Category Archives: Teachers

Well, a new year has come, and you favorite edublogging prodigy is back from a well-deserved break playing with Legos and wishing for more snow. Before things start to heat up again, it’s time for a little more perspective. Jay Greene guest blogger Matt Ladner sent Happy New Year’s greetings by directing our attention to Education Week writer Sean Cavanagh’s look back at 2012 school choice developments and a look ahead to what 2013 might bring. While 2011 certainly qualified for its Year of School Choice designation, the year that just passed was more of a mixed bag. Should even an idealistic 5-year-old be surprised that the tremendous momentum couldn’t be completely sustained, and that progress also entails challenges? Still, most of the trends Cavanagh cites are positive, including:

Last week a couple of my Education Policy Center friends had the privilege of visiting an innovative Denver charter school that’s serving kids close to my age: Rocky Mountain Prep. This new school is following in the footsteps of successful forebears that serve high-need student populations — placing a foundational emphasis on high expectations with competent, caring and dedicated teachers. But at the same time Rocky Mountain Prep is also pioneering a blended learning model for delivering instruction to enhance the number of students who can be effectively reached. Currently, the southeast Denver school serves students in pre-kindergarten through 1st grade, but is slated eventually to go through 8th grade. Classrooms use a rotation model in which some students at a given time will be learning on specialized software (including Dreambox), receiving small group instruction, or more focused attention on areas identified where they are struggling. Special grant funding enables a teaching apprentice, rather than an aide, to join the classroom’s lead instructor. The idea enables class sizes to be a little larger while maximizing the impact on student learning during these important formative years.

I love anniversaries, don’t you? Exactly one year ago I commented on a front-page Denver Post story documenting the use of taxpayer-funded union release time in Colorado school districts. Without taking a comprehensive look, the Post reporter found $5.8 million in subsidies to teacher unions. So on this not-quite-historic 1st anniversary, it’s interesting to see a new video posted of a recent interview with one of the union officers paid by taxpayers to take leave from the classroom. In the Spotlight on Corruption production, the District Twelve Educators Association (DTEA) official discloses some of what she does:

Recently I told you about my Education Policy Center friends’ visit to Liberty Common High School in Fort Collins — which principal just so happens to be outgoing State Board of Education chair Bob Schaffer (whose farewell dinner earned a nice tribute in the Colorado Statesman). Well, if you’re going to make the 2-hour round trip from Denver, does it not make more sense to visit two great schools in one fell swoop? I might say visiting Ridgeview Classical Academy — a rigorous K-12 charter school — was a no-brainer. But the truth is you need all the brains you can get to succeed there. Talk about a place where knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and academic work are neither repressed nor scorned, but embraced by students as part of the school culture? How many other high schools you know would see as the norm three sophomore-level students solving advanced geometry proofs as an elective activity?

I love lists, I love education, and I love to tell people about things. So it should be no surprise that my attention was caught by yesterday’s news release from Stanford: “Hoover Institution Education Experts Identify News Media Hits and Misses in 2012 Education Coverage.” The Koret Task Force on Education named five stories that were well-covered and five that were neglected. First, the hits: Charter schools Teachers’ unions Special education Pre-Kindergarten education No Child Left Behind Next, the misses:

Thousands of kids in Michigan are missing school today. Can you guess why? It is December, so you might be tempted to think a snow day or some other inclement weather situation explains all the absences…. Sorry, try again. Maybe some sort of influenza or chicken pox epidemic, you might say?… Well, if you did, you’d be wrong once more. And no, it’s not “Take Your Daughter to Work Day” either, so don’t even bother with that guess. The real answer is a union-orchestrated political protest against legislation that would give workers more freedom in the workplace. Michigan Capitol Confidential tells the story

All the big people are talking about these days seems to be the coming “fiscal cliff,” and some tough decisions leaders in Washington, D.C., have to make. For anyone who has common sense, a big part of the solution has to be for Congress to stop spending more money than it takes in. You know, the kind of balanced budget people like my parents have to use? In one of his more provocative pieces (and that’s really saying something), education guru Rick Hess writes that many so-called education advocates are essentially saying: “Let’s push kids off the fiscal cliff!” What does he mean? He does a good job crunching some numbers to show that, in order for politicians to stop racking up bills that kids like me will have to pay someday, our country needs significant reforms to old-age entitlement programs (Social Security and Medicare). So you’d expect the education advocates to be pushing for entitlement reform to help spare kids like me a massive debt burden? Not so fast, Hess points out:

Not many students can say their principal has served in Congress and chairs the State Board of Education. Perhaps even fewer can say their principal also has been a great champion for parental choice and positive educational transformation. In fact, that’s probably a unique distinction that belongs to the chartered Liberty Common High School in Fort Collins, Colo., in its third year of operation under the direction of Bob Schaffer. Another distinctive source of pride for Liberty Common, its inaugural junior class (2011-12) earned the highest ACT average scores in the entire state of Colorado. To see firsthand the source of the school’s success, my Education Policy Center friends two days ago joined a small group from Jefferson County Students First on a morning tour. The academic rigor and emphasis on core character values were evident throughout the building. Fairly unique, Liberty Common High School students are initiated into one of five different “houses” with a character trait as theme. The system promotes camaraderie among different grades and helps the students embrace and convey the school’s core values that ought to serve them well later in life.

According to a school district dispatch yesterday, Douglas County’s visionary, cutting-edge work in performance-based educator pay and evaluations has received a key nod of community support: The Castle Rock Economic Development Council (EDC) has endorsed the Douglas County School District pay-for-performance program. “We know excellent schools are one of the top reasons that companies choose to locate in Douglas County,” said Frank Gray, President, Castle Rock EDC. “We applaud DCSD for their ongoing commitment to excellence and we believe pay-for-performance will continue to improve our schools.” The Douglas County Pay-for-Performance plan is something that my Education Policy Center friends and I are keeping a close eye on. District leaders are working hard and quickly to break the mold and upgrade how educators are evaluated and compensated, including a system of market-based differential pay based on teacher job descriptions. Except a more detailed report in the months ahead.

With so much going on in Colorado’s world of education reform — and all sorts of new and shiny things taking place — it can be easy to forget the state is in the middle of a large-scale change to teacher evaluations. The highly-charged debates over SB 191 in 2010 seem like a distant memory. Yet the long process of implementing a new evaluation system focused on educator effectiveness grinds forward across Colorado, with bill sponsor Senator Michael Johnston insisting there is no reason to delay further. A couple of new reports from different sources give reason for ed reformers to keep their fingers crossed. A Center for American Progress report by Patrick McGuinn unpacks the challenges facing state education agencies as they try to bring new evaluation systems to life on a large scale. The report specifically cites Colorado’s work to multiply the number of qualified trainers and the unique partnership between CDE and the Legacy Foundation — concluding that a lot of careful thought and planning has to be given to any state contemplating similar reform.