Category Archives: Suburban Schools

June 24-28 has been designated the first-ever National Employee Freedom Week. “National Employee Freedom Week is a national effort to inform union employees of the freedom they have regarding opting out of union membership and making the decision about union membership that’s best for them.” The Independence Institute is one of more than 40 organizations across the United States to join in celebrating the occasion. The following post is part of a series highlighting the issue’s impact in Colorado. When it comes to exercising employee freedom, many Colorado teachers may opt to stay part of the union. But they may not approve of all aspects of what the union does with their money. That’s why the Education Policy Center every year informs educators across the state about the Colorado Education Association’s December 15 deadline to get back the portion of their dues collected to fund local and state political candidates and causes.

A few days ago I told you about the national attention attracted to Douglas County School District’s market-based pay system. That was before Choice Media highlighted the story on its Ed Reform Minute, or the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci linked to the Reuters story with the quip: In Douglas County, Colorado, they are actually going to offer more pay to attract teachers in shortage areas, thus becoming the first school district to enact the law of supply and demand. Supply and demand? Whoa, how radical for K-12 education! First, let me assure you there is no known threat of economists taking over schools. Put those conspiracy flowcharts away. Douglas County’s fluid system assigns new teacher hires to one of five different salary bands, based on which of 70 teaching job descriptions for which they have applied. Both middle school and high school social studies instructors (who presumably cover economics in class) fall in the lower two pay bands. For some, however, like displaced union president Brenda Smith, a basic principle of economics is just a passing fad for the world of education:

Without a doubt, it’s easy for us Education Transformers to get impatient at the pace of progress, and that’s when any positive change appears to be taking place at all. Some days it just seems easier to put your head down on the desk and daydream, or maybe go count your pennies to see how much more you need to buy the new set of Legos. Today offers a somewhat subtle example, but a very important one nonetheless. Douglas County School District’s innovative work of adopting market-based pay, recognizing the economic realities of supply and demand for different teaching specialties, got a national write-up by Reuters’ Stephanie Simon. I’m already tuned into what’s going on in Colorado’s third-largest district, so more than the information itself, it was this reaction that caught my eye: “It’s quite novel,” said Eric Hanushek, an education economist at Stanford University. That would be the same Eric Hanushek who is rated as the third-most influential “Edu-Scholar” in the country. And what’s his honest reaction? Dougco’s work in this area is “quite novel.” Former Education Secretary William Bennett would list market-based pay among “all of the good reforms” Dougco uniquely has taken on. I just prefer to […]

Mike Antonucci is doing yeoman’s work at the Education Intelligence Agency, going state by state to update K-12 student, employee, and spending data from the U.S. Census Bureau. I’ve called on his helpful charts that show the relationship of pupil enrollment to teacher hiring, and how states (and even districts) are doing financially compared to five years earlier. Friday it was Colorado’s turn in the spotlight. Antonucci came at the information from an interesting angle, showing that Denver Public Schools’ ProComp “performance pay” system has not deterred new hiring. He makes a few other valuable observations. But leave it to little old Eddie here to uncover a few more interesting tidbits from the data for you all. First of all, the Census Bureau says the state’s per-pupil funding grew by 8.3 percent from 2006 to 2011 — just short of keeping pace with inflation. Yet as Antonucci explains in a newer post, school districts typically are not set up to absorb the occasional recessionary cuts like they are the frequent increases that outstrip the “marginal costs”:

Douglas County School District continues to move forward with major system changes that recognize and reward performance in meaningful ways. And the press continues to pump up the controversy while leaving factual disputes unresolved. Today’s Denver Post turns attention to a DCSD elementary school where a principal misapplied the new employee evaluation standards, creating a false impression of how many teachers rate “highly effective.” I already provided some clarification to that story, when it still only graced the pages of local newsprint. But the Post story includes an observation about a different Dougco elementary school that bears a closer look: Parents at Saddle Ranch Elementary held a rally Thursday in support of the school’s teachers after they heard that about 18 of the campus’ 35 teachers were leaving the district. They said none of the teachers at the school were given a highly effective rating, and they believe those teachers are not being valued. District officials would not comment on teacher ratings at the school, and said only eight teachers, including three retirees, have officially said they are leaving. [emphases added]

It’s Friday! Which means it must be time to provide some more clarity on the bold innovations taking place in Douglas County. Today provides a great opportunity to highlight a fairly balanced 9News story, making sure to emphasize and elaborate on some key points and add one or two others that may have been left out for sake of time. The premise of the report is an unusually high number of teachers leaving DCSD’s Chaparral High School. Two teachers and union members — including one who served on DCFT’s 2012 negotiation team — say they are departing for greener pastures because of an “adversarial” relationship with the central administration, particularly related to the development of a teacher evaluation system: “Teachers were not a part of the process. We did not collaborate. We were not a part of the conversation of what was going to be included in it,” [Chaparral teacher and DCFT negotiator Carlye] Holladay said. The first issue to address is the entire perception that Chaparral is representative of some massive teacher walkout. The 9News story showed a slide of district figures that indicate teacher turnover is only up ever so slightly, in line with last year’s numbers. Given […]

Apologies to all if I seem a little off-kilter today. You see, it’s finally sunk in that for the first time I can remember, there is a world of Colorado education without a Lobato funding adequacy lawsuit. A few months ago, as the two sides argued their respective cases before the state Supreme Court justices, I remarked how we need school finance reform, not a constitutional crisis. And yesterday’s ruling gives us that helpful reprieve. I can understand, no doubt, why emotions are running high for some plaintiffs who expended so much time and energy fighting to sway the judges into ordering more education funds from the state tax coffers. (Then again, there’s not so much sympathy for the school boards that voted to spend taxpayer dollars suing for more tax dollars and forcing the state to spend money to defend the case. How many of these school districts contributed funds, and how much?) As Professor Joshua Dunn noted in a radio conversation yesterday, one can only wonder what sort of success the Lobato plaintiff team might have had instead spending the past 8 years focused on improving education without expecting the judiciary to give perceived solutions to authentic problems. […]

Update, 5/28: I took off for the long holiday weekend, and came back to learn that Our Colorado News had updated the article on the Trailblazer teacher evaluation controversy, addressing some of the shortcomings I identified. I’d like to thank them for making an effort to improve the story. If you can’t stifle dramatic local innovation at the legislature, there’s always the route of misleading newspaper articles. When it comes to the bold transformational changes going on in Douglas County, and the overheated political opposition that goes along for the ride, you almost have to expect it. The local journalists at Our Colorado News have picked up the slack, publishing a story rife with relevant omissions to try to convey a conveniently crafted political message: Trailblazer Elementary School Principal Linda Schneider says 70 percent of her teachers are “highly effective” under the Douglas County School District’s new evaluation system. The district questions that finding, and is summoning all the school’s teachers for a second, independent review…. District-wide, about 15 percent of teachers are rated “highly effective,” according to information provided by DCSD. Under the evaluations, each teacher is assigned a rating ranging from “highly effective” to “ineffective” that is tied […]

After a lot of recent attention, it seems to have grown awfully quiet this month in the Adams 12 school district. Two of four scheduled negotiation sessions with teachers union officials already have taken place, but beyond that it’s left to the open-ended curiosity of a perpetually precocious 5-year-old to try to guess what’s taking place. If the Colorado Education Association (CEA) mother ship had let the District Twelve Educators Association (DTEA) accept the board’s offer of open negotiations, we might have more than a clue. Still, we could take a stab at what the respective sides might be fighting hard for behind closed doors. An April 19 DTEA memo set forth the topics proposed for discussion. Kept out of the (properly hygienic, smoke-free) back rooms, I can only wonder what sort of progress might have been made in the direction of cutting back or ending tax-funded union release time, or the board’s general push toward greater fiscal responsibility. On the other hand, union leaders want to undo the 1.5% shift in teacher pay to cover their guaranteed retirement benefits (aka PERA), even if they can’t explain how that will be accomplished without asking more of parents and/or having to […]

When I’m running a race, no matter how short my little legs may be, I don’t want to be left in the middle of the pack: I want to break the tape first… I want to WIN!! In America, including Colorado, we tend to think our suburban schools serving middle-class students are largely doing just fine. But that all depends on your perspective and your point of comparison. It’s well past time to think beyond the school district next door or across the state. A group called America Achieves just released a report titled “Middle Class or Middle of the Pack” that ought to help wake up some people. Many of the chief excuses for America’s humdrum or weak showing on international tests just sort of melt away: Many assume that poverty in America is pulling down the overall U.S. scores, but when you divide each nation into socio-economic quarters, you can see that even America’s middle class students are falling behind not only students of comparable advantage but also more disadvantaged students in several other countries.