Category Archives: Middle School

This morning, Colorado’s outgoing governor Bill Ritter formally recognized some schools and school districts for outstanding academic performance. A couple observations, first about the school districts. As Ed News Colorado’s Nancy Mitchell explains and breaks down, there are five levels of rating districts can earn from the state’s Department of Education. Only 14 of 178 earned the highest (“Accredited with Distinction”), while 7 districts received the lowest (“Accredited with Turnaround”). Most districts fall somewhere in between. Many times we’ve heard during the discussion about Douglas County’s groundbreaking private school choice proposals (which passed on to the superintendent in resolution form on Tuesday night) that the district doesn’t need choice because it’s the highest-performing district in the state. But a careful look at the list shows Douglas County isn’t anywhere in the top 14 “with distinction.” Maybe — just maybe — a whole slate of expanded choices and options for families will help the district compete and rise to the top. Hmmmm. With the governor’s blessing today, the Colorado Department of Education also recognized 32 schools as “Centers of Excellence” for demonstrating the highest rates of student academic growth while serving at-risk student populations (75 percent or more). Included on the […]

With a little snow finally starting to fall around here, it’s time to go outside and play. So instead of any sort of grand analysis today, I just want to extend my congratulations to Michelle Pearson — who last week was named Colorado’s 2011 Teacher of the Year: Pearson comes from a teaching family; both the maternal and paternal sides of her family had teachers in them, working in schools in the U.S. and Canada. She says her greatest accomplishments in education have not been what she’s done alone, but what students, families, colleagues and the community do together. Pearson believes standards are the key to teaching. She says in a true standards-based environment students should understand what they are learning, why they are learning it and be able to connect their work to their world. Her belief in the importance of standards is exemplified by her recent service on the Colorado Department of Education’s social studies standards committee (along with my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow).

Not everyone can be super-smart at math, but a brand new Harvard study (PDF) by Paul Peterson, Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann shows how virtually every state in the USA is not educating enough top-flight math performers. If you look at the 56 nations who take the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), 30 do better than America in the share of students who rank advanced in math. Even our best state doesn’t crack the top 10 or 15. Can’t we be more competitive? The neat part of the Harvard study is seeing how individual states stack up against the other PISA-tested nations. (The authors found a valid way to compare results on our NAEP test with PISA.) Top-ranking Massachusetts, where 11.6 percent of 8th-graders (and 12.4 percent of white 8th-graders) rate as advanced in math, comes in behind 16 entire nations. That includes not only Taiwan, Korea and Finland, but also our neighbors to the north: Canada! Even if you include only the advanced math rate among students with a college-educated parent, seven other nations still outperform Massachusetts. What about Colorado, though?

If the Denver Post can take a glimpse, so can I. Not that I am excited by the prospect of taking a glimpse at a school full of icky girls. But here goes anyway…. About 120 sixth- and seventh-grade girls who enrolled in the Girls Athletic Leadership School now inhabit the third floor of Calvary Temple, near Cherry Creek mall. G.A.L.S. is the only single-gender public school in Colorado, aimed at empowering girls and providing them opportunities denied in a co-ed setting. Interesting factoid about the Girls Athletic Leadership School. What a clever acronym, too. Maybe it’s time for an all-boys charter school. Let’s call it the Gents United Youth School (G.U.Y.S.). I’m all about equity and balance, you know. Anyone with me on starting G.U.Y.S.?

Looking for something a little different than the traditional schooling model, maybe even cutting edge and innovative? After all, exposing Colorado families to more choices and educational options is a big part of what the “glimpse at new schools” series is all about. You might be interested in this: Aurora Public Schools opens the doors of Vista PEAK Exploratory in August. The school was highlighted a few months back in a story for the Aurora Sentinel: It’s an approach that will offer students a new way of planning their education from an early age, one that will give children access to specialized programs in science, math, visual arts, business and other areas. This new “pathways” method will play a central role in the Vista PEAK Exploratory School on East 6th Avenue and Harvest Road that’s set to open later this year, the first part of a campus that’s eventually slated to include a high school and a satellite college campus.

The faithful readers of Ed Is Watching (I love you, mom and dad!) know that during the past two summers I have dedicated many blog posts to introducing interesting new education options in Colorado. Links to all the posts are compiled on our A Glimpse at New Schools page. This year, I’ve decided to get an earlier head start while we head for the mid-summer doldrums. To kick off the 2010-11 edition, it seems appropriate to highlight the offspring of some golden oldies. I’ve written before about West Denver Prep middle school and Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST) — both top-notch, “distinguished” charter schools. The great news is that these schools won’t be contained, but rather are multiplying under successful models and sound leadership. The 2010-11 school year doubles the number of West Denver Prep campuses from two to four, with new sites shared at Lake Middle School (starting with 6th graders only) and Emerson Street School. And DSST (the original campus in the Stapleton neighborhood contains both a middle school and a high school) will open a second campus in far northeast Denver’s Green Valley Ranch. If DSST II hits the same trajectory of getting 100 percent […]

Not too long ago I wrote about my Education Policy Center friends’ visit to Adams School District 50 for the Standards-Based Education tour. Some seem to have taken the posting as an unqualified enthusiastic endorsement of the district’s SBS program, or maybe they thought I was being too one-sided and generous with praise. The intent was to provide a descriptive summary of what my friends saw from the official tour. Okay, though, I own up for not making it clearer, and maybe I gave the district too much benefit of the doubt. But that’s also what happens when my friends let a 5-year-old do their blogging for them. (Not that I don’t like doing it, I’m just saying….) Anyway, a few facts are plain: 1) Adams 50’s SBS system is new and untested. 2) Buy-in from schools and teachers certainly isn’t universal across the district, and implementation has been rough — at least at times. 3) Test results so far haven’t been encouraging.

One of the main ingredients that gives public charter schools the opportunity to thrive in a competitive environment is the degree of autonomy to determine its own culture, curriculum, program, budget and personnel policies. But just how much autonomy do they have? We know that because of different laws and policies, all states certainly aren’t equal. The Center for Education Reform’s annual report card on states’ charter-friendliness is the leading example. But today the Fordham Institute released a report that takes a closer look at 100 charter schools in 26 different states, rating them on a carefully-developed metric of autonomy in the areas of: Vision and Culture, Program, Staffing, and Financial and Governance. An interesting aspect of the report was not only taking into account the effect of state laws but also adding the impact of contracts signed between charter schools and their authorizers (e.g., school districts) on autonomy in these different areas.

People in Iowa, avert your eyes for a moment. The shame might hurt too much. Did you see this story? Thanks to Mike Antonucci, I learned today about the “teacher who Un Des-Moines her own protest.” For all you Cleveland Indians fans out there, that’s what we call a pun. The Iowa State Daily tells us more about the protest: Earlier that week, students arranged a gathering outside of Merrill Middle School in Des Moines to protest the cuts before the school day started March 8. The rally was organized by Theresa Hoffman’s language arts students while Hoffman got an OK with Merrill’s principal. “They were very upset that we lost shop and drama [last year], and then when they heard we were going to lose vocal music and that I am retiring and a math teacher is retiring, and they’re not replacing us, they’re concerned with the size of classes,” Hoffman explained

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: