Category Archives: Innovation and Reform

It’s March — which means, if you like basketball as much as I do, there’s a really big tournament coming up. And after a team wins two games in that tourney, then they become part of the cleverly named “Sweet Sixteen.” But what about states that filled out applications for competitive federal K-12 grant money? How does it work out for them? Well U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a big basketball fan, too, and was once a good college basketball player. No doubt about that. So in one sense I understand why this morning Duncan announced 16 states are finalists for the first round of Race to the Top money. Colorado, which asked for $377 million to implement reforms, is among them. Since no one knows exactly how many grant awards will be distributed, it’s hard to say how this all will play out and whether states will even get the amount they asked for. But Colorado hasn’t helped itself with a consensus approach, which among other things has created a council to study how to tie teacher tenure and evaluations to student academic growth, rather than actually try to fix the law itself. And today Ed News Colorado […]

The Denver Post followed up its Sunday story on local school district expenditures with an editorial today that says “Shine the light on school spending”: A bill now advancing in the General Assembly would require school districts to make budget information available online, including discretionary spending. House Bill 1036 argues that districts ought to take advantage of technology to allow for greater transparency. We question whether a mandate is needed, but agree with the intent and urge districts to use the technology on their own. As my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow noted in his recent report “What Should School District Financial Transparency Look Like?” (PDF), HB 1036 is a small step forward but a relatively weak mandate.

I know this sounds a little weird, but I think I’m experiencing a bad case of deja vu. The topics of three posts I wrote last week all re-emerged this Friday morning: On Monday the 15th I noted that the school spending transparency debate had returned to the State Capitol. While Senate Bill 91 here was killed, I see that our neighbors to the Southwest – Arizona – are giving serious consideration to a bill that would bring detailed spending transparency to public school agencies and all other governments. On Wednesday the 17th I highlighted our new podcast with Harrison superintendent Mike Miles about his district’s groundbreaking performance-based teacher pay program. Today the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) posted their interview with Miles about the very same topic in its weekly Teacher Quality Bulletin. Last but not least, on Thursday the 18th I brought your attention to Rick Hess’s new blog and promised to cut back on using the “It’s For the Kid” line. This morning the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci observes that it didn’t take very long for NEA to help make Hess’s argument for him. Here’s hoping the month of March brings something new. Have a […]

The same day that I promised to stay away from using the “it’s for the kids” line to make an argument, the Denver Post published an online column by University of Northern Colorado education professor Spencer Weiler doing just that: …Colorado is only as strong as the quality of education children throughout the state receive each day. And the quality of education is directly correlated with the funding the state ensures for its public schools. Money matters when it comes to educating children. It is with that backdrop that I wish to comment on the state’s failure to adequately fund public schools and the current fiscal crisis. When Colorado passed Amendment 23 in 2000 the state was $696 below the national average in per-pupil funding. We are now over $1,400 below the national average in per-pupil spending and the gap will continue to grow as a result of the current recession…. Let me explain…. No, let me sum up. According to Dr. Weiler, we must take away reasonable controls on the growth of government and the right of citizens to vote on tax increases because Colorado schools aren’t funded as much as in many other states. In other words, it’s […]

Look, I’m not perfect. Using the “for the children” argument is something I have resorted to only on a few occasions. I’ve even had fun mocking someone for using the counter-intuitive “blame the children” argument. For a little kid like myself, that’s not a bad record. But now I’ve got to keep on my toes. The sharp and cynical education policy maven Rick Hess now has his own blog for Education Week, and right out of the gate he’s not pulling punches beating on the “It’s For the Kids” (ITFK) mantra — including letting us all know how silly AFT president Randi Weingarten and former U.S. Department of Education officials sound doing it: Such variants of the IFTK genus are intended to stifle questions by flaunting moral superiority. Playing the IFTK card ignores the likelihood that no one is eager to leave anybody’s kids behind and the reality that policies entail imperfect choices. By squelching honest dissent, IFTK excuses incoherent policy and practice in the name of moral urgency. So, here’s a wild idea. Can’t we just presume that everybody cares (or admit that we can’t tell the posers from the real deal) and just argue policies and practices instead? […]

When it comes to changing the way teachers are paid, many people have heard of Denver’s ProComp. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote an issue paper (PDF) about that performance pay plan and others in Colorado. But clearly, as far as the extent of innovation goes, Denver has nothing on El Paso County’s Harrison School District. To get a strong sense of why this is, I recommend you click the play button below (or follow this link) to listen to a brand new 17-minute iVoices podcast interview with Harrison Superintendent Mike Miles: Not only a lot of thought, but also a lot of time and hard work went into Harrison’s “Effectiveness and Results” (E and R) pay program. E and R is set to transition during the upcoming year until all teachers and other licensed employees will be paid based on performance and achievement in 2011-12. Best of luck to Harrison! I hope other school districts, officials and education leaders are paying attention and taking close, careful notes. The proof will be in the pudding, so let’s study the E and R program to see how successfully and efficiently it helps improve student learning.

Ed News Colorado’s Alan Gottlieb has excellent coverage of last night’s lottery event in which 170 mostly poor and Hispanic 5th grade students were vying for 130 slots to enroll into the new West Denver Prep charter school. The original West Denver Prep is the highest-performing middle school in Colorado’s largest city (as opposed to some Michigan school districts that paid money to deceive parents into thinking their schools were the best). Alan posted a video that might be difficult to watch, if you have a hard time watching the disappointment of parents who recognize their children’s educational futures may be on the line. Here’s a poignant and powerful reminder of why we work so hard to expand school choice and promote other important education reforms:

Ed News Colorado reports on an attempt by Denver Public Schools leadership to help its struggling schools break out of their struggles: [DPS superintendent Tom] Boasberg, in an email to principals Friday afternoon, said “it is our intention” not to place any unassigned teachers at year’s end into schools now on probation under the district’s school rating system. He also said DPS “will seek to limit forced placements” in the district’s poorest schools, or those receiving Title 1 federal grant money based on student poverty rates. Whether the teachers are poor performers, or they just aren’t warm to the school’s culture and its program to achieve excellence (presuming an effective one is in action), it does more harm than good to force teacher placements — at least as a policy on paper. If the current approach is the best we can do to deal with the “dance of the lemons,” then we might as well give up on urban school reform. But I’m too young to give up, and you should be, too! Writing at the Ed News blog, Alexander Ooms lauds what DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg is trying to do: “Changing the lemon dance to a game of musical […]

There’s been plenty of debate — here in Colorado, more than in most states — about the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top (RTT) $5 billion grant funding program. On the surface it sounds really good, promoting some commonsense and effective reforms that in many cases should have been enacted years ago. To some extent, it may actually yield positive results. But now that 40 states have participated in the first round of applications (and Colorado opted for the safe “consensus” approach), we soon will find out whether the faith in RTT is justified. As the editors of the Wall Street Journal note, the first big test will be to see how selective the grant process actually is (H/T Frederick Hess): It’s been reported that Mr. Duncan may reward as many as a dozen states in the first round. A state like California in that scenario could receive between $350 million and $700 million. That may seem like a lot of money, until you consider that California’s K-12 education budget shortfall next year is expected to be between $5 billion and $10 billion.

While Colorado’s governor and state officials have created a 15-member Council on Educator Effectiveness and Denver Public Schools has received a $10 million Gates Foundation grant to study and develop a new teacher evaluation system, Harrison School District in Colorado Springs is moving forward on a truly bold merit-pay reform. So reports Nancy Mitchell in today’s edition of Education News Colorado: Incentives play no part in the plan created by Miles, the superintendent here since 2006. There are no bonuses for teaching in struggling schools. Teachers don’t pocket a couple thousand bucks more if their students do better than expected on state tests. Instead, teachers in Harrison will soon have their entire salaries based on a combination of their annual evaluations and their students’ academic progress. No longer will teachers get annual raises for another year on the job or for taking more college classes – the way most districts in Colorado and across the country pay their instructors. These changes are made easier by the fact that Harrison teachers do not have collective bargaining rights.