Category Archives: Teachers

If you want to stay informed about school reform and wrestle with some stimulating insights along the way, Education Next is an invaluable publication. To celebrate its 10th anniversary (wow, that seems old!), the Education Next editors paired off into two different teams to take stock of a decade of reform and debate what the movement has achieved and has yet to accomplish. In one corner stand the venerable Checker Finn, Paul Peterson and Marci Kanstoroom, who argue that education reformers (or education transformers, as I prefer) still have some distance to go to claim victory in the battle of ideas: It’s way, way too early to declare victory. Atop the cliffs and bastions that reformers are attacking, the opposition has plenty of weapons with which to hold its territory. They say the battle is fought on too many fronts, the general public has not bought in to reform, and the gap between good policy ideas and effective implementation remains large. On the other side stand Rick Hess, Mike Petrilli and Marty West declare the battle of ideas essentially won but heavily caution reformers of trying to get too ambitious, of overpromising what specific reforms can accomplish, and obsessing with […]

“Cars are cars all over the world…” goes an old song my parents told me about. While cars are cars, it kind of goes without saying that Kids Aren’t Cars, right? But a new series of online short movies by that name reminds us that it’s past time to move beyond the old assembly-line model of education because “our schools shouldn’t be dropout factories.” Produced by Kyle Olson and the Education Action Group Foundation, the first episode debuts today: One of the points hammered home in the film is that many school districts are weighted down by the regulated work rules of collective bargaining agreements — reminiscent of the United Auto Workers. One of the key figures interviewed in the film is Indiana state superintendent Tony Bennett (pictured in the video freeze frame above). Interestingly, the legislature in his state is debating a bill that would limit public school union collective bargaining, including what tax-funded policies can be discussed behind closed doors.

I’ve got to hand it to Mike Antonucci for coming up with such a great name for an education event as Collaborpalooza (try saying it five times fast). Sounds like some sort of rock & roll festival. But according to the U.S. Department of Education that’s putting it on, the actual name of the event is the Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration. Of 245 school districts that applied, the Department announced this week the names of the 150 that will participate, in addition to 13 districts separately selected to act as presenters. Color me highly skeptical about the whole confab. Of course, all results and other things being equal, collaboration on a project is preferable to having it imposed from the top-down. But how often in the multi-billion, quasi-monopoly K-12 education enterprise are all other things really equal — especially when the Department insists on involving unions? Did Colorado’s 100-plus non-union school districts need not apply?

So what does my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s brand new op-ed in the Colorado Springs Gazette have to do with President Obama’s State of the Union address last night? Piqued your curiosity at all? Maybe just a tad? A couple weeks ago I told you about what’s going on in Falcon School District 49 near Colorado Springs, and the beginnings of their creative attempt to restructure the school district. Well, the Falcon board voted to move forward with the innovation plan — a decision Ben lauds and highlights in his Gazette op-ed. You can find out more about Falcon’s innovation plan by listening to an iVoices podcast with school board member Chris Wright, or by visiting a new page created on the district’s website. A main tenet of the plan is moving greater autonomy from the central administrative office to the schools in the different innovation zones. To get there, the district plans to request Innovation status from the State Board of Education — a step empowered by the creation of Colorado’s 2008 Innovation Schools Act. But what was the genesis of the groundbreaking piece of legislation? A high-need school with a bold principal (Kristin Waters, now helping […]

I’ve heard my mom say on more than one occasion that people come in all shapes and sizes. The same is true for school districts, too. Rebecca Jones at Education News Colorado provides some interesting insights with a story focused on Colorado’s smallest, and steadily shrinking, school district: Agate. When you see the numbers and the trends that tell the story, you can see why the “State’s smallest district ponders future”: A decade ago, enrollment in Agate peaked at 132. Since then, the decline has been steady. And like many small school districts across Colorado struggling with declining enrollment, the prospects for remaining a viable independent district grow slimmer with each departing child. To serve its 26 students – 12 in high school, five in middle school and nine in elementary school – Agate has a nearly $1.2 million budget for the 2010-11 school year. More than 70 percent of that comes from the state, which sets aside a relatively generous per-pupil allotment for rural school districts, and lets a district with declining enrollment average out its head count over four years, so a sudden drop in enrollment won’t cause quite so catastrophic a loss of revenue. That means Agate […]

Update: Thanks to quick help from staff at the Colorado Dept. of Education, I can tell you that Colorado public school agencies spent $7.9 million in 2008-09, and at least $6.9 million in 2009-10, on “tuition paid to private schools or non-approved agencies.” Now to figure out if that changes the nuance of CEA’s opposition to a private school tax credit program. Hey, there, don’t look now, but I think there’s something behind you… like the bogeyman!! Not really, it’s just the impression I got from reading yesterday’s Colorado Independent story titled “Colorado private school vouchers are back, disguised as tax credits.” (H/T Complete Colorado) You’ve got to watch out for those pesky vouchers in disguise. You never know what they might sneak around to do: haunt your house (Vouchergeist!), drink your blood (Vouchers or Vampires?), or worst of all, maybe steal some of your Legos! About that story in the Independent, guess what? Did you know that teachers unions and public school establishment groups are opposed to private school choice? I had no idea before reading it that groups like the Colorado Education Association or Colorado Association of School Boards might not like Rep. Spencer Swalm and Sen. Kevin […]

On a busy Friday, the easy and preferred course of action is for me to point you to the latest School Reform News article by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow. The title of the story is “Teacher Training Overhaul Would Leave Ed Schools in Charge”: Following a blue-ribbon panel’s lead, the nation’s largest accreditation agency for education schools has called for a fundamental overhaul of teacher preparation programs. A report commissioned by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) advocates a clinical model for training public educators and stronger partnerships between local school districts and higher education preparation programs. “The system we have now is far too uneven,” said NCATE president James G. Cibulka. “We have a cottage industry of innovative ideas and practices. We need to approach the problem as a systemic one.” [Link added] Critics say some of the report’s recommendations are long overdue, while they also leave education schools too firmly in control of the teacher preparation process. For a fuller critique, read Mike Petrilli’s “Rearranging deck chairs on the ed school Titanic.” For historical background, read George Clowes’ 2002 School Reform News piece on the crumbling research behind teacher certification.

Today, January 13, 2011 … a significant day for innovation and productivity in Colorado K-12 education? It’s too early to say for sure. But a couple of Board decisions may mean as much. First, the Colorado State Board of Education — which yesterday broke in its new members by making their first decision on a charter school appeal — has an exciting resolution on its agenda for this afternoon. Here’s the main punch of the resolution: BE IT RESOLVED: That the Colorado State Board of Education encourages Colorado’s local Boards of Education to implement cost efficiencies and adhere to the Secretary’s recommendation to improve the productivity of the education system through smart, innovative and courageous actions including, but not limited to, the following areas: (1) Streamlined administrative operations; and (2) Competitive contracting; and (3) Digital learning; and (4) Enhanced educational options; and (5) Performance-based compensation systems. “The Secretary’s recommendation” refers to something I highlighted a couple months ago: a speech by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan in which he called for school districts to be more productive and do more with less.

If you’re stuck in the education bubble, the big news for this week is Education Week‘s release of its annual “Quality Counts” report. The national publication uses a wide range of metrics to rate states on their K-12 performance and policies. Since I can guarantee you that some prominent official or media figure in 2011 will turn to “Quality Counts” to make this or that case about Colorado K-12 education, I figure a little up-front clarification is in order. First of all, let me say that the report produced by Education Week contains a lot of valuable information — and especially in the categories of K-12 Achievement; Standards, Assessment and Accountability; and the Teaching Profession. But I admit to find it confusing that one-third of the overall rankings is built around two factors that rely heavily on inputs, rather than outputs. I’m talking about Chance of Success and School Finance.

I’m still catching up on stories and commentaries I may have missed while on break at the end of the year. A few months ago I brought your attention to a growing dispute in Weld County’s Valley Re-1 School District, from the local teachers association that claimed its collective bargaining privileges were being stripped away illicitly. In December by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow on his personal blog took a closer look and found more reasons to be skeptical of the Valley Education Association’s claims that the existing policy represented collective bargaining. He also pointed out how the dispute was set up by Colorado’s unique legal formulation and noted the potentially significant ramifications from VEA’s lawsuit against the school district for officially changing the policy. A precedent from the case very well could affect other Colorado districts with similar policies. Well, on December 23, the Michigan-based Education Action Group (EAG) featured the story in its national e-newsletter and on its NEAExposed blog under the headline “Colorado school board battling to keep aggressive teachers union in check.” EAG’s interview with the Valley Re-1 superintendent: