popularity and promise. In the Hoosier State, more than 8,000 students from low- and middle-income families are taking advantage of the private option provided by the new choice scholarships. And as Associated Press writer Tom Coyne points out, public education leaders not only are taking notice of the phenomenon, many also are taking action to try to woo families to stay:

Last time I wrote about Florida, it was touting their “silver medal” among the 50 states for growing student achievement in the past 15 years. The Harvard study that handed out the imaginary awards analyzed how much progress 4th-grade and 8th-grade students have made on the national NAEP test. Second place out of 50? Not too shabby. But how valid is it? Some critics have said the remarkable gains Florida 4th-graders have achieved, particularly in reading, are dramatically overblown because of their student retention policy. Since 2003 most of the state’s 3rd-graders who have failed to demonstrate reading proficiency have been held back, of course the test results for the smaller pool of 4th-grade pupils is going to look better. End of story, right? Not so fast. A recent Independence Institute guest speaker has gone behind the numbers to figure out just how much the retention policy can explain away Florida’s remarkable gains. In a newly published analysis for Education Next, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Marcus Winters finds the truth lies between the two claims, but closer to those made by Florida’s boosters than those made by its critics:

Several days ago Education Week published a story about a large Colorado school district replacing French and German language instructors with software-driven programs: Of all the recent budget cuts made by the Eagle County, Colo., school district —the loss of 89 staff jobs through attrition and layoffs, a 1.5 percent across-the-board pay cut, and the introduction of three furlough days—none sparked as much anger or faced the same scrutiny as the decision to cut three foreign-language teaching positions and replace them with online instruction. Since I’m not too familiar with the details underlying the decision in Eagle County, I’m more interested in discussing policy ramifications and other ideas in general terms. Clearly, the decision was driven by the need to tighten the budget belt. The 6,300-student mountain district is not alone in this circumstance.

When Colorado passed the first-of-its-kind Innovation Schools Act in 2008, observers knew that the law was primarily tailored to transform the most challenging campuses in Denver Public Schools (DPS). And so it largely has played out. No one else has matched the 24 DPS schools who have taken advantage of the Act’s process to transform existing public schools by setting them free from many state laws, board policies and bargaining provisions. But if the state’s second-largest and most heavily urbanized district takes a look in the rear view mirror, they may begin to see a different district creeping up behind them: Falcon 49. Now, in one sense, Falcon cannot catch up, because there aren’t even 24 schools in its boundaries. But as a share of schools with officially approved innovation status, the El Paso County district is now clearly past DPS and behind only tiny Kit Carson, with its only two schools recognized under the Innovation Schools Act. Two months after granting innovation status to six Falcon schools, on Wednesday the Colorado State Board of Education unanimously approved innovation plans for two more Falcon schools–bringing the total to eight. In addition to the positive potential unleashed by achieving freedom through […]

Since I got so long-winded yesterday (and because I know you’re tired of me hammering on the school funding issue once again), today’s post is going to be a short one. I’ve recently pointed out that the statewide K-12 financial trends are not quite as dire as some have proclaimed. But what about at the local level? The Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci has been doing his homework. Using the latest Census Bureau data, he has assembled a district-by-district comparison of Colorado K-12 spending between 2004-05 and 2009-10. It’s worth a look to get a localized sense of funding effects. On a per-student basis, all but 10 of the state’s 178 school districts spent more in 2010 than in 2005.

I’ve recently been asked whether I actually take the time to read every piece of hate mail, er, fan mail that I receive with not only compliments but also with thoughts and suggestions to improve this blog. Let me tell you, I’ve never let a piece go unopened. And yes, all your suggestions have been heard loud and clear. But this time, it really is important for me to talk about school finance. You see, Ed News Colorado reports today that the School Finance Partnership has released a new and expanded version of a report released five months ago, highlighting some guiding principles to develop a new school funding system for Colorado. The Partnership includes several groups from CASE, CASB and CEA to a few more reform-minded organizations, and is co-chaired by former state treasurer Cary Kennedy. To approve any and all recommendations required the full consensus of all these groups on the steering committee. Unsurprisingly, then, the result is not exactly tilted in a fiscally conservative direction. That’s seldom how these things work. But it’s worth a closer look:

Summer vacation is almost over (for some students, it already is). Any reason why I can’t write about Douglas County again? That’s what I thought. So here goes… Education Week‘s Stephen Sawchuk reported last week from the annual the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention that members sounded off on a local Colorado issue: The union passed, unanimously, a special resolution pledging solidarity for AFT affiliates that it asserts have been attacked, beseiged, or had their contracts superceded, as in Detroit, Chicago, and Douglas County, Colo. Today a friend found and brought my attention to a copy of the resolution. Truth be told, it contains more Whereas‘s than you can shake a stick at, including the paragraph that honed in on Colorado’s third-largest school district:

I need a sidekick. No, I really, really do. Someone maybe a little naive and idealistic (even more than yours truly) who can feed me lines like these: Sidekick: What are we going to do today, Eddie? Me: Why, same thing we do every day: Blog about education, of course! Sidekick: Oh, yeah. Of course. But what exactly are we going to blog about? Me: Same thing we blog about every day: How schools need to spend money more effectively in tight budget times…. Ok, so I exaggerate a bit. Just a little bit! I mean, in the past couple weeks alone, we’ve covered the issue of reforms focused on productive spending here, here, here and here. It’s a common theme for a very practical reason. As Checker Finn and Amber Winkler explain in the preface of the new Fordham Institute report How Americans Would Slim Down Public Education:

More than 10 years after Washington, D.C., gave us the No Child Left Behind era, the issue of educational accountability is returning to the forefront. How do we measure and attribute school success (or failure)? Who should be held accountable, and how should that accountability be shared? What should be the consequences, both positive and negative, and how will they be implemented and enforced? What role, if any, should the federal government play? The New York Times is hosting a forum with some of the brightest minds in education policy chiming in on the question: “Can School Performance Be Measured Fairly?” Now look, I’m not really fond of the way the question is framed. The obvious answer is Yes, just as obvious as the answer to the question “Can School Performance Be Measured Perfectly?” is No. That being said, some of the points respondents have made are significant, and deserve serious attention in policy debates: