Category Archives: School Finance

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2010 to my mom, a few random basement-dwellers, and the handful of my other regular readers … I will be back on this space on January 4! (Yes, that’s a picture of the world-record largest Lego Christmas tree from Oberhausen, Germany, in 2003. Can you imagine how many presents would fit under it? Not to mention how much fun it would be to help build it! May all your Christmas dreams come true, too!) A couple days ago I asked how far Colorado was willing to go to reform personnel policies in order to win federal Race to the Top dollars. An interesting report from Education Week‘s Michele McNeil gives us every indication that Colorado is among the 25 states with application grants funded by the Gates Foundation, and thus more likely to be on the inside track for Race to the Top. So there you have it … It’s nice to end on a positive note, no matter how briefly. Race to the Top is going to be an even hotter education issue for 2010. So rest assured that I will be writing about it plenty, along with other important issues, when I […]

Education leaders here in Colorado have shown a great deal of interest in the federal Race to the Top dollars, a multi-billion dollar program that we are told is designed to spur reform. In order to be eligible for rewards, states will be rated according how well their policies and goals line up with innovative practices mostly aimed at boosting student achievement. But no category will carry more weight in the Department’s Race to the Top determinations than “Great Teachers and Leaders.” That’s why the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) has created a very handy scorecard (PDF) to help you figure out whether Colorado or any other state might be on the right track to pursuing needed “human capital reforms.” I like going to Coors Field and keeping track of what happens on a baseball scorecard, but I don’t think that’s exactly what they mean. Just what sort of things could Colorado do to get a high score in the area of “Great Teachers and Leaders” and increase our state’s chances of getting Race to the Top funds? Some of the “bold practices” NCTQ indicates would really help us include (in no particular order):

State Treasurer Cary Kennedy seems like a nice lady, and I think it must be hard being a politician in such an office — especially during the tough budget times faced by state government and the difficult decisions that requires. But does the current budget reality mean Treasurer Kennedy can have it both ways? As the Denver Post has reported, Governor Bill Ritter is asking K-12 schools to give up $260 million in expected funding between the current budget year and 2010-11 — despite Amendment 23’s constitutional requirement to guarantee annual increases in the core of state K-12 education funding. As my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow has noted, the potential showdown between union-backed Ritter and the Colorado Education Association over the proposed cuts could make for “interesting times.” For Treasurer Kennedy, who devised Amendment 23 but now in office stands by fellow Democrat Bill Ritter, the scenario presents an especially challenging dilemma. Ed News Colorado’s coverage of Kennedy’s Friday speech to the Colorado Association of School Boards at the luxury Broadmoor hotel (a good use of taxpayer funds itself?) really captures the challenge she faces:

This week the Detroit News reported on one of the measured reactions Michiganders have to proposals to address that state’s budget crisis: Local public school districts have too little funding to provide a quality education, according to 60 percent of voters surveyed in an exclusive Detroit News/WXYZ (Channel 7) poll released Tuesday. Only 23 percent of respondents said the taxes and fees paid for public education are “too high”; 60 percent said they are about right, and 12 percent said “too low.” What’s missing from the story?

In many Colorado school districts, taxpayers are subsidizing union presidents and/or other officers to take release time from the classroom for union business. Back in 2003-04 the practice cost Colorado taxpayers at least $775,000 (PDF). Since nothing is known to have changed to crack down on the process, the figure must be considerably more these days. What exactly are union officials doing with their taxpayer-subsidized time, and how can we find out? Bargaining negotiations? Grievance procedures? District committees? Political activities?

Should Colorado enact a K-12 scholarship tax credit program that empowers families to choose private schools? It may sound crazy politically, yet the idea would make sense not only to expand choice for families but also to help the state save money during an especially tough budget year. What, you say, you don’t believe that it could save Colorado money? Then you simply have to take a look at this: As the Center for Arizona Policy reports, an analysis by Baylor University economist Dr. Charles North shows that Arizona’s education tax credit program saves their state somewhere between $100 million and $240 million! Arizona’s experience shows that there is a demand out there among families for something better, and that providing the right kind of tax credit incentive can help provide a quality education to more students more efficiently than the existing system. It’s time for Colorado to take a closer look.

I’ve told you before about groups like ABCTE that are reaching out to top-notch professionals and making it easier for them to make an effective transition into classroom teaching. But where’s the proof this is a good idea for the bottom line of education? In the new edition of Education Next, Daniel Nadler and Paul Peterson show that states with genuine alternative teacher certification programs (like Colorado) have experienced greater gains in math and reading scores, and especially among African-American students. Is it a coincidence, or cause-and-effect? Ultimately, it’s hard to say. But as the authors conclude, the arguments against alternative certification have been eroded: But the burden of proof would now seem to shift to the plaintiffs in the Renee v. Spellings case, who argue that traditional state certification is necessary to ensure teacher quality. Genuine alternative certification opens the door to more minority teachers, and student learning is more rapid in states where the reform has been introduced. Meanwhile, scientific evidence that alternative certification harms students remains somewhere between scant and nonexistent. The Race to the Top push in Colorado has brought forth some good ideas, but a truly bold and visionary effort also would have included a […]

Katie Redding at the Colorado Independent reported yesterday on the official recommendations for Colorado’s application to receive Race to the Top federal reform dollars. One of my Education Policy Center friends got a chance to chime in: Ben DeGrow, education policy analyst for the free-market Independence Institute, found much to like about the application, particularly the suggestions to provide financial incentives to teachers and to attach higher funding to high-risk students (which he noted would give parents more choice about which schools could best serve their students.) There’s only so much reasonable space in an article like that one, so Ben asked me to revise and extend his remarks a bit. The “higher funding to high-risk students” is really a call for a widespread move to a transparent Weighted Student Funding formula that empowers parents and school-level leaders at the expense of central administration bureaucrats. Ben further cited Cole Arts and Science Academy as Colorado’s premier example of “Turning Around Low-Performing Schools.”

Over at Education Next (one of my favorite stops these days), professors Robert Costrell and Michael Podgursky say there may be a way to make a positive move beyond the traditional debate over teacher pensions: The critics of DB [defined benefit plans] are correct that current plans are seriously underfunded in part because benefits are not tied to contributions. This makes plans vulnerable to gaming and juicing up of benefits formulae when stock market returns are good, which, of course, leaves the taxpayers and employers holding the bag when stock market returns turn south.

Can we have an honest discussion about school funding? Not that my friends in the Education Policy Center haven’t been trying. All sorts of numbers are used in various ways to make the case that Colorado (or pick your state) has drastically underfunded schools, and more than once they’ve worked to set the record straight. Certain interest groups and their useful supporters nonetheless want us to aim for the middle of some specific ranking. If that’s their goal, someone almost always can find some category in which Colorado (or pick your state) lags the national average, or even the middle of the pack. And when have you ever heard the same advocates in high-spending states acknowledge that they have enough funding, that no increases are needed? Well, how about a little context? Along comes Vanderbilt University professor James Guthrie with a new piece in Education Next that effectively breaks through the scare tactics and lays the foundation for a serious, honest discussion.