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Far too often the world of K-12 education seems like a venture into the ridiculous. Forget the sublime. Some of us would be happy with a handful of common sense. But there’s also a good practical lesson for school reformers in a new from Michigan Capitol Confidential story highlighting a couple school districts’ sarcastic approach to implementing a 2010 teacher compensation law: Some Michigan school districts think their best teachers are worth $1 more than their worst. That’s the amount the Davison Community Schools in Genessee County, and the Stephenson Area Public Schools in Menominee County, pay to be in compliance with the state’s merit pay law, which was put in place when Jennifer Granholm was governor. The Gladstone Area Public Schools in Delta County pays its top-notch teachers $3 more than the worst. As Joanne Jacobs also highlights, a peek at these districts merely scratches the surface, as an estimated 80 percent of Michigan school districts essentially have resisted implementing the pay reform. Four out of five have ignored the law!

When you’re a Colorado reporter looking for a somewhat different point of view on major local school tax increases, where do you go? Karen Auge shows that she read my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s concise new paper “Colorado K-12 Tax Hikes Challenged” in her story’s third paragraph as she covered the issue in yesterday’s Denver Post: The Independence Institute, a libertarian think tank generally opposed to tax hikes and government growth, said per-pupil spending in districts asking for tax hikes has gone up, even as real income has decreased. [link added]

A quick Friday hit, thanks to Ed News Colorado, as the local Douglas County paper highlights the reform-minded school board’s progress in implementing performance pay and related upgrades to teacher policies: While pay for performance isn’t new in Douglas County, the program still under development pushes aside the traditional pay system based on years of experience and higher education coursework and degrees. “We’ve pretty much replaced the old step-and-lane structure (of) experience on the left, education on top,” said the district’s chief human resources officer, Brian Cesare. “We’re saying now it’s going to be performance on the top and market value on the left.”

I’ve shared with you before my concerns about the work of Colorado’s School Finance Partnership — too weighted down by established interests, too vague and unambitious thus far, etc. The Partnership put out a report in August, but now is transitioning to a series of technical discussions on how to make effective changes to school funding formulas and the like. State senator Michael Johnston, a key leader in the partnership, has stated his goal of striving to achieve both “bold” reforms to the School Finance Act and a “bold” request for additional tax revenue from voters (making such a tough request from cash-strapped voters in one sense would have to be bold). Just exactly how “bold” the respective proposals end up could make all the difference. You likely will hear more from me on that at a later point. But for now it’s interesting to note that Colorado isn’t alone in discussing this sort of “grand bargain.” Once more, our state may end up at the center of a national movement — at least according to an account from the Fordham Institute’s’ Michael Petrilli.

Yesterday I shared some thoughts about how a growing Brighton district with some crowded schools might find some creative solutions to its problem. While securing safe, functional and adequate facilities is a high priority for some school districts, others can bask gratefully in their new quarters and hopefully focus even more on the mission of educating students. Which brings us to another part of Adams County. Not every school district will be able to do what Mapleton has created with its colorful, new state-of-the-art Skyview Campus. On September 27, some of my Education Policy Center friends received a tour of the creatively-designed campus from superintendent Charlotte Ciancio and human resources officer Damon Brown. (from L to R): Brown, Raaki Garcia-Ulam, Ben DeGrow, Pam Benigno, Ciancio

A Denver Post Your Hub story from last week by Joey Kirchmer chronicles some growing pains in Brighton School District: Brighton High School and Prairie View High School are at or over capacity this school year, which has forced administrators to turn to outdoor modular classrooms, roaming teachers and possibly start looking at a split-schedule system.

Last week my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow came out with a short, fun, and kid-friendly paper called “Colorado K-12 Tax Hikes Challenged.” The paper looked at five large school districts asking voters for more tax funds on this fall’s ballot: Jefferson County, Denver, Cherry Creek, Aurora, and St. Vrain Valley. DeGrow acknowledged that these school budgets have faced more pressure than they are used to — mostly because per-pupil revenue growth has slowed down, but not actually dropped. Yet the household budgets of citizens in these communities have been hit even harder during the recent economic downturn. The paper concludes by offering “a different approach” that focuses on more productive spending. Looking at one of the five districts, Denver Public Schools, a new report by EAG News makes some specific suggestions for spending reductions to inefficient salary structures and union perks. The total estimated annual savings would be $37.5 million, including the following proposals:

Lucky Colorado. Yesterday the president of the nation’s second-largest teachers union paid a visit. Ed News Colorado reports that while AFT’s Randi Weingarten stopped in to tout an innovative school nutrition program at Denver’s Cole Arts and Science Academy, she also used her big political stick to bash the Douglas County school board: “This is what’s infuriating to me,” said Weingarten. “Here we have Denver, which took the germ of an idea and it has blossomed into this amazing thing with workers and management re-envisioning the school kitchen. “And across the border is Douglas County, where the school board is only interested in its own power. Douglas County schools used to be on the cutting edge in Colorado. But rather than respect the staff, for political and malevolent reasons the board has undermined the public education system that once was known as the jewel of Colorado.” Why is she so upset?

It’s not uncommon for me to tell you about the great need for public schools to spend dollars more productively. A recent brief, colorful paper written by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow makes the point with some great local significance for school districts asking voters for tax increases this fall. But, you may ask, why is this a problem in the first place? Why does the productivity of school spending tend to deteriorate over time? The answer, as Matt Ladner ably points out in a couple new posts, is Baumol’s disease. Wait a minute, I see some of you ready to run and hide. No, it doesn’t mean you’re going to break out with red blotches on your skin, develop a high fever, or experience bouts of memory loss. It’s not that kind of disease! Ladner points to a lecture by the brilliant education policy scholars Paul Hill and Marguerite Roza to explain the phenomenon: “the tendency of labor-intensive organizations to become more expensive over time but not any more productive.”

Last week I was excited to tell you about the special screening and premiere of the new education reform film Won’t Back Down, that has created quite a stir of teachers union protests. (They should protest, writes National Review‘s Rich Lowry, noting “the calculation of their self-interest was exactly right.”) Not here in Colorado, though, at least as two of my Education Policy Center friends tell me. They went to Thursday screenings in two different locations. One of them, Ben DeGrow, wrote a review of the film for Ed News Colorado. For some reason, I don’t think he’ll mind if I quote quite liberally from his piece titled “Movie’s vital message: ‘We will not wait!’”: