Category Archives: School Accountability

Last week I told you about how charter schools in Aurora were getting shortchanged in a proposed bond measure. The local newspaper, the Aurora Sentinel, fired back at the charter schools with a strange and poorly informed editorial. There’s no need to rehash all the places where the newspaper’s editors went wrong. Denise at Colorado Charters took care of it pretty well with a two-part series (here and here). According to a 2007 Harvard University national survey, most Americans don’t really know much about charter schools. Though interestingly, support for charters and equalized funding for charters is much higher among those who actually understand how they work. Perhaps if the Aurora Sentinel editors were similarly well-informed, their opinion would change. But the reason I wanted to bring this all to your attention was the full and fresh treatment given today at the online news shop Face The State. One of the Education Policy Center’s own is quoted in the story: “The claim that charter schools lack accountability is laughable,” said Ben DeGrow, an education policy analyst with the Independence Institute, a Golden-based free market think tank and frequent supporter of charter schools. “In many ways they’re more accountable than traditional […]

There’s a big hubbub today about CSAP results being announced. For those of you who don’t know, CSAP stands for Colorado Student Assessment Program – it’s the battery of tests in reading, writing, math, and science that help people to see how well schools and students are performing. The folks in the Education Policy Center and others like them get really excited on days like this, because of all the new information and what story it might tell. I guess this year is really special, because a new “growth model” has been introduced that allows for better measurement of individual student and school progress from year to year. Me? I haven’t had to take any CSAPs yet – frankly, I could do without tests altogether. But I understand why many people might think they are important. Anyway, the Rocky Mountain News has the basic rundown on the latest CSAP scores, and once again, hoped-for progress is not being achieved: Results were up in 11 of the 24 tests given in reading, writing and math in grades 3 through 10. Scores were down in seven tests and unchanged in six. Reading and math scores were generally up, with more grades seeing […]

Probably the best state for Colorado or any other to look to as a model in education reform is Florida. Education reform was the primary focus of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during his eight-year tenure, and he was able to make progress on many fronts. The remarkable success yielded by years of systematic advances in school choice, accountability, standards, and teacher pay makes the Sunshine State worthy of emulation: Government-gathered data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that Florida has outpaced Colorado and the national average in nearly every measure of math and reading proficiency. In that light, it was important that Heritage Foundation education policy analyst Dan Lips was able to sit down and interview Jeb Bush (H/T Matt Ladner) at a recent education reform summit in Orlando. Here are a few key excerpts of Bush’s remarks from the interview transcribed at National Review Online: We need all schools — here in Florida and in 49 other states — to get better for our country’s future. The only way to improve student performance is through continual and perpetual reform of education. America needs a 21st century education system for a 21st century world…. Raising standards, […]

One of the most common critiques of No Child Left Behind is that its goal of achieving proficiency in reading and math for all students by 2014 is impossible to achieve. While it may be impossible for all American public schools to achieve the 100 percent proficiency marks, should we let that excuse stop many schools from achieving 100 percent proficiency, schools that really are able to get there? The Washington Post highlights a Maryland elementary school that already has hit the mark: Last spring, all 184 students in the third and fourth grades at Ocean City Elementary School passed the Maryland School Assessment, or MSA, a battery of tests given by the state every year since 2003 to satisfy the law. The school was the first in the state, apart from a few tiny special-education centers, to meet the goal that has defined public education this decade. “We think of MSA as the floor, as sort of the basics of what all students should be doing,” Principal Irene Kordick said. “We shoot for the ceiling.”… The school serves 568 students in a coastal resort town with an odd mix of families — in oceanfront condominiums, middle-class colonials and Coastal […]