Category Archives: Teachers

Still trying to recover from the big fireworks last night, I couldn’t decide between two blogging ideas this morning. So instead I’m giving you a little bit of both. First, you just have to read today’s Wall Street Journal editorial proclaiming what I told you last week — that 2011 is indeed The Year of School Choice: No fewer than 13 states have enacted school choice legislation in 2011, and 28 states have legislation pending. Last month alone, Louisiana enhanced its state income tax break for private school tuition; Ohio tripled the number of students eligible for school vouchers; and North Carolina passed a law letting parents of students with special needs claim a tax credit for expenses related to private school tuition and other educational services. The Douglas County Choice Scholarship program gets a mention later on in the piece, making Colorado one of the 13 states. Isn’t that number ironic, coming right after the July 4th holiday, remembering the number of colonies that declared independence from the British crown? It could have been 14, if Pennsylvania hadn’t fumbled the ball, as the Journal points out. So make that Year of School Choice almost perfect.

Believe it or not, July is here and the Independence Day weekend is practically upon us. You know what that means. Lots of red, white and blue; cookouts; parades; and, of course, fireworks. But probably not the kind of fireworks you’re thinking of. One thing about fireworks is how they can provide a moment of brilliant light that illuminates the sky and sometimes the ground below, providing a candid glimpse of things otherwise concealed by a blanket of darkness. In that sense this frank declaration of union priorities delivered at the 2009 National Education Association Representative Assembly certainly would qualify as fireworks: Will there be similar fireworks — or maybe fireworks of another kind — at this year’s NEA event, which is now getting underway in Chicago? The big attention for 2011 is focused on NEA’s new teacher evaluation policy proposal, but the agenda also includes a proposed dues hike and a formal endorsement of President Obama for re-election. The best coverage of the NEA Representative Assembly (hands-down) can be found at two blogs: Mike Antonucci’s Intercepts and Stephen Sawchuk’s Education Week Teacher Beat. Light a sparkler or two for me while you’re at it.

Over at the Ed News Colorado blog, progressive teacher-activist Sabrina Stevens Shupe lays out a critique against reformer types for “the intellectually lazy use of ‘status quo.’” She says that reformers like me use the term as a blunt object “meant to suggest low achievement,” but that in reality the No Child Left Behind test-based accountability regime is the true “status quo.” Guess it all depends on your perspective. I question how truly pervasive this lazy reformer use of “status quo” is. Without a ton of time on my hands, I took to my own archives here at Ed Is Watching. The last two instances in which I used the phrase “status quo” were to talk specifically about the current states of union bargaining transparency and teacher evaluations. Going back to last October 1, though, this type of remark I made might rile up Shupe: Funny how we forget so quickly about $100 billion of borrowed taxpayer funds shipped around the country to prop up the K-12 status quo.

Little Eddie is on the run today, so I just want to point you to a quickie. A few months ago I told you about the glimpse into the education future known as Khan Academy. After talking about how the online curriculum was being used in a California school, I noted: It represents a key part of the transformational movement offering students a wider variety of effective learning options. Let’s embrace it. While generally a fan of what Salman Khan is doing, education policy guru Rick Hess warned a couple weeks ago against the tendency to make him into the “most overhyped edu-entrepreneur of the moment.” Fair enough. I very often appreciate Hess’s critical focus on toning down hype and expectations. He brings a strong, reality-based perspective to school reform.

I so often enjoy reading the online work of Mike Antonucci at the Education Intelligence Agency, if for no other reason than he asks the questions and does the homework that so very few others are willing to do. On his Intercepts blog today, he adds some badly needed context and perspective on the supposed effects of the “Teacherpocalypse” crisis: The U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics has updated its Common Core of Data to include last year’s workforce numbers, and they show – for the first time in ages – a decline in the number of K-12 full-time equivalent classroom teachers. But it’s difficult to connect these modest figures with the stories of overcrowded classrooms, devastated schools, and other tales of woe that accompanied the edujobs debate last summer. I’ll post the full details in Monday’s communiqué….

Camping trips can be fun, but no one told me just how hard it would be to blog while out in the middle of nowhere in the great outdoors. No, seriously, it was fun to get away for awhile. But I hope none of you were left to wonder: If little Eddie isn’t watching the world of Colorado education, then who is? Probably not so much, especially since school is out for most students and people are focusing more on soaking up the summer rays. Anyway, while I’m trying to get my bearings a bit, maybe it’s time to take a look at a couple of good summer reads on the world of education:

About eight weeks ago I brought your attention to the fact that Colorado and Michigan taxpayers both are still underwriting teachers union release time. But not so much anymore in one of our neighboring states. This is one to chalk up in the “How did I miss that?” category. Anyway, way back in March, Utah enacted House Bill 183. According to the description from Parents for Choice in Education, a Utah grassroots group backing education reform, the legislation: Prohibits granting paid association leave and requires reimbursement to a school district of the costs for certain employees, including benefits, for the time that the employee is on unpaid association leave.

Happy Monday! The debate over implementing Colorado’s educator effectiveness law (aka SB 191) continues to grow. This week the State Board of Education is scheduled to hear a staff presentation concerning the first draft of rules for creating a statewide evaluation system for teachers and principals, to set the parameters for the 2012-13 pilot program, and define CDE’s supporting role, among other things. In that spirit, the timing couldn’t be better for my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s new School Reform News article “Tennessee links teacher evaluations to pay”: Tennessee’s State Board of Education has ratified new rules requiring that student test scores factor in evaluating, paying, and promoting educators. The rules tie 35 percent of teachers’ professional evaluations to their students’ results on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS). Teachers of tested subjects will be rated according to their students’ test score growth, while principals will be judged on school-wide gains.

This week one of my Education Policy Center friends was privileged with the opportunity to visit a Denver charter school that fills a niche for 16- to 21-year olds who have dropped out and/or been neglected by the system. Life Skills Center of Denver is an alternative education campus that uses computer-assisted instruction in a teacher-guided laboratory setting to help high school students get remediation in lagging math and reading skills with the goal of graduation and success in life. In 2007, after four years of operation, Life Skills was in danger of having its charter revoked and being shut down. The State Board intervened to save the school after the DPS board’s vote based on legitimate concerns with poor results that showed up on testing measures. As Denise at Colorado Charters noted back then, new principal Santiago Lopez had already taken steps to improve the school. And Alan at Ed News Colorado came around to seeing Life Skills as a “special case” that deserved to stay open: If DPS had a viable alternative for these kids, one that was being drained by the existence of Life Skills, I’d favor shutting down the school. But these are kids DPS has […]

An interesting tidbit to open the month of June from the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci in his latest Communique. A reminder that severe economic recessions typically don’t affect K-12 public education anywhere near the same as they impact families and businesses in the private sector: From 2004 to 2009, student enrollment increased a cumulative 0.7 percent, while the K-12 teacher workforce increased 6.5 percent. Per-pupil spending increased 26.7 percent (about 12.5% after correcting for inflation). Spending on education employee salaries and benefits increased 27.5 percent. It’s an odd enterprise that reacts to fewer clients by hiring more employees. The day of reckoning was postponed, but finally arrived this year. Unfortunately, there was no rapture to accompany it.