Category Archives: State Legislature

I don’t think you’ll see me writing much more for the blog this year. Can you believe it’s almost 2012? Well, just in case this is the last post of the calendar year, I wanted to make sure it’s an important one. Looking at the growing world of digital learning certainly qualifies. Basically, I’m past due in telling you about a great new publication my Education Policy Center friends have created for parents: Choosing a Colorado Online School for Your Child by Ella Peterson and Pam Benigno. Along with our fantastic School Choice for Kids website, this is definitely something you’ll want to know about for 2012, if you are at all interested in looking for a new public school for your child here in the great Centennial State. Many school district open enrollment periods really get rolling in January. This kind of guide can be very valuable if you think the cyberschool option might be right for your family. Shortly thereafter comes the first-ever national Digital Learning Day on February 1. Colorado is one of at least 27 states to have signed on as a partner to this effort. Participating in Digital Learning Day is something I definitely look […]

Update, 1/5/12: Chris Tessone at the Flypaper blog also makes note of the Denver Post story, correctly observing: “It’s difficult to make an argument that taxpayers should be directly subsidizing union leaders. Organized labor already extracts indirect subsidies by skimming dues from teachers’ paychecks, sometimes against the desires of teachers.” Guess what! Just over a week ago I banged on a drum that may have started to hurt some of your ears by now. The drum is the madness of taxpayer-funded release time for Colorado teachers unions. And then (out of the blue?) yesterday the front page of the Denver Post shouts about “Colorado teachers unions under fire for taxpayer subsidies from school districts.” Thanks so much to reporter Karen Crummy not only for taking note of this issue my Education Policy Center friends have highlighted for years but also for doing lots of her own digging to tell a pretty disturbing story. The Post‘s findings about the number of districts paying tax dollars for union officers and other teachers to leave the classroom, and the lack of accountability for the practice, track very closely with the findings in Independence Institute papers from 2004 and 2010. That’s probably why Crummy […]

Earlier this year Arizona broke down another barrier in the ongoing struggle for educational freedom by enacting the revolutionary “Empowerment Savings Accounts” for special-need students: The state will deposit 90 percent of the student’s funds into an account parents can use for a variety of educational expenditures, including textbooks, therapy services, tutoring, and even tuition for alternative or online schools. Not only does the money follow the student to serve their educational needs as the family chooses, but the families are encouraged to be wise consumers by the fact they can save money in their ESA from year to year. Any money left over at the end of high school can be used toward college expenses. Who wouldn’t like that?

Occasionally I like to take a peek around at other states and see if there’s anything Colorado can glean from them, or vice versa, or just to get a bigger picture of the education reform debate. Today let’s look west at Nevada. Why? Because of the new School Reform News story penned — er, keyboarded? — my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow: As four school reform bills Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) successfully championed earlier in 2011 go into effect, Sandoval is redoubling efforts to expand school choice and end social promotion for third-graders who lack basic reading skills. Nevada’s House and Senate are currently controlled by Democrats. During this last session, they refused to grant a hearing to a voucher bill Sandoval backed. Nevada lawmakers convene every other year, so the governor’s next crack at improving K-12 education will come in 2013.

Twelve weeks seems like a long time to someone my age, and I know it can be really hard for almost anyone to plan beyond the Christmas holiday and into the New Year. But I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity so you can mark your calendar right away for Wednesday, February 1, 2012, the first-ever Digital Learning Day: a year-long campaign to celebrate bold, creative innovative teachers in classrooms across this nation. These front-line innovators are already embedding digital learning into new instructional practices to ensure that every student leaves the classroom ready for college, career and life success. We ask you to join with us, as with them, as we launch an unprecedented, collaborative effort to expand innovation into every city, town, school and classroom in America! Former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise explains a little bit more in this 3-plus minute video:

Despite what you may hear, legislative “gridlock” isn’t always a bad thing. In fact, it quite often can be a good thing. Case in point comes from this story yesterday in Ed News Colorado: Colorado’s top senator says he’ll introduce legislation to “rein in” online schools after his request for an online education audit was rejected Tuesday on a party-line vote by the Legislative Audit Committee. The gridlock in question is yesterday’s 4-4 audit committee vote, which prevents Senate President (and Congressional candidate) Brandon Shaffer from making a selective attack on K-12 online providers and the families that choose their services for a full-time educational program. At least through the audit process, that is. Ed News writer Nancy Mitchell explains that opponents of Shaffer’s request proposed a more comprehensive audit:

So here we are, almost a week after the election here in Colorado that got a lot of big people’s attention. Prop 103’s “for the kids” tax hike went down in a ball of flames. A record number of local school tax and debt elections ran headlong into defeat. In at least one case, “negative perceptions” of a school district’s level of financial transparency has been credited with bringing down a mill levy override proposal. If that’s the case, then the timing couldn’t be better for the release of my Education Policy Center friends’ new issue paper Time to Show the Money: Complying with Colorado’s Public School Financial Transparency Act. Research associate Devan Crean was the lead author, and senior policy analyst Ben DeGrow was the co-author. In 2010 our state legislature passed HB 1036, a bipartisan measure requiring local K-12 agencies to post budgets, financial audits, financial statements, salary schedules, and as of July 2011, expenditures in the form of check registers and purchase card statements. So how well are they doing?:

Today across Colorado, the last ballots are coming in to help determine who will serve on many of the state’s 178 local boards of education (some have no competitive races, and therefore no election). It may not be the most thorough or reliable way to bring about needed reforms, but opportunities exist for some positive changes to be made at the local level that promote parental choice, professional teaching and productive education spending. That a few dozen school board candidates came out last month to hear from my Education Policy Center friends gives me some small amount of hope. Among the many topics covered at the September school board candidate briefings were examples of Colorado local K-12 innovation. Since 2005 the Education Policy Center has released a series of six papers in the “Innovative School District” series — including homages to Douglas County for its “home-grown teachers” waiver program, and to Delta County for its student-centered VISION program. Well, believe it or not, school district-level innovation is by no means isolated to our own Centennial State. An article by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow published in the new November issue of School Reform News highlights the initiative of […]

You’ve seen me write before about 2011 as the “Year of School Choice”, right? That summertime proclamation came about the same time as the Pennsylvania legislature stalled on a major proposal to create school vouchers, though so many other states created or expanded educational choice programs. Well, maybe — and let me emphasize maybe — the Keystone State will take the chance this year to redeem itself and put some icing on the “Year of School Choice” cake! Earlier this week the Pennsylvania state senate voted 27-22 to approve a plan that “provides vouchers to low-income students attending the bottom 5 percent of the state’s worst performing school districts in achievement tests,” reports the American Federation for Children. The legislation also would expand the state’s large and highly successful tuition tax credit program. Writing for the Daily Caller, Andrew Campanella explains how the momentum behind this legislative proposal shows how school choice has risen above traditional political barriers to find increasing support in “blue states”

When it comes to invoking the great Cookie Monster in blogging about public policy, who is the king? That’s right. I hate to toot my own horn, but you may remember such famous Eddie posts as: K-12 Officials Blaming Special Education is Sort of Like Me Blaming Cookie Monster; and Ben DeGrow (and Cookie Monster?) Talk Falcon Innovation on Jeff Crank Show. Well, it appears that I’ve been falling down on the Cookie Monster-blogging job, and someone has had to pick up the slack. That would be one of Jon Caldara’s minions giving little old Eddie a little silent homage with today’s gem about