Category Archives: Parents

Update, 11/9: Douglas County’s choice proposals have been noticed east of the border (the Colorado border, that is). A blogger at Kansas Education notes: …why are so many private schools religious ones? The answer. As a parent, you’re probably already paying taxes to support a school district to which you can send your child. What’s going to motivate you to pay tuition on top of that? Religious faith is one compelling reason. Let parents take some of the money spent on behalf of their child to a private school, and you’ve expanded the range of choices for those parents. Isn’t that a good thing? Most Americans like having more choices rather than fewer. Update, PM: A great resource I overlooked is this Douglas County Choice Task Force FAQ sheet (PDF). Find out why the task force exists, what it’s been up to and what’s coming next. I’d like to think it was my Friday blog post about Douglas County’s private school choice proposal that fired up everyone. While I may be just a little tyke, I’m not that naive! Anyway, let the discussion (and the good times) roll…. On Saturday the Denver Post‘s Jeremy Meyer followed up with a second […]

Update, 11/9: Blogger Ben Boychuk at Somewhat Reasonable gives a plug to Douglas County and to little ol’ Eddie. He echoes our remarks and raises a great point: “Indeed, what if the public schools in Douglas County, Colorado served the interests of taxpayers and parents, and not those of the unions and ranking members of the establishment with a vested interest in preserving the status quo?” I love it when the Denver Post brings big attention to issues I’ve covered here weeks before. It tells me little Eddie is ahead of the curve. It was true of this summer’s Common Core standards debate, and today it’s true of the Douglas County school board looking to expand the boundaries of parental choice. I wrote on October 18 about the DCSD School Choice Task Force: The Task Force has looked at a range of changes for possible recommendation and adoption — everything from improving open enrollment policies to enhancing services available to home schoolers to ensuring equitable treatment of charter schools to considering a local private school choice program. I wrote that after the Board itself publicly reasserted in a public memo: We believe that informed parents, not Board members, are best […]

Everybody’s got the election on the brain today, but there is something maybe even bigger going on out there that is of concern to us education transformers. Tomorrow the United States Supreme Court is set to hear the case Garriott v Winn, which will decide the constitutionality of Arizona’s K-12 tuition tax credit program. Apparently, somebody didn’t like the program because a lot of people have given to scholarship organizations that make it easier for students to attend religious schools. But it seems groups like the ACLU never bothered to ask whether the program helps families like the Dennards, featured below in an Institute for Justice video: As a new study by Dr. Vicki Murray shows, Arizona’s tax credit program “overwhelmingly” benefits low- and middle-income families. But that didn’t stop the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals from stepping out on a limb to say that the program empowering more parents to make educational choices is somehow against the law. Thank goodness there is one higher judicial stop to determine what should happen. For some more background and basic facts on the case, check out this page from “On the Docket.”

How often do you see a local school board proactively promoting school choice — including choices inside and outside the district, for the sake of satisfying the local education customers? Let’s be honest: It’s pretty rare. So maybe it’s time to introduce you to the Board of Education for the Douglas County School District, the third largest in Colorado. Last Thursday the DCSD board sent out a memo that included this interesting passage: We also want to address the perception that the Board of Education prefers one type of school over another. Nothing could be further from the truth. Simply put, your Board supports choice. We believe that informed parents, not Board members, are best suited to determine which schools will best serve the needs of their individual students. Under our Superintendent’s leadership, schools are making efforts to define themselves clearly. We strongly support these efforts so that parents have the best information to choose which school will meet the unique learning needs and goals of their children. This work will also provide choices for teachers to match their professional styles with the school’s learning environment. Our role will be properly limited to ensuring that all schools operate on a […]

An article in yesterday’s Denver Post brought attention to a new report by our friends at Colorado Succeeds that urges Colorado to follow Florida’s lead on education reforms. Where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah… Jeb Bush’s Stellar Education Reform Record Worthy of Colorado Emulation (July 2008) Bolstering the Case for Jeb Bush’s Education Reform Success (October 2009) Florida Keeps Star Role Among States in Improving Student Test Scores (March 2010) CSAP Scores Get Little Attention, But Call for Expanding School Reform Approach (August 2010) If Colorado policy makers read the report and follow the Florida formula, frankly I don’t care who gets the credit. The Denver Post story focuses heavily on two planks of the Colorado Succeeds report’s five-plank recommendation: 1) End promotion from 3rd grade to 4th grade until students prove basic literacy skills; and 2) Improve the Colorado Growth Model with clearer, easier-to-understand letter grades and other consequential refinements.

The Waiting for Superman debut (coming soon to a theater near you, my Colorado friends) really has super-charged the discussion about the American education system and the need for change. This weekend the Washington Post featured a column by 16 major school leaders — including Denver Public Schools superintendent Tom Boasberg, former Pueblo City School superintendent J. Wm. Covington and my edu-crush Michelle Rhee. The theme?: But the transformative changes needed to truly prepare our kids for the 21st-century global economy simply will not happen unless we first shed some of the entrenched practices that have held back our education system, practices that have long favored adults, not children. These practices are wrong, and they have to end now. It’s time for all of the adults — superintendents, educators, elected officials, labor unions and parents alike — to start acting like we are responsible for the future of our children. Because right now, across the country, kids are stuck in failing schools, just waiting for us to do something.

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about teachers and policies related to them. But what about those who teach teachers — at least those teachers who receive traditional certification from postsecondary schools of education? Last week the Fordham Institute released the results of a survey of more than 700 education professors “to determine how they view their own roles and what they think of myriad K-12 policy developments that have taken place over the last decade.” The report Cracks in the Ivory Tower? sheds some light on education policy debates. As Checker Finn points out, there are some modest signs of more education professors being open to reforms of teacher tenure, incentive pay and alternative certification. But overall, they still “see themselves as philosophers and evangelists, not as master craftsmen sharing tradecraft with apprentices and journeymen.” Our own State Board of Education chairman Bob Schaffer, participating as one of the “Education Experts” on the National Journal blog, is not terribly impressed. Schaffer latches onto the finding that only 36 percent of education professors see teaching math facts as “absolutely essential” compared to a much higher percentage who believe in the critical importance of teaching 21st Century […]

Are you a parent of school-aged kids and live in Colorado? Perhaps you already have been to our enormously helpful School Choice for Kids website to learn about all the education options available near you and great tips to navigate the school district open enrollment process. (If you haven’t, why not check it out now?) But maybe you are looking for other handy resources on school-related issues. Then there’s another site to add to your list, EdNews Parent. The three areas of emphasis are Healthy Schools, Teaching and Learning, and Safe Schools — with an opportunity for parents to ask questions of 14 different experts. (Here’s hoping my mom and dad don’t log on to ask about how to deal with their 5-year-old son’s blogging addiction or Lego obsession….) Of course, I have to give the standard disclaimer about the site. I don’t necessarily endorse any or all of the advice offered there, nor should you necessarily rely wholly on that advice alone. But I did want to make known the availability of another important resource for Colorado parents, one that has some promise and potential and one you might find to be of value.

The new week brings an interesting Ed News Colorado story from new writer Katie Kerwin McCrimmon called “Keeping Up with the Dunruds.” The story highlights a Denver family with a boy about my own age who sounds like he shares some of my penchant for prodigy: Braeden Dunrud was riding in the family car when he saw a sign for the Spicy Pickle restaurant and asked his mom if it said “Spacey Pickle.” Pretty darn close for a 3-year-old. A short time later, Braeden revealed his reading abilities again. As he carried a can of root beer to the recycling bin, he called out, “Does it say Mug’s?” His parents looked at each other, stunned. Yes, as a matter of fact, it did say Mug’s, a brand name the parents never used. Clearly, Braeden was teaching himself to read. Now 5, Braeden is among 38 children in advanced kindergarten at the Center for Early Education in Denver, a stand-alone site that houses preschool programs for four southeast Denver feeder schools, along with both traditional and advanced kindergarten classrooms. The center opened in 2009 and expanded to provide preschool for 3-year-olds, along with kindergarten, this year.

The big local education news of the day is the release of the latest results from Denver’s School Performance Framework. SPF — which in this case has nothing to do with how much protection you get from the sun — takes into account a host of measures of how DPS schools are performing, with an emphasis on student academic growth. Based on their score, each school receives one of five ratings (from best to worst): Distinguished (Blue) Meets Expectations (Green) Accredited on Watch (Yellow) Accredited on Priority Watch (Orange) Accredited on Probation (Red) The rating determines whether individual schools receive greater autonomy and rewards or greater support and corrective action. Two major headlines come from Denver’s latest round of SPF results: