Category Archives: State Board of Education

This hasn’t been one of the big issues on my education transformer radar, nor is it one I’ve covered before. But it does bring out an interesting point of clarity for those who are interested in our K-12 schools and the politics that surround them. The Coloradoan in Fort Collins reported yesterday that the state’s largest teachers union has filed a legal challenge against a new public school reporting requirement: The statewide teachers union has sued the Colorado Board of Education over new rules requiring the public disclosure of teacher arrests. The board passed the new rules this spring at the prompting of Fort Collins resident and board chairman Bob Schaffer. The first attempt to establish the rule was shot down by a 4-3 vote in May 2010. The State Board went back to the drawing table to address concerns and complications, but the teachers union remained fundamentally opposed:

It’s the first day of summer, “longest day of the year” — which may have something to do with trying to get as much attention as possible for a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and friends to try to stop Douglas County’s choice scholarship (voucher) program. Ed News Colorado was among the first to report today: Some Douglas County parents and three civil liberties groups have filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of Douglas County’s pilot voucher program, set to launch this fall. The suit, filed this morning in Denver District Court by groups including the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, seeks a preliminary injunction to immediately halt the plan. Douglas County school district officials did not quickly respond to a request for comment. They have scheduled a 3:30 p.m. press conference today at Castle View High School in Castle Rock to discuss the suit. [emphasis added] Civil liberties? Is the irony lost on anyone that they are fighting to take away educational freedoms from parents and families? Maybe only certain kinds of choice are “civil liberties.” Guess I might just be too young to grasp all the nuance. But I will […]

Happy Monday! The debate over implementing Colorado’s educator effectiveness law (aka SB 191) continues to grow. This week the State Board of Education is scheduled to hear a staff presentation concerning the first draft of rules for creating a statewide evaluation system for teachers and principals, to set the parameters for the 2012-13 pilot program, and define CDE’s supporting role, among other things. In that spirit, the timing couldn’t be better for my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s new School Reform News article “Tennessee links teacher evaluations to pay”: Tennessee’s State Board of Education has ratified new rules requiring that student test scores factor in evaluating, paying, and promoting educators. The rules tie 35 percent of teachers’ professional evaluations to their students’ results on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS). Teachers of tested subjects will be rated according to their students’ test score growth, while principals will be judged on school-wide gains.

This week one of my Education Policy Center friends was privileged with the opportunity to visit a Denver charter school that fills a niche for 16- to 21-year olds who have dropped out and/or been neglected by the system. Life Skills Center of Denver is an alternative education campus that uses computer-assisted instruction in a teacher-guided laboratory setting to help high school students get remediation in lagging math and reading skills with the goal of graduation and success in life. In 2007, after four years of operation, Life Skills was in danger of having its charter revoked and being shut down. The State Board intervened to save the school after the DPS board’s vote based on legitimate concerns with poor results that showed up on testing measures. As Denise at Colorado Charters noted back then, new principal Santiago Lopez had already taken steps to improve the school. And Alan at Ed News Colorado came around to seeing Life Skills as a “special case” that deserved to stay open: If DPS had a viable alternative for these kids, one that was being drained by the existence of Life Skills, I’d favor shutting down the school. But these are kids DPS has […]

A few weeks ago I posted some thoughts about Colorado’s implementation of the educator effectiveness law (SB 191) — including a video from Step Up Colorado — that prompted a lengthy and thoughtful comment from an area teacher who is part of the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ)’s New Millennium Initiative (NMI). Then someone else from CTQ reached out to my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow to notify him of a report, co-authored by Denver-area teachers, with thoughts on SB 191 implementation. I thought it fitting to dig in and follow up, seeing as how it was just last week Ben shared his thoughts before the State Board of Education on this very topic. Anyway, the CTQ report Making Teacher Evaluations Work for Students: Voices from the Classroom was released earlier this week. Some of the 21 teachers’ main points include:

If you gave me a big box of crayons and asked me to write a manifesto, it’s probably not what I would have come up with. But I am glad to give it a big thumbs up, and hope that lots of big people sign on. What am I talking about? Closing the Door on Innovation: Why One National Curriculum is Bad for America: We, the undersigned, representing viewpoints from across the political and educational spectrum, oppose the call for a nationalized curriculum in the Albert Shanker Institute Manifesto “A Call for Common Content.” We also oppose the ongoing effort by the U.S. Department of Education to have two federally funded testing consortia develop national curriculum guidelines, national curriculum models, national instructional materials, and national assessments using Common Core’s national standards as a basis for these efforts. We agree that our expectations should be high and similar for all children whether they live in Mississippi or Massachusetts, Tennessee or Texas. We also think that curricula should be designed before assessments are developed, not the other way around. But we do not agree that a one-size-fits-all, centrally controlled curriculum for every K-12 subject makes sense for this country or for any […]

There’s more to creating good policy than just passing a good law. This is especially true when it comes to big changes, like Colorado Senate Bill 191’s push to update how teachers are evaluated and retained. It wasn’t that long ago I expressed my concerns about the implementation. A couple weeks ago the co-chairs of the State Council on Educator Effectiveness presented their recommendations to the Colorado State Board of Education. One of the presenters expressed a hopeful confidence that the 50 percent of teacher and principal evaluations based on observed performance would match up with the 50 percent based on student growth. The good news, as reported by Education Next, is that new research by Thomas Kane and colleagues shows creating such an effective evaluation system can be done — because in a sense, the Cincinnati Public Schools’ Teacher Evaluation System (TES) already has done it:

Yesterday the Colorado State Board of Education was in deliberations to interview and consider one or more applicants for the state’s next education commissioner. Right now everything is in the hush-hush, so don’t even bother to ask me who any of the finalists are. Why? Because I don’t know. The new commissioner is scheduled to be appointed at the next monthly Board meeting (May 11 and 12). Whoever it ends up being, I hope the leader is a true education transformer, someone who would be at home fitting in with the 10 state education commissioners (having just doubled in size) who form the group “Chiefs for Change.” Have you heard about Chiefs for Change? It’s “a coalition of state school chiefs and leaders that share a zeal for education reform. Together, they provide a strong voice for bold reform on the federal, state and local level.”

When (or should I say if) I get older, maybe I’ll acquire a healthy dose of that battle-worn cynicism about highly-lauded education reform initiatives like Colorado’s Senate Bill 191 — also known as the “Great Teachers and Leaders” law. Sometimes I think I’m too young to adjust my expectations appropriately. But if someone as smart and experienced as Sandi Jacobs from the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) is upbeat but realistic about it, why shouldn’t little Eddie? Sandi Jacobs… You may be scratching your head, saying, “Where have I heard that name before?” My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow has interviewed her for podcasts a few times before, most recently back in February for a discussion on “Upgrading Colorado Teacher Policies,” based on the latest edition of NCTQ’s State Teacher Policy Yearbook. Having spoken here in Denver Friday at a Donnell-Kay Foundation Hot Lunch event, Sandi also guest-blogged over at Education News Colorado:

The must-read, full-length education story of the week is a piece by Dana Goldstein at the American Prospect, titled “The Test Generation.” Before you think this little guy has gone completely loony tunes, you have to know a couple things: The article is all about Colorado, and mainly about the implementation of Senate Bill 191, but it opens with and focuses plenty of attention on the remarkable pioneering work of Harrison School District Two; and While I don’t agree with all the article’s points and conclusions, it’s a mostly fair assessment that provides some interesting insights into Colorado’s efforts to forge ahead on enhancing educator effectiveness. Showing the story’s release was timed well, earlier this week the co-chairs of the State Council on Educator Effectiveness presented their thick set of recommendations (PDF) to the State Board of Education for consideration. More thoughts on that to come in the near future. More interesting is Goldstein’s close look at Harrison superintendent Mike Miles, whose focused leadership in the development of a groundbreaking new teacher evaluation and pay system have unsurprisingly garnered criticism from the teachers union. Yet so far the results speak for themselves: