Category Archives: Teachers

Here it is Wednesday afternoon, and I can’t stop pacing the floor — well, in between playing with my Legos, that is. Pacing, playing Legos. Pacing. Playing Legos. — Pacing — Playing Legos — Blogging!!!…. Why? you may ask. Because I’m impatiently waiting for a decision from Judge Martinez about the lawsuit trying to shut down the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. Well, I did interrupt my pacing and playing Legos long enough to catch a great Your Hub article by Douglas County’s own Karin Piper: More than 500 kids may lose in Dougco Scholarship lawsuit. You should check it out, too. If after reading Piper’s article you need to get your mind off the whole lawsuit and local voucher situation, may I recommend a piece by Innosight Institute’s Michael Horn about why digital learning will liberate teachers:

Late last week I chimed in on the results of the 2011 Education Next–PEPG Survey of Public Opinion on school reform issues, noting the significant uptick in support for private school vouchers. Super edublogger Joanne Jacobs drew out another finding, namely that the views of teachers and the general public on key reform issues seem to be diverging rather than coming together. But I think that perhaps the most insightful observation on the results came from Mike Petrilli at the Education Gadfly, who wrote about “the school–and the deficits–we deserve”: …particularly timely, in this era of fiscal austerity, are new insights about the public’s views on school budgets. And guess what: On education, like everything else, Americans don’t want to make tough choices. They want to keep taxes low while boosting school spending. Sound familiar? Petrilli notes that 65 percent of survey respondents don’t want to increase taxes to pay for education. That’s nationwide. The number should be at least as high in Colorado — which is bad news for the Rollie Heath education tax hike headed to our November ballot.

Earlier this year the Colorado legislature considered a bill by state representative Don Beezley that would have empowered parents of students in low-performing schools with new options to turn around those schools. Unfortunately, the “parent trigger” bill was shot down by the House Education Committee. Now, anyone in the know could tell you that the “parent trigger” is hardly an idea unique or original to Colorado. A major version of the idea has taken off in California, and a number of other states have weighed similar proposals. Like Connecticut — where Dropout Nation’s RiShawn Biddle this week exposed an internal American Federation of Teachers (AFT) document giving a transparent look at the union’s anti-parent power strategy and tactics. Biddle later posted a follow-up after the union’s initial reply, noting:

What is it about our neighbors to the west? A couple months ago I brought your attention to Utah’s new law providing accountability to the use of teachers union release time. But there’s more going on in the Beehive State that has captured our attention here. Within the past month my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote not one but two articles for School Reform News on two other Utah issues. Both are worthy of attention and may be instructive here in Colorado. First and foremost is an article titled “Utah passes first ‘high-quality’ digital learning law; districts seek guidance”:

Update, 7/28: Writing at redefinED, Doug Tuthill and Adam Emerson highlight the rich irony behind the “Save Our Schools” phenomenon. So apparently there’s some big national march called “Save Our Schools” or something like that. I told you about it a month ago. While the good people at the National Council on Teacher Quality took a conciliatory approach to pointing out the flaws in the “SOS” program. But the award goes to Sara Mead, writing at Eduwonk, for this effective takedown: …This is not an agenda for accomplishing anything. It’s just a wish list. Half of it is a wishlist of things the organizers don’t want (performance-based pay, school closures). Half of it is a wishlist for things someone might want, without any clear theory of how to operationalize them or what that might actually look like in practice in the real world. (I, too, would like to see “Well-rounded education that develops every student’s intellectual, creative, and physical potential”–but in the absence of clear prescriptions and mechanisms about how to make that a reality, well, you might as well wish for a pony, too.)… I can’t help but think that a lot of people marching on the nation’s capital […]

If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I have a great deal of respect for the work of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ). As I pointed out a few months ago, NCTQ has been spearheading an important review of the university programs that prepare teachers for K-12 schools in the U.S. Yesterday the organization released a report highlighting one phase of its research — namely, student teaching. Among the important standards examined were the amount of classroom time and commitment expected of student teachers, the role the program plays in matching students to cooperating teachers, as well as requirements that cooperating teachers have at least three years experience and a proven record of effectiveness at improving student learning. NCTQ selected about 10 percent of the nation’s 1,400 teacher preparation programs to create a random sample across the USA. You may not be surprised to learn that the overall results are less than stellar. But as Education News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl reports, one of the three Colorado programs selected was one of only 10 nationwide to receive the highest mark from NCTQ: Colorado Christian University. The two other institutions from our state fared much […]

Don’t ask, because I don’t know what happened to all my time today. Rather than go in depth and expound on something profound, I will just direct you to this fascinating story in Wired magazine about “How Khan Academy is changing the rules of education”: “This,” says Matthew Carpenter, “is my favorite exercise.” I peer over his shoulder at his laptop screen to see the math problem the fifth grader is pondering. It’s an inverse trigonometric function: cos-1(1) = ? Carpenter, a serious-faced 10-year-old wearing a gray T-shirt and an impressive black digital watch, pauses for a second, fidgets, then clicks on “0 degrees.” Presto: The computer tells him that he’s correct. The software then generates another problem, followed by another, and yet another, until he’s nailed 10 in a row in just a few minutes. All told, he’s done an insane 642 inverse trig problems. “It took a while for me to get it,” he admits sheepishly. Carpenter, who attends Santa Rita Elementary, a public school in Los Altos, California, shouldn’t be doing work anywhere near this advanced…. Funny, that’s what some people say about this 5-year-old’s edublogging prowess. But I digress. The article by Clive Thompson is a […]

Ed News Colorado reports today that school districts are eager to participate in the pilot for the state’s new educator effectiveness law: Nearly a quarter of Colorado school districts have applied to participate in field-testing of new principal and teacher evaluation methods. It was “a surprise and an encouraging message” that the Department of Education received 41 applications, said Diana Sirko, deputy commissioner. “We look at is as very encouraging.” She said CDE had expected a couple of dozen applications at the most. According to the Denver Post, another CDE official indicated realistic hopes were for only about 10 positive responses from Colorado’s 178 school districts. Talk about the second local major education reform program of the year in which participation has exceeded all expectations. The more than 30 private schools that applied to be partners in Douglas County’s groundbreaking local voucher program (19 have been approved, as of this date) inundated staff who planned for about half the response. All in all, it appears to be a positive sign that a large number, and wide variety of (rural, suburban, urban), Colorado school districts want to be a part of piloting the educator effectiveness law, which garnered national attention last […]

This hasn’t been one of the big issues on my education transformer radar, nor is it one I’ve covered before. But it does bring out an interesting point of clarity for those who are interested in our K-12 schools and the politics that surround them. The Coloradoan in Fort Collins reported yesterday that the state’s largest teachers union has filed a legal challenge against a new public school reporting requirement: The statewide teachers union has sued the Colorado Board of Education over new rules requiring the public disclosure of teacher arrests. The board passed the new rules this spring at the prompting of Fort Collins resident and board chairman Bob Schaffer. The first attempt to establish the rule was shot down by a 4-3 vote in May 2010. The State Board went back to the drawing table to address concerns and complications, but the teachers union remained fundamentally opposed:

Update, 7/7: Guest-writing over at Eduwonk, the insightful Paul Hill gives valuable perspective to the scandal, noting that Atlanta had taken a very inside-the-box approach to achieve its touted phony scores and suggesting the use of online adaptive tests as a policy solution that curbs cheating while preserving test-based accountability. The big, hard-to-ignore education news of the week comes from Atlanta, Georgia, in the sunny South. The Christian Science Monitor‘s Patrick Jonsson reports: Award-winning gains by Atlanta students were based on widespread cheating by 178 named teachers and principals, said Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal on Tuesday. His office released a report from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that names 178 teachers and principals – 82 of whom confessed – in what’s likely the biggest cheating scandal in US history. This appears to be the largest of dozens of major cheating scandals, unearthed across the country. The allegations point an ongoing problem for US education, which has developed an ever-increasing dependence on standardized tests. Let me tell you: If I got caught cheating, I couldn’t even imagine the consequences my parents would bring down on me. No trips to the beach all summer? No dessert for a month? Grounded from playing […]