Category Archives: Journalism

What a hubbub. Having finally read last week’s desperate New York Times attack against K-12 tuition tax credit programs, I was left scratching my head. Really? The Old Gray Lady seems awfully cranky about school choice and short on facts or serious arguments when it comes to this one. In a way, it felt like writer Stephanie Saul was pushing different random hot buttons to get people fired up about… something or other. As usual, overlooked in the article was the fact that nearly all gold standard academic research shows positive academic or competitive benefits from private school choice programs — and not one shows a negative impact. But that probably didn’t sound as compelling as the overblown assertion that “scholarship programs have been twisted to benefit private schools at the expense of the neediest children.” Writing for Education Next, Jason Bedrick does the most thorough job of dismantling the implicit argument in Saul’s story.

On Monday night, Denver CBS4 investigator Rick Sallinger broke a story about Adams 12 dismissing two teachers for allegedly bilking thousands of dollars in PTO funds that were supposed to go for student trips. I never like to see such a story as the one featured in the 3-minute video. Interviewed by Sallinger, school board president Mark Clark made a great point: We hold our kids accountable. We have them expelled or suspended for their behavior. I think the same rules apply for everybody. The husband-and-wife educator duo look to be in hot water. According to the CBS4 report, the decision to pursue firing Johnny and Pamela Trujillo followed an internal district audit. I’m not able to comment on the specifics of the case to presume anyone’s guilt, but if further investigation confirms the truth of the serious charges, it also reflects on an important policy: teacher tenure (aka “due process”).

What role should value-added test scores play in evaluating teacher performance? While I’m not going to take both sides of the debate, like the nation’s largest teachers union has done recently, there is more nuance to the question than the purpose of this post is suited to address. Maybe you can come to next week’s Education Policy Center event on Teachers Matter with Dr. Marcus Winters and get his thoughts. Part of the debate, however, has filtered into the issue of whether teachers’ value-added (aka VA) performance scores should be disclosed to the public. A couple years ago the Los Angeles Times stirred up controversy by publishing teacher ratings. In February the “Old Gray Lady” herself, the New York Times, followed suit. Rather than opine on the controversy myself, it seems a far better (and easier) approach to bring your attention to the insightful and creative commentary of California’s Larry Sand, author and former teacher known for espousing commonsense views on education issues:

Hard to believe it was five months ago I asked the question: Is major education reform about ready to give Iowa a try? At the heart of the story is a local connection. Jason Glass, appointed the state’s education chief a little more than a year ago by incoming Governor Terry Branstad, has some notable Colorado roots. Branstad and Glass forwarded a fairly bold plan for the Hawkeye State. Ideas included significant changes to teacher preparation, pay and retention; focusing on literacy through cutting back on social promotion; school accountability enhancements; and more flexibility and student opportunity through charters, online programs and other public education options. Of course, the state’s top executive certainly can’t — nor should he be able to — update laws by fiat. Still, Gov. Branstad’s plan has faced a particularly difficult time since being launched in the Iowa legislature in February. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow provides some of the detail in a new story for School Reform News:

Update, 1/5/12: Chris Tessone at the Flypaper blog also makes note of the Denver Post story, correctly observing: “It’s difficult to make an argument that taxpayers should be directly subsidizing union leaders. Organized labor already extracts indirect subsidies by skimming dues from teachers’ paychecks, sometimes against the desires of teachers.” Guess what! Just over a week ago I banged on a drum that may have started to hurt some of your ears by now. The drum is the madness of taxpayer-funded release time for Colorado teachers unions. And then (out of the blue?) yesterday the front page of the Denver Post shouts about “Colorado teachers unions under fire for taxpayer subsidies from school districts.” Thanks so much to reporter Karen Crummy not only for taking note of this issue my Education Policy Center friends have highlighted for years but also for doing lots of her own digging to tell a pretty disturbing story. The Post‘s findings about the number of districts paying tax dollars for union officers and other teachers to leave the classroom, and the lack of accountability for the practice, track very closely with the findings in Independence Institute papers from 2004 and 2010. That’s probably why Crummy […]

A couple weeks ago I reminded you that Colorado’s public school open enrollment season is fast approaching, and mentioned a series of school choice expos hosted by Denver Public Schools (DPS). As it turns out, Colorado Public Radio’s Jenny Brundin attended one of the expos and filed an interesting report about “The Middle School Freak Out” (H/T Ed News Colorado). Sometimes it’s easy for policy wonks like my friends in the Education Policy Center to focus on the abstract — the numbers and the philosophical debates. A story like Brundin’s, with interviews of students and parents, quickly reminds you that policy changes like expanded choice within DPS have ramifications sometimes not considered. Sure, it means various families have more educational options, but what does that look like in real life? Choice can be empowering and liberating, but it’s also messy sometimes. The Public Radio story shines a light on the special distress that often accompanies the transition from elementary to middle school. (I’m not even close to being there yet, so don’t ask me what it’s all about.) Some families avoided the dilemma by enrolling students years before into one of the growing number of Colorado’s K-8 schools. But for […]

With all the breathless attention on K-12 online education these days, you’d almost think it was a brand-new phenomenon — not something that got its start in Colorado more than a decade ago. This time it’s the Washington Post, chiming in to note that some are questioning the educational value of cyberschools. Am I surprised? No. Let me repeat what I’ve said many times: Full-time online education is by no means the best option for all students, or even most students. But it works very well for many families who have chosen the learning option. Which some might have a hard time understanding if you believe the straw man presented by an opponent in the Post story:

Last week I told you that the first-ever Digital Learning Day is less than three months away. Someone out there must have been paying attention! Today the Wall Street Journal has a big — no, make that a huge! — article by Stephanie Banchero and Stephanie Simon about online education cleverly called “My Teacher Is An App”: In a radical rethinking of what it means to go to school, states and districts nationwide are launching online public schools that let students from kindergarten to 12th grade take some—or all—of their classes from their bedrooms, living rooms and kitchens. Other states and districts are bringing students into brick-and-mortar schools for instruction that is largely computer-based and self-directed. The first sentence talks about full-time online education, something that Colorado has had going for more than a decade. (You didn’t hear it from me, but a helpful new report on this topic from my Education Policy Center friends may be coming soon.) About 2 percent of our state’s K-12 public school students are enrolled in a full-time online program, and the number has been rising significantly in recent years.

Colorado’s education story of the month has been the state of public online schools. An in-depth investigative report by Ed News Colorado (and Rocky Mountain Investigative News Network) coincided with a request for a formal legislative audit by the state senate’s highest-ranking Democratic official. Ed News Colorado’s three-part series: Identified a problem with students transferring out of online programs after the student count day that determines funding; Observed shortcomings among online schools in academic test performance and completion rates; and Found one bad apple of an irresponsible online school operator that since has changed management companies. The discouraging news cannot be completely brushed aside, yet the attention brought to online schools in Colorado demands context and a focus on genuine, equitable policy solutions that benefit students and support the ability of families to choose among excellent educational options. That’s why I have waited to write about the “story of the month” until my Education Policy Center friend Pam Benigno’s op-ed response was published today in the Denver Post:

It was to my youthful bemusement that today I ran across several edublog postings about a new “PDK” poll. PDK? At first I wondered that might stand for: Pretty Darn Klever? (or Kute?) Maybe Precociously Delightful Kid? (Guess they weren’t really talking about me, though….) It’s actually the 43rd Phi Delta Kappa poll of American opinion on the public schools. Who has time to actually read it these days? Maybe you do, but instead I’ll just point you to some highlights brought out by more astute commentators: