Category Archives: Research

It’s been a couple weeks since I chimed in on Colorado’s Lobato school funding trial — in particular on the dubious $115,000 taxpayer-underwritten study proclaiming that our state’s K-12 education system is inadequately funded. Well, believe it or not, the District Court hearing is still going on. After the case seemingly has dropped off most of the local media’s radar, Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl continues the fine work of providing daily updates from the courtroom, including the latest: “There’s no consistent relationship between school resources and school achievement,” Hoover Institution scholar Eric Hanushek testified Thursday in the Lobato v. State school funding case. Hanushek, a nationally known researcher on the economics of education, is the key expert witness for the state as it seeks to counter the plaintiffs’ claim that Colorado’s school funding system doesn’t adequately meet the education requirements of the state constitution. Questioned by Senior Assistant Attorney General Carey Markel, Hanushek added, “Money certainly matters; you can’t run a school without money.” But, he added, “How you spend money is more important than how much … In general, you can’t expect any large achievement gains without changing the way you spend.”

How did Colorado get to be the oddball? It’s got to be more than just so I would have something to tell you about. Oddball at what? you ask. Okay, let me back up and give you a little context. Yesterday Harvard professor Paul Peterson wrote yesterday on Education Next about a new U.S. Department of Education report rating state math and reading standards for 4th and 8th grade. Though USDOE’s report didn’t acknowledge it, Dr. Peterson and his team had published very similar research — comparing state standards to the “gold standard” National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — just a year ago: Every state, for both reading and math (with the exception of Massachusetts for math), deems more students “proficient” on its own assessments than NAEP does. The average difference is a startling 37 percentage points. Interestingly, the new USDOE report concludes:

Welcome to Week 2 of 5 in Colorado’s ongoing school finance adequacy lawsuit, familiarly known as Lobato v State, or just the Lobato case. A report this morning from Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl highlighted some of Monday’s key plaintiff testimony: One of the main plaintiffs’ witnesses in the Lobato v. State school funding lawsuit testified Monday that his study projects Colorado needs to spent $10.3 billion a year on K-12 schools, an increase of $3.6 billion. Justin Silverstein is vice president of Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, a Denver-based research and consulting firm that produced a 96-page study projecting the funding Colorado school districts would need to support the demands of state requirements such as new content standards, tests and teacher evaluation systems. The firm was paid $115,000 by the plaintiffs for the study. [link added] I think I just overheard one of my Education Policy Center friends ask where they could get $115,000 to conduct a study and write a report. But I digress. Anyway, the lead sentence of that story caused me to do a little back-of-the-envelope math. $10.3 billion minus $3.6 billion = $6.7 billion. Diving deep into the murky waters of school funding statistics — where […]

Late last week I chimed in on the results of the 2011 Education Next–PEPG Survey of Public Opinion on school reform issues, noting the significant uptick in support for private school vouchers. Super edublogger Joanne Jacobs drew out another finding, namely that the views of teachers and the general public on key reform issues seem to be diverging rather than coming together. But I think that perhaps the most insightful observation on the results came from Mike Petrilli at the Education Gadfly, who wrote about “the school–and the deficits–we deserve”: …particularly timely, in this era of fiscal austerity, are new insights about the public’s views on school budgets. And guess what: On education, like everything else, Americans don’t want to make tough choices. They want to keep taxes low while boosting school spending. Sound familiar? Petrilli notes that 65 percent of survey respondents don’t want to increase taxes to pay for education. That’s nationwide. The number should be at least as high in Colorado — which is bad news for the Rollie Heath education tax hike headed to our November ballot.

Little Eddie is busy today, so all I’m going to do for today is point you to the results of the 2011 Education Next–PEPG Survey of Public Opinion on school reform issues. The big takeaway? Our findings reveal more stability than change in public opinion over the five years since the Education Next–PEPG survey began, suggesting that the momentous policy develop­ments of the past year were not caused by—nor have they yet produced—broad changes in popular views. The one exception to that generalization is a significant turnaround in support for school vouchers, which until this year had been in decline. To be perfectly frank, the results are a mixed bag for reformers and transformers. Support for charter schools, merit pay, tenure reform and tax credits are all about the same as measured in 2010. And support for online learning actually took a small step back. But the news on vouchers (and given the timing of this week’s court hearing on the Douglas County Choice Scholarship program) is really quite remarkable. When framed as an issue of parental choice, the percentage of respondents favoring vouchers was 47 percent — up from 39 percent last year. When framed as an issue of […]

Update: In today’s post on Lobato, the Colorado Education Association blogging team writes: “In 2008-09, before the current recession began, Colorado spent $1,809 less per pupil than the national average of all states.” However, the National Education Association’s latest data (see page 55, table H-11) show Colorado spent $9,574 per student in 2008-09, only $616 below the national average. Someone in Denver needs to contact the D.C. mother ship. August is here, can you believe it? For a few students, it means school is starting. But the big news is the first of two major education-related court case hearings gets underway today. Reporter Carol McGraw lays the groundwork of the six-year-old Lobato v State school funding lawsuit with a substantial article in the Sunday edition of the Colorado Springs Gazette: “Where would the $3 billion come from?” asks Ben DeGrow, senior education policy analyst for Boulder-based [sic] Independence Institute. He said the court has no business ordering the legislature what to do. “What makes a judge in a courtroom more qualified? This is throwing the state Constitution out the window.“ Under the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, state and local governments cannot raise tax rates without voter approval and cannot spend […]

The birthday of the late, great economist Milton Friedman is in two days. He would have been 99 years old. Since the anniversary of Friedman’s birth falls on a Sunday and I won’t be blogging then, what better time to commemorate him and his passionate life’s work to expand school choice? In the Education Policy Center’s ever-evolving issue paper — A Chronology of School Choice in the U.S. — senior fellow Krista Kafer describes the seminal contribution he made to this important movement: At mid-century, the concept of a ‘voucher’ for parents first appeared in 1955 in the article “The Role of Government in Education” by economist Milton Friedman, who would later win the Nobel Prize in economics. [link added] Robert Enlow, who heads up the Foundation for Educational Choice (created to carry on Milton and wife Rose Friedman’s legacy of school choice advocacy), penned a great op-ed yesterday that brings together a confluence of important events:

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I have a great deal of respect for the work of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). As I pointed out a few months ago, NCTQ has been spearheading an important review of the university programs that prepare teachers for K-12 schools in the U.S. Yesterday the organization released a report highlighting one phase of its research — namely, student teaching. Among the important standards examined were the amount of classroom time and commitment expected of student teachers, the role the program plays in matching students to cooperating teachers, as well as requirements that cooperating teachers have at least three years experience and a proven record of effectiveness at improving student learning. NCTQ selected about 10 percent of the nation’s 1,400 teacher preparation programs to create a random sample across the USA. You may not be surprised to learn that the overall results are less than stellar. But as Education News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl reports, one of the three Colorado programs selected was one of only 10 nationwide to receive the highest mark from NCTQ: Colorado Christian University. The two other institutions from our state fared much […]

Learning to read is essential to a quality education. Kind of goes without saying, doesn’t it? There has been increased attention in recent years on the importance of phonics and scientifically-based reading instruction. These are crucial features of instructing students in the early grades, ensuring they get off to a strong start in their educational careers, yet in too many cases (at least in Colorado) teachers are not adequately prepared to impart the learning to students. Yet can what sustain and build on those reading skills as students reach 8th grade and beyond? Take a glimpse at what has gone on the past few years in a small corner of the New York City Public Schools (New York City? I can almost hear some of you ask in the voice of disgruntled Texas cowhands. Yes, the Big Apple!). In a New York Daily News op-ed, Sol Stern highlights the success of the three-year Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) program piloted in 10 Bronx and Queens elementary schools: After the first year, [then school chancellor Joel] Klein announced the early results: On a battery of reading tests, the kindergartners in the Core Knowledge program had achieved gains five times greater than […]

It’s July. School is out for the summer. Education news tends to be slow. To top it all off, your local edu-blogging prodigy is spending extra time at the swimming pool, and occasionally gets wrapped up in frustrating games of Angry Birds on his dad’s iPhone. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few things worth noting. First, have you ever wanted to make a persuasive case for school choice to a skeptical acquaintance, but didn’t want to recommend a too-thick tome they’d never read or have to send a list of web links that might disappear? Then Dr. Jay Greene just might have the solution for you, announcing the publication of his new 48-page booklet Why America Needs School Choice. To get a good hint of what it’s about, listen to the new School Reform News podcast interview with Dr. Greene. Second, the grassroots group supporting Colorado’s groundbreaking local voucher program (among many other expanded educational options) has launched a new website. Check out Great Choice Douglas County, and be sure to show your support! Remember, too… visit the page created by my Education Policy Center friends for all the information you’ll need on the Douglas County Choice Scholarship […]