Category Archives: School Finance

Marcus Winters — whom I will long remember as the author of Teachers Matter and featured presenter at the Independence Institute’s first-ever Brown Bag Lunch — has written a great new piece for City Journal. Appropriately titled “Better Schools, Fewer Dollars,” Winters’ column addresses the issue of tight budgets and educational productivity. A few weeks ago I highlighted a new 2-minute Education Policy Center video on rethinking Colorado school finance that sounded similar themes. Winters brings forward data, some more familiar than others, to show how spending per K-12 student skyrocketed in the past generation with very little or no improvements to show for it. The Manhattan Institute senior fellow further undermines the logic of adequacy studies used to inform court decisions like Colorado’s Lobato case. And this is what a Denver judge hangs her cut-and-paste ruling for the state to spend billions more in scarce resources? Anyway, Winters also reviews the research on cost-saving charters and voucher programs, which show some benefits for students and at the very worst could be interpreted as not doing any harm. Nothing new or surprising there for faithful readers or others who have paid attention to the education reform debate. But his concluding […]

“Before we can do anything to fix Colorado schools, we just need to give them more money. …Right?” Well, Colorado taxpayers can’t afford to dish out more any time soon. Especially since the per-pupil spending increases of the past decade didn’t significantly impact student learning, and Colorado brings in more than $10,000 in tax revenues per student. So begins a great new 2-minute video put together by my Independence Institute friends. It blends excerpts from a March 19 Colorado State Board of Education panel event here in Denver, “Making the Connections: School Finance Design and Student Achievement.” Two panelists in particular, national school finance experts, make a strong case that Colorado needs to think outside the box in designing a new system to fund learning success:

Digital learning is much more than a buzzword. It’s a real trend in K-12 education that’s growing faster than any single person or entity can keep up with. The effective use of technology in instruction to enhance student learning experiences takes on a variety of forms — including full-time online education programs and numerous blended learning models. Like many other reforms, it can be done well or done badly. While digital learning is no magical silver bullet to save every student in every school, neither is it something to be feared. Rather, the opportunity needs to be embraced as a tool to strengthen and enhance the reach of quality instruction, to improve and diversify curricula, to focus staff time and energy, and provide for more productive use of education dollars. I can’t begin to try to point you to all the important nooks and crannies of this issue, but the Thomas B. Fordham Institute has brought together some of the best current thinking in their new book Education Reform for the Digital Era. (If you’d rather pop up some popcorn, Fordham also has just released a 90-minute video panel discussion on this very theme.) Well worth the read is the […]

Last week I brought your attention to the Douglas County school board’s bold proposals heading into historic open negotiations. (Thank you, Parent Led Reform!) While I’m little and sometimes notice things that most big people do not, that’s certainly not the case with the Dougco budget proposal. In fact, Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll yesterday delved into a few areas I barely touched on, particularly in relation to how district teachers are paid: In contract negotiations with the district’s teacher union, the board has signaled it wants to move toward a system in which pay scales are related to the relative scarcity (or abundance) of various categories of teachers. That way, the district hopes to attract the best possible applicants. In other words, if the district gets hundreds of applications every time it has an opening for a physical education instructor but only a few applications to teach AP calculus, why should it pay the same for both of those career paths?

I write a lot about Douglas County here, and with good reason. The school board there has charted a bold course. Hey, it wasn’t much more than a year ago that they voted to establish the first locally-created private school choice program in the nation. More recently, they demonstrated their commitment to transparency by voting to open union negotiations to public view. Tomorrow morning’s Dougco open negotiations Twitter Rally, which yours truly will be a part of, should be noteworthy not only for the breakthrough moment but for the content of the conversation. Because, you guessed right, it sure looks like the Board of Education of Colorado’s third-largest school district has taken the bold approach. While leaders in the 42,000-student Adams 12 school district “are proposing a 3 percent reduction in employee pay through furlough days and an increased pension contribution,” Dougco is offering up a more appealing plan to :

What role should value-added test scores play in evaluating teacher performance? While I’m not going to take both sides of the debate, like the nation’s largest teachers union has done recently, there is more nuance to the question than the purpose of this post is suited to address. Maybe you can come to next week’s Education Policy Center event on Teachers Matter with Dr. Marcus Winters and get his thoughts. Part of the debate, however, has filtered into the issue of whether teachers’ value-added (aka VA) performance scores should be disclosed to the public. A couple years ago the Los Angeles Times stirred up controversy by publishing teacher ratings. In February the “Old Gray Lady” herself, the New York Times, followed suit. Rather than opine on the controversy myself, it seems a far better (and easier) approach to bring your attention to the insightful and creative commentary of California’s Larry Sand, author and former teacher known for espousing commonsense views on education issues:

The Professional Association of Colorado Educators (PACE) — a young, small, but growing (Hey, sounds like me!) non-union teacher membership organization — this week released the results of a member survey on some key education policy issues facing our state. With a Spring Break Friday sailing me away into lazy oblivion, today seemed like the perfect opportunity to step back and see the informed opinions of more than 100 Colorado teachers. Without further ado on this quick-hit post, here are some results from the PACE member survey:

Timing is everything, they say. What were the odds that these two key votes would go down the same day? The dual development certainly is noteworthy. On Tuesday the Colorado House of Representatives adopted House Bill 1118, which simply requires school districts to open up union negotiations to public observation so taxpayers and teachers can see dollars and interests negotiated in good faith. The vote was 33 to 31, with one member absent. All other Democrats but one voted No. All Republicans but one voted Yes. Later that night the Douglas County Board of Education unanimously voted to approve a resolution that the district’s union negotiations be held in public view. Last month the grassroots group Parent Led Reform, led by local mom Karin Piper, proposed the issue before the Board.

Do you ever get lost, driving around a big city and missing your destination? Maybe you pass the same landmark two, three, or even four times, getting more frustrated along the way. Maybe your GPS is malfunctioning, or maybe you just wish you had a GPS! For me, the feeling comes as I search for the pirates’ buried stash of gold doubloons (okay, it’s really some of those chocolate candies wrapped in gold foil, but please play along). What makes it so much easier to find the treasure? That’s right, a map. A treasure map. X marks the spot. Now it isn’t exactly the same, but today my Education Policy Center friends officially released “The Future of Colorado Digital Learning: Crafting a Policy Roadmap for Reform.” A quick read with some pretty graphics (thanks, Tracy!), it lays out the main policy changes that many of the state’s online education leaders see as important — including some of the important changes Center director Pam Benigno highlighted in an op-ed last fall. From the media release sent out this morning:

Today the group Sunshine Review (“a national nonprofit organization dedicated to government transparency”) unveiled its 2012 Sunny Awards to the 214 government agencies that have the most transparent websites. Colorado is represented by six agencies, including three school districts: Jefferson County Public Schools Denver Public Schools Mesa County School District 51 (Grand Junction)