Category Archives: School Finance

The negotiations surrounding the teachers union contract have broken down. Now the situation appears to be getting quite tense in the Boulder Valley School District. Last week I expressed my hopes that the teachers choose to act like professionals, rather than rehash last spring’s “sick out” or even worse. This Daily Camera report (complete with video) from Tuesday’s Boulder Valley School Board meeting indicates the growing possibility that my hopes may not be met: Union officials said they don’t know what value fact-finding would provide, and they’d rather go through the budget to find the money needed to move toward professional pay. Regardless of how negotiations move forward, King has said schools won’t be interrupted. The teachers’ union has said taking some sort of “job action,” such as a strike, is a possibility but they hope to avoid it. [emphases added] Four items to consider:

Yesterday’s Pueblo Chieftain featured a very telling story of why serious education reform cannot simply be entrusted to the good will of local school bureaucrats. Not that they aren’t necessarily trustworthy, because most of them certainly are. But the prevailing number of federal and state regulations, added on top of the provisions negotiated into the master union contract, have stacked incentives in favor of pleas for more money to help get them out. See what I mean: Local school administrators are well aware of the attempts by districts around the country to find ways to reward teachers and give them incentives to do better but it’s not something that can be done without also finding ways to pay for it. Kathy West, interim superintendent of Pueblo City Schools, said that there are indications that new federal programs will be coming soon to help cash-strapped districts like Pueblo’s do that. But for the time being the district remains with its narrowly worded contract and pay scale that bases salaries on years worked, degrees and training earned and on annual across-the-board pay increases. “It’s just too hard….” In other words, labor peace trumps teacher quality.

Update, 8/26: The witty voice of experienced education reformer Checker Finn eloquently notes that “the country’s most powerful education organization has fired a big grumpy shell across the bow of the country’s earnest and determined education secretary. This battle is joined.” I invite you to read his perspective. When it comes to the U.S. Department of Education doling out money to states for reform and innovation, is Colorado like the nerdy kid at the front of the class who sucks up to the teachers? That’s the colorful metaphor Education Week blogger Alyson Klein crafts to explain our state’s approach to getting Arne Duncan‘s “Race to the Top” money: If the competition for a slice of the $4.35 billion Race to the Top Fund were a K-12 class, Colorado would be the kid sitting right up front, wearing gigantic glasses, furiously taking notes, and leaping up to answer every single one of the teacher’s questions. The latest effort? A petition, sent to folks in Colorado, urging them to endorse the state’s bid. Hidden beneath the surface are concerns that Colorado might not meet the early expectations and be one of the top finalists.

It doesn’t seem that long ago the school year was winding down, and up in Boulder many teachers were calling in sick as a form of protest: sort of a collective temper tantrum. Now students and parents in the district may wonder what’s coming next. As the Boulder Daily Camera and Denver Post have both reported, 94 percent of Boulder Valley Education Association members (or about 75 percent of all Boulder Valley teachers) have voted to reject a contract offer that included across-the-board 1 percent bonuses but no permanent pay raise. Hey, I might vote against it, too — but for different reasons, I can assure you.

It’s Friday. What better time to kick an institution that’s down, and deservedly so? If anyone is taking nominees for an American school district to tear down and start over the education system from scratch, I vote for the Detroit Public Schools. Anyone with me? The district’s well-documented failures and financial deficits are exacerbated by the latest findings of far-reaching corruption. The Detroit Free Press reports today about what was found in a pair of audits of Detroit Public Schools (H/T Intercepts): Among the findings: 160 outdated BlackBerrys, 11 motorcycles, 97 two-way phones and 50 handheld radios sat unused. One audit also showed that 411 people — including some who are dead — were receiving health insurance even though they weren’t eligible. Ending those benefits will save the district an immediate $2.1 million, [emergency financial manager Robert] Bobb said. Health insurance for dead people? To cover future embalming needs? Protection money from grave robbers? If we take away their benefits, will they be added to the rolls of Americans without health insurance? Unbelievable stuff. Do you see what I mean?

Earlier this week Ed News Colorado reported that five Jefferson County residents have stepped forward to fill the school board vacancy left by departing Scott Benefield: Here are the candidates: * Harvey Burns of Westminster retired from the district is 2004 after 30 years as an English teacher and librarian. He works as a substitute teacher. He was an officer of the Jefferson County Education Association and served on the board of the Colorado Education Association in the middle 1990s. * Edward Duran of Arvada is vice president of an information technology company. * Tomas Griego of Westminster is a retired middle school teacher and middle and high school administrator. After retirement he worked as a hearing officer in the Westminster schools. Most of his career was as assistant principal of Hodgkins Middle School in the Westminster district. * Robin Johnson of Arvada is the mother of three children in the Jeffco schools and has been a school volunteer and active in the Jeffco PTA. She works as an administrative assistant in an accounting firm. * Cody McNutt of Arvada is a graduate of the International Baccalaureate program at Lakewood High School, currently is a senior at the University of […]

Alyson Klein, one of the ladies who cover happenings related to education on Capitol Hill for Education Week, reports about an important committee vote yesterday: A bipartisan effort to boost funding for the Teacher Incentive Fund by an extra $100 million went down to defeat today during the full Senate Appropriations Committee’s markup of the bill funding the U.S. Department of Education in fiscal year 2010. The bill already includes $300 million for the TIF, a teacher performance-pay program that is currently funded at $97 million. The proposed increase in the failed amendment would have been paid for by taking $100 million out of the federal State Grants for Improving Teacher Quality program. TIF provides competitive grants to state agencies, school districts, and charter schools that develop quality performance pay programs for teachers and for principals. As my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow has outlined in his issue paper Denver’s ProComp and Teacher Compensation in Colorado (PDF) and elsewhere, local Colorado school districts have applied for and received a significant share of TIF grant money. Besides Denver, they include Eagle County, Harrison (El Paso County), and Fort Lupton. Our K-12 education compensation system badly needs a serious overhaul, and […]

When it comes to measures of where Colorado ranks in education spending inputs, I never cease to marvel at the selective judgment of newspaper writers. Take for example today’s Denver Post headline: “Colorado at 40th in K-12 funds per student”. Yes, the Census Bureau has released its annual rankings and finds that Colorado spent $8,167 per pupil, 11th from the bottom nationally, during the 2006-07 school year. That is below the national average of $9,666 and almost half the amount spent by New York, the top state. But why only the Census Bureau? Several months ago the National Education Association released its annual rankings (PDF) and found that Colorado spent $8,895 per pupil in 2006-07, which ranks us at 30th — not 40th (see H-9). Or what about the U.S. Department of Education, which when you look at total expenditures per pupil for 2006-07 places Colorado at 31st ($10,160)?

Alexander Russo at This Week in Education reports that the city of Baltimore threw a party to celebrate some dramatic improvements in student achievement: No doubt, the city has pulled things together in recent years. The number of students exceeding the state reading standard increased by 92 percent over the last two years, and the number of students exceeding the state math standard increased by 107 percent. All this apparently without any of the standards-lowering that other states have engaged in. The district still ranks near the bottom of Maryland’s 24 districts. But it’s worth celebrating. Academic performance in Charm City must have been pretty bleak before, if after such improvements the district still ranks last in the state. But then you see what’s happening to a charter school that’s been the shining light in Baltimore, and you wonder about the level of commitment to continuing the improvement process they’ve started to celebrate:

Robert Manwaring at the Quick and the Ed asks the timely, fair and relevant policy question: “Should New Era of Transparency Apply to Union Finances?”: Perhaps it is time to shed a little more light on how union funding is used. As union dues go up, what is the additional funding being spent on? Does the public have a right to know? Are union dues going up to compenate [sic] for all of the teachers that are being lost to job cuts, or are unions increasing salaries and expanding their influence. It would be interesting to know. Teachers unions represent government employees. They bargain over public services paid for by taxpayers that serve students in our communities. Therefore, not only do the educators who pay dues into the organization have a right to know where the money goes, so does the general public. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow makes this terrific point in a paper he wrote a few months ago, titled Setting the Standard for Pro-Worker Transparency (PDF). Transparency is good for governments, political campaigns, and corporations. Why not labor unions? Judging by the comments beneath his post, you would have thought Manwaring had advocated fire-bombing union […]