Category Archives: Teachers

Twenty-eleven is here, and I’m back with my youthful optimism looking toward a better, freer education future. While a lot of states — including Colorado — look forward to convening their legislatures with a focus on tackling budget problems, truly bold education reform is at the forefront of conversation in at least one place: Florida. Education Week State Education Watch blogger Sean Cavanaugh recently took note of some recommendations made by Governor-Elect Rick Scott‘s transition team. The 20-page document covers a wide range of ideas in various areas, including teacher quality, school choice and digital learning. Most of the focus is being drawn to a “universal voucher” idea that Gov-elect Scott had hinted at, and is now being fleshed out in the form of education savings accounts. As Cavanagh reports:

What are the best and worst developments in K-12 education for 2010? You can chime in and make your selections on a poll sponsored by Education Next — based on a list released by Stanford University’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education. Ten items are available for you to rate either as one of the two best or two worst developments. Included as possible choices are items I’ve written about over the course of 2010, including:

The Mackinac Institute for Public Policy’s Michael Van Beek — who is essentially the Michigan equivalent of my friends in the Education Policy Center — brought some interesting news to my attention with a recent posting: The Traverse City Area Public School district is raising transparency to a new level by posting on its website the contracts it proposes to unionized employees. At present, only the proposed transportation employee union contract is available, but eventually, all of them will be. So what, you say, that’s more than 1,000 miles away. Why should little Eddie in Colorado care? Glad you asked for me. Several months ago my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote an issue backgrounder called “Colorado Education and Open Negotiations: Increasing Public Access to School District Bargaining.” He noted that only one of 42 bargaining districts in our state have policies that ensure public access to the union negotiating process.

Quick hit for today from The Associated Press, highlighting results from a new education survey: An overwhelming majority of Americans are frustrated that it’s too difficult to get rid of bad teachers, while most also believe that teachers aren’t paid enough, a new poll shows. The Associated Press-Stanford University poll found that 78 percent think it should be easier for school administrators to fire poorly performing teachers. Yet overall, the public wants to reward teachers — 57 percent say they are paid too little, with just 7 percent believing they are overpaid and most of the rest saying they’re paid about right. A full copy of the survey data is available here. When asked about problems facing American schools today, reuspondents listed the following as “extremely” or “very” serious, in descending order:

My mom and dad work with me a lot to help me be less selfish. The phrase “Me first” is kind of frowned upon in our household. Ok, I get that. But what about “We first”? If I’m thinking about all us kids out there who are students, that’s not being too self-centered… right? It was about two months ago you all had to help me fight back the tears after the news that Michelle Rhee was forced out of her job as D.C. schools chancellor. But it’s always darkest before the dawn, they say. For last week the news came out that my edu-crush is now leading a national education reform advocacy group known as… you guessed it: Students First. Isn’t this great news? Well, if you don’t want to drown in my enthusiasm, you ought to read the thoughtful, well-informed perspective of the Center for Education Reform’s Jeanne Allen, who offers some valid cautions to Rhee with her “Welcome Aboard” message.

It’s not often I get to tell you about a kid cuter than little ol’ me. But credit goes to Lynn Bartels at the Denver Post for noting the real star of this great video — a video which explains how the Colorado Education Association automatically collects funds from members “to help influence elections” and how they can get the money back if they ask: You go, little girl! Tell Ms. Johnson about the Every Member Option refund. If she doesn’t like 99.9% of those dollars going to fund one political party or if she just doesn’t want her money spent on Colorado political campaigns, Ms. Johnson (and any other teacher in Colorado who belongs to the CEA) can: Read up on all the details on Colorado teachers union political refunds, and find out whether her local union has a separate EMO refund, too Go directly to the CEA’s Every Member Option online refund request page and take just a couple short minutes to ask for the $39 back But don’t delay. After December 15, it’s too late. Yes, I’m still thankful Colorado teachers at least can request political refunds. But can’t it be done more politely by, you know, […]

So you just got elected (or re-elected) to the Colorado state legislature. But it’s not as much fun as you thought, because they say there’s this big budget deficit that has to be made up. And that means some spending cuts, which won’t make you the most popular person with a lot of the interest groups that depend on funding from tax dollars. That includes K-12 education, which makes up the biggest part of the state’s general fund budget (about 45 percent). Some cuts will have to be made. But does that mean bad times for schools and students? Not necessarily, not if state leaders are willing to make some tough decisions. What sort of decisions? Well, I’m glad you asked. The Independence Institute has created a really thick report known as the Citizens’ Budget to show how legislators can find lots of ways to save money without harming important services. This big project helps to show in detail what my mom and dad have taught me so well: it’s not about how much you spend as much as how smart you are about spending it. (That’s saved me from breaking the piggy bank on a couple occasions.)

Thanksgiving is football season, so I thought it would be a perfect time to highlight the intersection of education reform and… baseball. Yes, that’s right. Writing on the Education Next blog, Harvard professor Paul Peterson brought my attention to a great new consensus report from the Brookings Institution on the role of value-added in teacher evaluations. Value-added? You know what I’m talking about. Measuring how much students gain and improve academically in a teacher’s classroom. Specifically, the Brookings report takes on four major areas: Value-added can be valuable without supporting every possible use of the information — including releasing it to the public Since the interests of students and teachers don’t align, their consequences from value-added should be different, too Value-added measurements turn out to be as reliable as high-stakes performance measures used in non-education fields Teacher evaluation systems that use value-added prove to be more reliable than systems that do not use it

Thanks to Mike Antonucci’s Intercepts blog, I learned that today is “National Blogging for Real Education Reform Day.” The American Association of School Administrators and ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development) are hosting this “grassroots effort to bring together Pk-12 and higher education educators.” I like to help educate people and am definitely grassroots, but I probably don’t fit the bill of whom they’re looking for to blog on the topic. Nevertheless, here’s a post for real education reform on November 22, 2010, and it has to do with educators. Specifically the way they are paid. I’m talking about all the money we pay teachers and other educators just because they have a master’s degree. As noted in a Saturday Associated Press story (H/T This Week in Education), we spend about $8.6 billion nationally each year on these “master’s bumps” — which have no connection to improved student learning. In Colorado, thanks to the research of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, we know the amount is nearly $140 million annually (that figure is from year-old data). My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow pointed this out in July 2009 testimony he gave before the state’s Fiscal […]

With a little snow finally starting to fall around here, it’s time to go outside and play. So instead of any sort of grand analysis today, I just want to extend my congratulations to Michelle Pearson — who last week was named Colorado’s 2011 Teacher of the Year: Pearson comes from a teaching family; both the maternal and paternal sides of her family had teachers in them, working in schools in the U.S. and Canada. She says her greatest accomplishments in education have not been what she’s done alone, but what students, families, colleagues and the community do together. Pearson believes standards are the key to teaching. She says in a true standards-based environment students should understand what they are learning, why they are learning it and be able to connect their work to their world. Her belief in the importance of standards is exemplified by her recent service on the Colorado Department of Education’s social studies standards committee (along with my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow).