Category Archives: State Board of Education

I began the week by telling you about the series of “Innovation Conventions” going on in Falcon 49 — a school district serving about 15,000 students east of Colorado Springs. (Background: Check out District 49’s innovations page and the links it contains, especially the open letter from the Board, the iVoices podcast interview and the op-ed by Ben DeGrow.) An article from yesterday’s Colorado Springs Gazette by Kristina Iodice highlights the latest “Convention,” this one hosted at Falcon High School for 100 staff and parents from the Falcon Zone. A couple of my Education Policy Center friends were there to listen in and observe the process unfold.

One of the great cliches in policy is that “one size doesn’t fit all.” Well, cliches get to be that way by having some truth behind them. Kind of like my dad’s spiffy loafers are a little big for my feet when I try them on, sometimes even the best state policies need to be tweaked to meet the needs of local communities. Ed News Colorado reports on yesterday’s State Board of Education meeting, in which Kit Carson R-1 became the state’s first district to receive innovation status: The State Board of Education voted 6-1 Wednesday to grant an innovation application from the Kit Carson school district. A key feature of the plan grants the district waivers from some provisions of Senate Bill 10-191, the landmark educator evaluation and tenure law. The vote is noteworthy because board members faced a seeming conflict between the 2008 Innovation Schools Act and last year’s educator effectiveness law. It’s interesting, because as Ed News’ Todd Engdahl notes, the lead Democratic sponsors of the two pieces of legislation both come from the same northeast Denver Senate District 33. SB-191’s Senator Michael Johnston succeeded former Senate President Peter Groff, who championed the Innovation Schools Act. On […]

Yesterday the superintendent of one of Colorado’s smallest school districts came before the State Board of Education. Kit Carson R-1’s Gerald Keefe was there to answer questions about his district’s innovation proposal. This wouldn’t surprise you at all if you listened to one of the newest podcasts produced by my Education Policy Center friends, in which Keefe explains why he believes his rural district should be set free from some state and federal teacher policies. I doubt the proposal will breeze through, and some details may need to be worked out. As reported in Ed News Colorado, Kit Carson’s superintendent caught some preliminary pushback from one State Board member: Angelika Schroeder, D-2nd District, said, “I haven’t heard the innovation” in the plan. She suggested Kit Carson should help pilot implementation of SB 10-191.

You think school choice just means a state voucher program or public charter schools? Think again. We are living in an age of all kinds of creative school choice ideas. First you have our own Douglas County School District, which is moving forward to create a local voucher program — among several other school choice enhancements. Today in the Colorado legislature we have a big hearing on House Bill 1048, which would provide tax credit relief for parents who switch students to private or home schooling. As a state school choice policy with a twist, Matt Ladner and the Goldwater Institute are touting the idea of Education Savings Accounts, something reportedly being considered as a reform idea by Florida’s new governor Rick Scott. Then there’s the Foundation for Educational Choice, which has researched and promoted the idea of school passports as a way to radically re-think federal education stimulus spending. Writing today on the National Journal’s Education Experts blog, Colorado’s own State Board of Education chairman Bob Schaffer offers up another idea for a school choice initiative using federal dollars but crafted at the state level:

Colorado Springs Gazette editor Wayne Laugesen posted a great piece last night urging citizens to give District 49 leadership a chance with its bold plan that favors students over bureaucrats: The school board has decided the large district will go forward without a superintendent — an experiment educators are sure to watch throughout the United States. If Colorado Department of Education officials approve the district’s anticipated application to become an “innovation” district, a chief executive officer will oversee the education program with less authority than a superintendent. Other day-to-day responsibilities, traditionally managed by a superintendent, will shift to principals, teachers and others directly in contact with students. It’s a decentralization plan, designed to focus resources more directly on students and those who work with them. It’s the Marine Corps approach, in which all personnel work the trenches. You can read his piece and then vote on the question: “Do you support D-49 in eliminating top administrative positions, including the Superintendent?” I hope you join me in choosing the first option: “Yes, it’s a good idea.”

So what does my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s brand new op-ed in the Colorado Springs Gazette have to do with President Obama’s State of the Union address last night? Piqued your curiosity at all? Maybe just a tad? A couple weeks ago I told you about what’s going on in Falcon School District 49 near Colorado Springs, and the beginnings of their creative attempt to restructure the school district. Well, the Falcon board voted to move forward with the innovation plan — a decision Ben lauds and highlights in his Gazette op-ed. You can find out more about Falcon’s innovation plan by listening to an iVoices podcast with school board member Chris Wright, or by visiting a new page created on the district’s website. A main tenet of the plan is moving greater autonomy from the central administrative office to the schools in the different innovation zones. To get there, the district plans to request Innovation status from the State Board of Education — a step empowered by the creation of Colorado’s 2008 Innovation Schools Act. But what was the genesis of the groundbreaking piece of legislation? A high-need school with a bold principal (Kristin Waters, now helping […]

Today, January 13, 2011 … a significant day for innovation and productivity in Colorado K-12 education? It’s too early to say for sure. But a couple of Board decisions may mean as much. First, the Colorado State Board of Education — which yesterday broke in its new members by making their first decision on a charter school appeal — has an exciting resolution on its agenda for this afternoon. Here’s the main punch of the resolution: BE IT RESOLVED: That the Colorado State Board of Education encourages Colorado’s local Boards of Education to implement cost efficiencies and adhere to the Secretary’s recommendation to improve the productivity of the education system through smart, innovative and courageous actions including, but not limited to, the following areas: (1) Streamlined administrative operations; and (2) Competitive contracting; and (3) Digital learning; and (4) Enhanced educational options; and (5) Performance-based compensation systems. “The Secretary’s recommendation” refers to something I highlighted a couple months ago: a speech by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in which he called for school districts to be more productive and do more with less.

Colorado is a truly interesting place when it comes to education reform. If you follow this blog at all, you know what I mean. But seriously, how many states have a State Board of Education chair who is such a bold spokesman for empowering students and parents rather than propping up politics and the current system? Bob Schaffer isn’t your everyday education official. Don’t believe me? Check out what the former Congressman and Senate candidate (and current charter high school principal) wrote in his latest entry of the National Journal “experts” blog when asked about the turnaround process and the U.S. Department of Education’s school improvement grant program. Here’s an excerpt for the flavor: Only from behind the haughty parapets of Washington, D.C., would anyone consider it “good news” that taxpayers of a bankrupt government are dropping heaps more of yet-to-be-printed money on 730 failing public schools. It’s a bizarre stratagem, unashamedly rewarding failure with billions more of other peoples’ hard-earned cash. How otherwise sane people can actually expect the long-term outcome of this audacity to be anything but more failure is beyond the rest of us out here in the commonsense parts of the country.

Most of us know about public charter schools: publicly funded and publicly accountable schools with independent boards and waivers from certain state laws and regulations concerning personnel and program. Here in Colorado they’ve been around quite awhile and have become an important part of the education landscape. Right now, as the Colorado League of Charter Schools reports, there are about 170 charter schools serving 70,000 students in our state (or 176 schools serving 66,000-plus students, if you accept the Center for Education Reform’s new numbers). There’s been a long debate about charters that doesn’t need to be rehashed here. Some are truly top-flight, head and shoulders above most public schools, others operate at about the same level but offer something different or unique, while some are underperforming (one of the great things about charter schools is the poor ones can be shut down much more easily than other public schools). The myths about charters have been debunked over and over and over again.

It’s the day after a late night election. There are some yawns and droopy eyes around here. But I did want to share you with some initial reactions. Let’s start in Colorado. First, we learned that Republicans won the state house and closed the gap on the Democrats’ state senate majority. Democrats hold on to the governor’s office, with John Hickenlooper taking the place of Bill Ritter. Alan Gottlieb opines in this morning’s Ed News Colorado commentary that a Hickenlooper administration will be “more in tune with the Obama administration and Democrats for Education Reform than with traditional Democract [sic] influencers, including teachers’ unions.” I sure hope he’s right.