Category Archives: Innovation and Reform

Katie Redding at the Colorado Independent reported yesterday on the official recommendations for Colorado’s application to receive Race to the Top federal reform dollars. One of my Education Policy Center friends got a chance to chime in: Ben DeGrow, education policy analyst for the free-market Independence Institute, found much to like about the application, particularly the suggestions to provide financial incentives to teachers and to attach higher funding to high-risk students (which he noted would give parents more choice about which schools could best serve their students.) There’s only so much reasonable space in an article like that one, so Ben asked me to revise and extend his remarks a bit. The “higher funding to high-risk students” is really a call for a widespread move to a transparent Weighted Student Funding formula that empowers parents and school-level leaders at the expense of central administration bureaucrats. Ben further cited Cole Arts and Science Academy as Colorado’s premier example of “Turning Around Low-Performing Schools.”

Colorado isn’t the only state angling for Race to the Top federal education reform grant funds. Some people say our state is on the inside track to get a share of the money. Meanwhile, the results from last week’s Denver school board election has some urban reformers worried that the grant application could be in jeopardy. It may help buoy the hopes of reformers to look at other states who seem to have similar, or even worse, struggles. I’m talking about Wisconsin. As legislators in the Badger State closed out their session last week, they approved a bill being touted as a way to make the state eligible for Race to the Top money. (For more background on the debate, check out the latest edition of School Reform News for a piece written by contributing editor — and my Education Policy Center friend — Ben DeGrow.)

Earlier this week there were some elections. A bunch of big people in Colorado voted, though not nearly as many as voted last year for President. One of the issues many of them had to decide was who would serve on the local school board. That part sure interests my friends in the Education Policy Center. Click the play button below to listen to a new iVoices podcast as Pam Benigno and Ben DeGrow discuss the fallout from the school board elections in Colorado’s three largest school districts: Jefferson County, Denver, and Douglas County. Based on candidates’ support of school choice and other key education reforms, the results for the three districts were very different: It will be interesting to see how things unfold in the near future — especially in Denver and Douglas County.

Can we have an honest discussion about school funding? Not that my friends in the Education Policy Center haven’t been trying. All sorts of numbers are used in various ways to make the case that Colorado (or pick your state) has drastically underfunded schools, and more than once they’ve worked to set the record straight. Certain interest groups and their useful supporters nonetheless want us to aim for the middle of some specific ranking. If that’s their goal, someone almost always can find some category in which Colorado (or pick your state) lags the national average, or even the middle of the pack. And when have you ever heard the same advocates in high-spending states acknowledge that they have enough funding, that no increases are needed? Well, how about a little context? Along comes Vanderbilt University professor James Guthrie with a new piece in Education Next that effectively breaks through the scare tactics and lays the foundation for a serious, honest discussion.

Chalk up another gold star for public charter schools as an education reform success. What am I talking about? The second half of a one-two research combination punch, released in late October but just reported by the smart people writing opinion for the Wall Street Journal: Mr. [Marcus] Winters focuses on New York City public school students in grades 3 through 8. “For every one percent of a public school’s students who leave for a charter,” concludes Mr. Winters, “reading proficiency among those who remain increases by about 0.02 standard deviations, a small but not insignificant number, in view of the widely held suspicion that the impact on local public schools . . . would be negative.” It tuns out that traditional public schools respond to competition in a way that benefits their students. Writing on Jay Greene’s blog, the venerable Greg Forster additionally notes: …Marcus also finds that the lowest-performing students in NYC’s regular public schools benefit from charter competition; in fact, while the benefits for the overall population are statistically certain only in reading, they’re certain in both reading and math for low performers.

If there’s a musical instrument I could play, it would probably be the drums. (Some of you may think it’s the horn I like to toot, and my mom & dad have already said “No” to any loud percussion instruments, but anyway….) Why? Because I like to keep banging on the drum of how very, very important teacher quality is to improving schools and student learning outcomes. Reforms like performance pay, streamlining tenure, and alternative certification are not merely nice ideas, but vital changes that need to be made to our school systems. On that note (pun intended), all of you — especially the teacher quality skeptics — really ought to check out this new issue brief by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF)’s Brooke Dollens Terry, “Shortchanging Our Kids: How Poor Teacher Quality & Failed Government Policies Harm Students” (PDF). Many of the things Brooke writes about Texas could apply to Colorado as well. While I’m beating on the drum, one of the groups doing great real-world work in adding quality teachers to the instructional ranks is ABCTE. ABCTE has just created a great new resource directed at teachers and leaders of charter schools — designed to help connect […]

An investment in efforts to turn around failing schools is a cornerstone of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s reform agenda, and constitutes one of the key elements of plans state must devise to receive Race to the Top grant funds. But is the turnaround strategy really a promising approach? Writing in Education Next magazine, Andy Smarick of the American Enterprise Institute stands up and shouts, “Wait just a minute!”: …Quite simply, turnarounds are not a scalable strategy for fixing America’s troubled urban school systems. Fortunately, findings from two generations of school improvement efforts, lessons from similar work in other industries, and a budding practice among reform-minded superintendents are pointing to a promising alternative. When conscientiously applied strategies fail to drastically improve America’s lowest-performing schools, we need to close them. Now look, I haven’t come to any conclusions whether Duncan is right or Smarick is right. As someone so young, my optimistic inclination is to give these bad schools a chance to turn things around. But I’ve also started to learn that older and wiser people like Mr. Smarick can make some valid points, too, by looking at the past and looking at other sectors to make sound policy decisions. In […]

The Greeley Tribune reported yesterday that the local school board approved its final offer to district teachers, less than three weeks after the union rejected the offer. I don’t like writing about situations like this one, because let me tell you there’s no winner to celebrate. The district made the least painful choice of funding salary increases for masters degrees and educational advancement — an approach with no ties to improving student achievement. Meanwhile, nothing is done to offer rewards to the best teachers, schools, or principals; removing the most ineffective teachers; or cutting non-core functions or personnel. Not that anyone can blame officials in a bureaucratic system for avoiding pain and the opportunity of belt-tightening times to make meaningful reforms. It’s just same old, same old … sigh.

As conservative Mike Rosen notes in his column today for the Denver Post, a big school board race is underway in the Douglas County School District. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow researched and wrote a neat report (PDF) last year on the district’s innovative local licensure program. For those not in the know, Douglas County is Colorado’s third-largest school district and is located immediately south of Denver, a mix of suburban and rural communities with one of the lowest poverty rates in the state. Education reform in high-poverty urban areas typically receives the most attention, and rightly so. But does that mean a district like Douglas County has reached a plateau, and doesn’t need reform?

Learn an education policy reform idea from Ohio? Not possible, you say? Come on, it’s not as unlikely as all that. Well, my friends in the Education Policy Center ran across a new practice in the Buckeye State that could help Colorado revolutionize the way we deliver education. In the somewhat obscure Middletown Journal, Ohio state representative Bill Coley writes about the new program created by his sponsored legislation: