Category Archives: Teachers

Guess I should be thankful that the big education issue being talked up for next year’s legislative session is teacher licensure. (It was supposed to be last year, but kind of got lost in the shuffle with that whole Senate Bill 213 debate.) As it usually goes with such things, there’s been a group meeting called the LEAD Compact Working Group. Their job is to come up with recommendations for legislators on how Colorado can make the licensure system work better, especially now that we are launching a system that evaluates teachers based on effectiveness. But as Ed News Colorado reports, there’s the rub: Nearing the end of its work, the group that is studying possible changes to Colorado’s teacher licensing requirements remains undecided on a key issue – whether or how to connect license renewal to teacher evaluation.

Yes, these are crazy days. But a short blog post is better than none at all. And I felt compelled to reply when I read this new Denver Post column by Alicia Caldwell. Not because she is entirely wrong, but because she errs by coming so close to, but missing, a critical breakthrough: But the truth is — listen up, my free-market friends — enticing top-notch teachers means competing and paying for them. The average teacher salary in Colorado in 2012 was just under $50,000. That’s not much. Paying teachers more isn’t a popular idea. But getting rid of the mediocre — a non-negotiatiable [sic] first step — and hiring smart people who are star teachers should be. As usual, read the whole thing. She writes earlier in the piece that, due to challenging student demographics, we should celebrate Colorado’s small gains on national tests because of being so “poorly” funded. (Close to $10,000 per student.)

The elections are over. I’m out from underneath the rock. It’s nice to see the sunshine again, to see that Amendment 66 was rejected (let’s think Kids Are First instead), and the reform message carried many major school board races. Time to shift gears, though, with the release of 2013 results from NAEP, the nation’s gold-standard test. The overall picture, as reported by Education Week‘s Catherine Gewertz, is not too encouraging:

The final reckoning day for Amendment 66 is almost upon us. Almost past are the hard press of empty promises and the creative reform bait and switch. What am I talking about? Senate Bill 191’s new (and hopefully improved) system of teacher and principal evaluations is going into place right now. We’re told the tax increase is needed to pay for the new system, though the new school finance legislation makes no guarantee funds will be spent that way and the projected increase comes in at far less than the total tax bill. Then, to top it all off, the unions who are bankrolling the Amendment 66 campaign to the tune of $4 million have promised to sue to end the reforms. Interesting timing, a story this week in U.S. News and World Report notes that performance-based evaluations like SB 191 are catching on across the country:

It’s pretty rare to see a geographically-themed post like this one here. While Weld County has become a focus for some about a debate to secede and create a 51st state, more interesting to me is a series of stories that set apart a number of the county’s school districts. The 12 school districts in northern Colorado’s mostly rural Weld County rank it second in the state to El Paso County, which has 15 different districts. Stealing the headlines a couple days ago was Weld Re-10J, better known as Briggsdale School, for adopting a student safety plan that includes enabling teachers and other staff to carry concealed firearms on school property. About 9 months ago I told you about the defeat of Senate Bill 9, which “would have allowed school boards to authorize carrying of concealed weapons in schools.” Apparently, Briggsdale has found a loophole that the Dolores County School District devised earlier this year. Don’t ask how or why: I’m too little.

Michigan Capitol Confidential recently featured a story about teachers union leaders apparently intimidating several educators who opted out of membership after the state adopted its right-to-work law: The MEA 17-B/C union newsletter listed the name of 16 employees from four school districts in the U.P. who decided against paying dues or fees to the union and it also listed the services they no longer will get now that they’re not part of the union. Kathi Moreau, a counselor at Stephenson Area Public Schools, left the union and said she was shocked to see her name in the newsletter.

The reason I rarely write about Common Core is the same reason why I’m writing about it today. Huh, you say? America’s fourth most influential Edu-Scholar Eric Hanushek makes a persuasive case in U.S. News: Policymakers and reform advocates alike have rallied around introducing a set of national content standards, suggesting that this will jump-start the stagnating achievement of U.S. students. As history clearly indicates, simply calling for students to know more is not the same as ensuring they will learn more. Bottom line (read the whole article): Common Core standards are not going to move the needle on the important content and skills U.S. students learn. For every Massachusetts that performs fairly well with high standards, there’s a California that has high standards but struggles tremendously in its educational results.

‘Tis the season for the DVR in our house. Political ads are back in Colorado, including ones making wildly exaggerated promises about Amendment 66. You know, the billion-dollar statewide tax increase allegedly “for the kids.” Thankfully, some local TV journalists have been willing to look under the hood of the Rube Goldberg proposal and call out the misleading rhetoric. Well, I’m too young for my own TV spot, but little old Eddie wants to give it a try with this pro-66 flier being handed out in Greeley. Let me respond to some of the points in turn: 1. For Greeley-Evans taxpayers — $3 return on $1. They’re referring to how much new revenue local schools will get for each new tax dollar area residents will pay. It’s certainly a better deal than a .62 return in Gunnison, a .59 return in Boulder County, a .56 return in Jefferson County, a .50 return in Douglas County, or a .20 return in Steamboat Springs. But it also means, taxpayers all across the rest of Weld County will be turning over more of their hard-earned funds to low-performing District 6. 2.Good schools are fundamental for our economic future Who can disagree with that? […]

You may not know what blended learning is. You probably can’t recite all the different categories of blended learning — though you would stand a better chance if you had read Krista Kafer’s paper on The Rise of K-12 Blended Learning in Colorado. One particular passage in Kafer’s paper highlights the rise of a particular form of blended learning that certainly seems to owe its origins to Colorado:

Following the Independence Institute’s own analysis of the economic harms the Amendment 66 billion-dollar tax hike would inflict, the Common Sense Policy Roundtable has released a long-term forecast that shows “without substantial improvement in student performance, Amendment 66 is drag on the Colorado economy.” The second in the pair of studies sought to estimate how much better student performance would have to be in order to make the tax increase proposal a neutral proposition. University of Colorado business school researcher Brian Lewandowski framed the question to the Denver Post in somewhat dramatic terms: “Even when you’re the best in the nation, graduation rate alone doesn’t get to break even,” he said. “We need a lot of improvement in educational performance for it to have profound positive impact on Colorado’s economy. But it’s not unachievable.”