Category Archives: Urban Schools

Colorado’s educator pay innovators — namely, Harrison and Douglas County — are further vindicated by commonsense actions from state leaders in North Carolina. Two years ago I brought readers’ attention to the massive blowout that is the research showing masters degrees for teachers don’t help students learn. Today, as EAG News reports, the Tarheel State has jumped on board with the winning team. After April 2014, an advanced degree for a North Carolina teacher no longer will result in an automatic pay raise. In other words, it’s the end of the “masters bump.” What will happen? Look further north to another state that’s adopted this approach:

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about good old SB 191, Colorado’s 2010 law passed in an attempt to create a more meaningful teacher and principal evaluation system. As the 2013-14 school year gets underway, school districts across the state are meeting the requirement to put the new system into place. What can we expect? That’s the question to ask, as observers wonder how the new system will affect classroom practices and behaviors, as well as interactions with principals and the role of districts in support. What we do know as of August 1 is who will follow the state’s model evaluation system. Ed News Colorado tells us that 160 of 178 districts have adopted this approach fully, further noting: Another 10 districts will use a “hybrid” – usually the model system for principals and their own systems for teachers. Jeffco, the state’s largest district, is among the “hybrid” category. According to Ed News, only seven districts are going their own route completely:

How many of my posts here have been inspired by a story at Education Next? Someone with too much time on their hands and go find the exact answer. But you’ll have to add this one to the count, because I think readers would find interesting a new piece by Marc Holley & Co., “Competition with Charters Motivates Districts.” It’s a creative project in which the authors look for evidence from 12 different urban school districts across the U.S. — geographically disbursed in four different regions — to see to what extent the growth of public charter sectors might actually “prompt low-performing districts to improve their practice.” They looked at more than 8,000 media reports since 2007 to determine whether the dozen districts responded constructively and/or obstructively. They conclude:

A good reminder when analyzing policies, including in the world of K-12 education, is to take some time to look beneath the surface. A policy may not be exactly what it seems. The inimitable Mike Antonucci recently offered up a telling example. Under the heading “How to Close ‘Open’ Bargaining Sessions”, he points readers to a column written by Las Vegas teacher Chip Mosher, recounting his adventure trying to attend so-called open negotiations. The result? It turns out before he could enter a session in which a union bargaining team was supposed to be bargaining on his behalf, Mr. Mosher says he had to sign a form that’s somewhere between a nondisclosure agreement and a “loyalty oath.” This encounter came after two previous attempts to observe negotiations. When Mosher asked if the union leader could sign his own form, something to the effect that he wasn’t being singled out, he was refused. The Las Vegas teacher tried to get more of an explanation, wanting to know from the union representative at the door if only teachers had to sign the union’s “loyalty oath” form:

There’s a growing appetite to change the way schools run and learning is delivered at the local level. The forward-thinking innovative programs of Douglas County and Falcon 49 have raised interest in a number of areas. One of those school districts is Greeley 6 in northern Colorado, which my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow has just highlighted in a brief new issue backgrounder: Northern Colorado’s Greeley Public Schools serves a challenging population of nearly 20,000 enrolled students. Receiving nearly $9,000 per student, the district has achieved unacceptable academic results–including low performance on state assessment tests, high remediation rate for graduates, and a decline in the district’s accreditation rating.

Summertime is catch-up time. Recently, I missed the chance to comment on the new CREDO national charter school study. The report’s predecessor, released four years ago, caught on in the national press as a sign that charters were faring badly. That report generated serious criticisms from researchers about the methods used to draw its conclusions. This time, however, the news is better, though not outstanding: Across the charter schools in the 26 states studied, 25 percent have significantly stronger learning gains in reading than their traditional school counterparts, while 56 percent showed no significant difference and 19 percent of charter schools have significantly weaker learning gains. In mathematics, 29 percent of charter schools showed student learning gains that were significantly stronger than their traditional public school peers’, while 40 percent were not significantly different and 31 percent were significantly weaker. So, looking at a bigger sample, CREDO finds overall small charter advantages in reading and a wash in math. Many of the most disadvantaged — “[s]tudents in poverty, black students, and those who are English language learners” — reap the greatest benefits. Despite the better news, the pro-charter Center for Education Reform showed its integrity by publicizing very similar concerns […]

Mike Antonucci is doing yeoman’s work at the Education Intelligence Agency, going state by state to update K-12 student, employee, and spending data from the U.S. Census Bureau. I’ve called on his helpful charts that show the relationship of pupil enrollment to teacher hiring, and how states (and even districts) are doing financially compared to five years earlier. Friday it was Colorado’s turn in the spotlight. Antonucci came at the information from an interesting angle, showing that Denver Public Schools’ ProComp “performance pay” system has not deterred new hiring. He makes a few other valuable observations. But leave it to little old Eddie here to uncover a few more interesting tidbits from the data for you all. First of all, the Census Bureau says the state’s per-pupil funding grew by 8.3 percent from 2006 to 2011 — just short of keeping pace with inflation. Yet as Antonucci explains in a newer post, school districts typically are not set up to absorb the occasional recessionary cuts like they are the frequent increases that outstrip the “marginal costs”:

It’s that time of year again. I get to share some news and thoughts with you about the latest release of Colorado’s 3rd grade reading test results. We’re talking the “preliminary and unofficial” results from TCAP, the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program, formerly known as CSAP. As last year’s debate on HB 1238 (the Colorado READ Act) reminded us, making sure kids have proficient reading skills by this milestone year is a crucial indicator of their future learning success. Ed News Colorado this week reports: Colorado’s third grade TCAP reading scores remained flat in 2013 for the third year in a row, according to TCAP results released Tuesday. Once again defying the trend and deserving a little extra kudos is Denver Public Schools, for boosting its 3rd grade reading proficiency up to 61 percent, closer to the state average. Also making progress is Westminster 50, which rebounded from a low 40 percent two years ago to 50 percent today. As the article points out, Aurora took a small hit but anticipates “a much different story next year,” while large suburban districts Jefferson County, Douglas County, and Cherry Creek followed the state’s flat trend line.

A sad education story is emerging from Oakland, California. Poor kids soon could be deprived of the option of attending the city’s top-performing high school and producing some of the best results nationwide. Why? Because a state audit found financial mismanagement by Ben Chavis, charismatic leader of the successful American Indian Charter, and lack of proper controls by the school’s board. The Oakland Unified School Board narrowly voted 4-3 in favor of shutting down the school that has topped California’s charts with its test scores. You’d be right to say the situation must be pretty bad for a school that successful to be shuttered down. Nationally-renowned libertarian investigative journalist John Stossel says American Indian Charter’s amazing academic track record for students so poorly served throughout most of the traditional K-12 system should overshadow the fact that Chavis and his wife made so much money off the school:

Gold-standard research on the positive impacts of school choice keeps rolling in. The latest work by Matthew Chingos and Paul Peterson measures the results for New York City students who received modest privately-funded vouchers to attend private schools. The study directly compared how many voucher students successfully completed high school and enrolled in college compared to non-voucher peers.