Category Archives: School Board

A couple days ago I shared with you my amusement at a Denver Post headline and story that injected the rumor of “vouchers” into the board race for Colorado’s largest school district: Jefferson County. What about the state’s second-largest district? Well, the big story over at Ed News Colorado right now is “Vouchers a tricky issue in DPS race”: When a newly-formed committee called Latinos for Education Reform placed ads in several community newspapers criticizing the records of both [Denver Public Schools board incumbent Arturo] Jimenez and board member Andrea Merida – who is not up for re-election this year – the Jimenez campaign initially complained of “race-baiting.” But Jimenez followed that with a newsletter to supporters claiming LFER is misrepresenting itself and that its ads “are being pushed by pro-voucher individuals and special-interest groups,” making reference to “radical pro-voucher activists from Douglas County.”

It’s less than two weeks past my Education Policy Center friends’ series of school board candidate briefings. In other words, it’s time for education reform senior statesman Checker Finn to raise the challenging and provocative question for National Affairs: Are local school district boards and the 19th century governance structure they represent about ready to wither away and disappear? Four years ago Education Policy Center director Pam Benigno wrote an article suggesting that online learning technologies were pushing school district boundaries into irrelevance. Of all places, the article was published in the Colorado Association of School Boards’ (now defunct) Prism magazine. (Sadly, no link is available.) Finn fleshes out the increasing policy and governance dilemmas as online and blended learning begin to skyrocket in popularity:

How about a little “dog bites man” story for education policy geeks? Hey, you can’t drive the point home often enough when you’re making the case for education transformation! A new issue brief for the Manhattan Institute by Marcus Winters (now one of Colorado’s own) highlights the unsurprising but important research he conducted along with Jay Greene and Bruce Dixon: Our study, to be published in the peer-reviewed journal Economics of Education Review, builds on two decades of research from a variety of school systems and confirms a consistent finding: external teacher credentials tell us next to nothing about how well a teacher will perform in the classroom…. As with most previous research, we found no relationship between a teacher’s earning a master’s degree, certification, or years of experience and the teacher’s classroom performance as measured by student test scores….

Last December I suggested to you four education reform books as stocking stuffer ideas. One of the books on the list was an important volume edited by Frederick Hess and Eric Osberg, titled Stretching the School Dollar: How Schools and Districts Can Save Money While Serving Students Best. In September my Education Policy Center friends have been busy briefing school board candidates from numerous Colorado districts about a broad range of reform issues. At the forefront of nearly all local officials’ minds is the fact that once plush and growing revenues for K-12 education have faced some modest cutbacks, forcing many to re-think how schooling can be done more productively. Stretching the School Dollar is an immensely practical resource for aspiring school board directors and the leaders they hire. In that light, it’s exciting to see The Education Gadfly report that the book has been nominated as a finalist for the Policy Innovators in Education (PIE) Network’s “Most Actionable Research” award. “Most Actionable,” indeed!

Yesterday was Labor Day. Which makes it a coincidence that my Education Policy Center friends decided to publish this report today, titled Nine Key Changes at the Bargaining Table: Of Colorado’s 178 school districts, 41 have a formal bargaining relationship with one or more employee unions. Because Colorado has no defined public-sector labor law, the greatest opportunity to reform restrictive policies and interest group privileges comes at the local school board level. Recent bargaining reforms in other states show the fiscal benefits that may be realized from adopting this approach. The few high-quality academic studies of the question all show that restrictive bargaining policies have a negative impact on student learning.

From the files of “I’m glad s/he’s not my state legislator,” we turn to the state of Michigan — where lawmakers are considering a plan to give families greater choice through mandatory public school open enrollment. A recent Associated Press story highlights some of the outrageous rhetoric from the opposition: State Rep. Timothy Bledsoe, a Democrat from Grosse Pointe, said he’s worried that a mandatory schools of choice program would be the “death blow” to local control of schools. “If your school board cannot control its boundaries and who is allowed to attend your schools, there just isn’t much left that Lansing can’t determine,” Bledsoe said. “The school board is left to hire and fire the superintendent and that’s about it.” A pretty silly argument all in all. Mandatory open enrollment essentially means no school can keep out students based on where they live, as long as there is a seat open and the school doesn’t have to create a special program or accommodation just for that student. Public school choice leader Colorado has mandatory open enrollment — one of the nation’s strongest open enrollment laws, in fact. In 2010-11, about 66,000 students attended a public school outside their district […]

My Education Policy Center friends told you the judge’s decision last Friday to put the brakes on the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program would create a lot of chaos for families. That’s the question of the hour: What are the more than 300 students who had received scholarships (and some had already started schools) going to do? Just like families make different choices based on their students’ educational needs, so many of their fallback scenarios will be different. FOX 31 News highlights one Castle Rock family: Two of Becky Barnes’ kids were enrolled in the voucher program. Now unable to pay their private school tuition she is working hard to get them enrolled in public schools. Her first grader will go back to the neighborhood school. Her 7th grader will attend cyber school. Other families are choosing to stay at their private school and pay the tuition. Becky Barnes is one of three parents whose emergency education plans were documented today in an article by Karin Piper. Another parent was Diana Oakley, mother of Nate Oakley, for whom things seem to be working out at least for now:

You thought I was going crazy yesterday waiting for a ruling on the Douglas County Choice Scholarship injunction request? Another day, and it isn’t getting any better. We have been promised Judge Martinez will issue a ruling this week, so at the most I should only have another day or so to hold out. But you know what? Colorado isn’t the only place where people are currently waiting for a judicial decision on a “Choice Scholarship Program.” This news comes today from the Northwest Indiana Times: A Marion County judge is set to rule next week on whether Indiana’s new school voucher program passes constitutional muster.

What is it about our neighbors to the west? A couple months ago I brought your attention to Utah’s new law providing accountability to the use of teachers union release time. But there’s more going on in the Beehive State that has captured our attention here. Within the past month my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote not one but two articles for School Reform News on two other Utah issues. Both are worthy of attention and may be instructive here in Colorado. First and foremost is an article titled “Utah passes first ‘high-quality’ digital learning law; districts seek guidance”:

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: