Category Archives: Uncategorized

My friends in the Education Policy Center never quit. They have good new ideas all the time. The latest is the site GoBash (“The Good, The Bad, and The Shameful”): The purpose of the site is to raise public awareness of influential figures who either support or oppose needed reforms of a public education system that has failed thousands of children. The first posting there takes a little different angle on the recent Colorado court victory for parents and charter schools I wrote about last Friday. GoBash files an open letter with the Boulder Valley school board: Just how much of the taxpayers’ money did you spend in your lawsuit against the State Charter School Institute? You lost the suit in district court but appealed to the Colorado Court of Appeals, costing not only the school district but the state more money. All to deny families more educational choice and opportunity. Thankfully, the appeals court justices had the good sense to uphold the district court’s decision. Shame on you, Boulder Valley School District! Agreed. Since GoBash filed its open letter, the Boulder Daily Camera reports that school board members are meeting tonight to decide whether to appeal the lawsuit and […]

Another day at the state legislature, more setbacks for school choice. I’m back from school, have my homework done, so I wanted to share this quick update. Dead on arrival? Yes, that would be a proposal by state senator Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud, to create a modest pilot property tax credit for families who take their child out of public school and enroll him in a private school or homeschool program. The Democrat-controlled State Affairs Committee terminated Senate Bill 221 (PDF) on a party-line vote. In other news, the state house shot down an attempt to restore cuts in public charter school facilities funding. A double-whammy against school choice opportunities, and it’s only Monday….

You know how this almost-six-year-old is no fan of the huge spending bill the President flew out here to sign last week. While it sounds nice on paper, I’m here to clue you in to the fact we aren’t going to be saved by a “magical money tree”. In the meantime, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow has a tip on how to make the best out of a bad situation. As he writes in yesterday’s edition of the Colorado Daily – if nearly a billion dollars is going to flow into Colorado for the purposes of K-12 education, let’s at least attach it to some serious and radical reforms: If the federal government is bound to spend untold billions it doesn’t have on education, nearly all would be better served by a student-centered approach to distributing the funds. Washington would do much better to offer incentives to states and school districts that attach funds directly to students, empowering families with a wide array of public schooling options. After all, parents best know how to make use of the money to meet their children’s needs. The so-called “stimulus” is a fait accompli. Yet for all the mammoth debt, the […]

Yesterday provided great news for Colorado families who live in school districts unfriendly to certain public education options. The Charter School Institute, a state body created by the legislature in 2004 as another way to authorize charter schools, secured an important legal victory. From a press release in the Attorney General’s office: Colorado Attorney General John Suthers praised a decision by the Colorado Court of Appeals today that upheld the constitutionality of the Colorado Charter Schools Act. The case centers on Boulder Valley School District’s claim that the General Assembly does not have constitutional authority to create and fund charter schools that are not controlled by local school boards.

Back when I was just barely 5 (not nearly 6, like I am now) I applauded Colorado’s new Innovation Schools Act. While the law could be better – some of those adult interest group lobbyists got in there and changed it – it’s a noteworthy step in the right direction. Today, finally, almost nine months later, the first two schools are coming forward to take action under the new law: Manual High School and Montclair (elementary) School of Academics and Enrichment will ask the Denver school board Thursday for permission to become the state’s first two “innovation schools.” The DPS board will hear the proposals and vote upon them at Thursday’s meeting, which begins at 4:30 p.m. at 900 Grant Street. The Denver Post‘s Jeremy Meyer has more details about these two schools’ requests for freedom: Principals in their presentations tonight will ask for further exemptions from state laws that govern employment rights for teachers hired by the school, how teachers are evaluated and standards schools are required to teach. The requests also will ask for permission to hire unlicensed part-time teachers, which is currently against state rules. What can be lost by exchanging greater freedom for greater accountability? The […]

I have to go back to school today, so I’ll miss the big rally at the State Capitol today: President Obama is flying his corporate jet to Denver to sign a bill putting my children into debt. I want to give him a proper Mile High welcome. The Independence Institute, along with Americans for Prosperity and other groups promoting sanity, are organizing a protest tomorrow, Tuesday, at noon at the west steps of the state capitol, and I hope you’ll be there. We’ll have over-sized checks you can sign to show your family’s $30,000 commitment to the bill. I’ll be joined by Michelle Malkin, Mike Coffman, Bob Beauprez, Jim Pfaff from AFP and many others. My parents said they want to make a statement and sign one of those checks. Thirty thousand bucks is a lot of money, you know. Can you imagine how many Legos or Matchbox cars that would buy? Seriously. And my family doesn’t get to pick the $30,000 off the magical money tree any more than the federal government gets to do so with the hundreds of billions of dollars they’re borrowing and spending. And, sorry to say, there won’t be a magical money tree at […]

I’m at home. My parents said the break from school is for something called Presidents Day. Among other things, our greatest presidents were gifted with tremendous common sense. While that often doesn’t seem to be the case with the way our public school system is run, a couple stories in the news give me a little hope that this might change. First, it’s good to see Boulder students tell their peers that the idea to rename a high school after a President who has been in office less than a month, who has accomplished nothing of significance, and who already has broken several campaign promises, is truly the height of silliness. Second, it’s good to see Aurora student Marie Morrow, who was busted for having a fake gun drill prop in her truck at school, is not suspended anymore. Now if we can do something to fix the “zero-tolerance” absurdity, we may have gained something positive from this experience. It’s truly hard to imagine what great men like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln would have to say about cases like the ones in Boulder and Aurora. But welcome to Colorado in the year 2009.

In case you missed it from Friday, after winning endorsements from both the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post, a proposal to bring greater financial transparency to Colorado public schools moved one step closer to reality by passing the state senate on a preliminary voice vote. I guess the big discussion state legislators had included some very interesting and telling remarks.

The challenge of being able to help all kids shouldn’t be a reason not to help some kids. That’s why I’m excited that Colorado is one step closer to having legislation that will provide new options for students with autism. Senator Nancy Spence, truly one of the legislature’s champions for educational choice and opportunity, has sponsored Senate Bill 130. In its original form (PDF), the bill would have created a new scholarship program so parents of autistic kids could choose to enroll them in a private school to meet their special needs. If you look in the Alliance for School Choice’s brand-new School Choice Yearbook 2008-09 (PDF), you will learn – among many other things – that five different states have some sort of special-needs scholarship program. In fact, Ohio has an existing Autism Scholarship Program that in its fifth year (2007-08) had more than 1,000 students and 200 schools participating. Bills that include private school choice tend not to do so well these days at the Colorado State Capitol, though there is some support among members of both parties. At the hearing Senator Chris Romer came up with an amendment so the bill would create a special pilot program […]

An absolutely vital key to successful education is high-quality instruction. So how well is Colorado doing in keeping effective teachers on the job in classrooms like mine? (Answer below) On a new iVoices podcast, you can listen to Sandi Jacobs – vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) – talk with my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow about her group’s new State Teacher Policy Yearbook and where Colorado fits in: To dig more in depth, go take a look at NCTQ’s Colorado report (PDF).