READ THE LATEST FROM EDDIE

Camping trips can be fun, but no one told me just how hard it would be to blog while out in the middle of nowhere in the great outdoors. No, seriously, it was fun to get away for awhile. But I hope none of you were left to wonder: If little Eddie isn’t watching the world of Colorado education, then who is? Probably not so much, especially since school is out for most students and people are focusing more on soaking up the summer rays. Anyway, while I’m trying to get my bearings a bit, maybe it’s time to take a look at a couple of good summer reads on the world of education:

About eight weeks ago I brought your attention to the fact that Colorado and Michigan taxpayers both are still underwriting teachers union release time. But not so much anymore in one of our neighboring states. This is one to chalk up in the “How did I miss that?” category. Anyway, way back in March, Utah enacted House Bill 183. According to the description from Parents for Choice in Education, a Utah grassroots group backing education reform, the legislation: Prohibits granting paid association leave and requires reimbursement to a school district of the costs for certain employees, including benefits, for the time that the employee is on unpaid association leave.

Happy Monday! The debate over implementing Colorado’s educator effectiveness law (aka SB 191) continues to grow. This week the State Board of Education is scheduled to hear a staff presentation concerning the first draft of rules for creating a statewide evaluation system for teachers and principals, to set the parameters for the 2012-13 pilot program, and define CDE’s supporting role, among other things. In that spirit, the timing couldn’t be better for my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s new School Reform News article “Tennessee links teacher evaluations to pay”: Tennessee’s State Board of Education has ratified new rules requiring that student test scores factor in evaluating, paying, and promoting educators. The rules tie 35 percent of teachers’ professional evaluations to their students’ results on the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System (TVAAS). Teachers of tested subjects will be rated according to their students’ test score growth, while principals will be judged on school-wide gains.

This week one of my Education Policy Center friends was privileged with the opportunity to visit a Denver charter school that fills a niche for 16- to 21-year olds who have dropped out and/or been neglected by the system. Life Skills Center of Denver is an alternative education campus that uses computer-assisted instruction in a teacher-guided laboratory setting to help high school students get remediation in lagging math and reading skills with the goal of graduation and success in life. In 2007, after four years of operation, Life Skills was in danger of having its charter revoked and being shut down. The State Board intervened to save the school after the DPS board’s vote based on legitimate concerns with poor results that showed up on testing measures. As Denise at Colorado Charters noted back then, new principal Santiago Lopez had already taken steps to improve the school. And Alan at Ed News Colorado came around to seeing Life Skills as a “special case” that deserved to stay open: If DPS had a viable alternative for these kids, one that was being drained by the existence of Life Skills, I’d favor shutting down the school. But these are kids DPS has […]

The warm weather here in Colorado and the lure of the swimming pool are the main reasons why readers here just get a quick update for today. Ed News Colorado’s Charlie Brennan reports that ideas for 11 new schools (eight of them charters) were pitched this week to the Denver school board. The public charter sector in Denver is brimming with activity and opportunity for greater growth. Highly successful West Denver Prep and KIPP Sunshine Peak were among those proposing expansions to the board. Other proposals were two all-boys (Yippee!) charter schools — Miller-McCoy Academy and Sims-Fayola International Academy.

An interesting tidbit to open the month of June from the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci in his latest Communique. A reminder that severe economic recessions typically don’t affect K-12 public education anywhere near the same as they impact families and businesses in the private sector: From 2004 to 2009, student enrollment increased a cumulative 0.7 percent, while the K-12 teacher workforce increased 6.5 percent. Per-pupil spending increased 26.7 percent (about 12.5% after correcting for inflation). Spending on education employee salaries and benefits increased 27.5 percent. It’s an odd enterprise that reacts to fewer clients by hiring more employees. The day of reckoning was postponed, but finally arrived this year. Unfortunately, there was no rapture to accompany it.

If you think American K-12 education policy is a complex and tangled web of laws, bureaucracies, incentives, politics and emotions — and you would be quite normal to do so — then treading into the narrower world of special education services might make your head completely spin. It’s the day after a long and fun Memorial Day weekend, in which most of my time was spent with playgrounds or Legos. So rather than make any grand interpretations or pronouncements, I want to bring your attention to the new Fordham Institute report by Janie Scull and Amber Winkler, titled Shifting Trends in Special Education. Nationwide, the number and share of special education students peaked in 2004-05 and has been on the decline ever since. The report explains:

Even when you’re forever 5 years old, time flies. I can hardly believe it was last October that I cried to learn my edu-crush Michelle Rhee was leaving her important superintendent job at D.C. Public Schools. Or that it was only a couple months later we all learned she was starting the new national group Students First. As Ed News Colorado reports, yesterday Rhee was in Denver to keynote a luncheon event for a fantastic local organization known as ACE Scholarships. I’ve heard from one of my Education Policy Center friends who attended that she gave a great speech. But then again, you can see some of it for yourself, like this clip on how she changed her mind (SMILE) about private school choice:

Talk about one of your below-the-fold news stories. Yesterday a Denver Business Journal headline declared: “Colo. near bottom for education spending.” The story references newly-released data from the U.S. Census Bureau, which shows Colorado fell from 36th in per-pupil spending in 2007-08 ($9,079) to 40th in 2008-09 ($8,718). There is good news, though. The best I can tell, unlike a certain recent tax increase press conference, no children were harmed — or even used as props — in the making of this article. For that we can truly be thankful. How do they measure these spending rankings, though? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I missed any local headlines when the National Education Association released its data showing Colorado’s per-pupil spending increased from $9,335 to $9,574 — albeit slipped down one spot in the rankings from 29th to 30th — during the exact same span. And the U.S. Department of Education’s data likely would be different from both NEA and the Census Bureau, as soon as they release their 2008-09 numbers for us to see.

The good people at the Education Action Group (EAG) Foundation have provided another interesting update into email inboxes, including to my Education Policy Center friends: These days, high-stakes contract negotiations between Michigan school districts and teacher unions are as commonplace as a Justin Verlander strikeout. What makes Traverse City’s negotiations unique is that taxpayers are finally able to keep tabs on the progress. School districts and teacher unions have a long history of conducting contract talks behind closed doors. It isn’t until both parties have signed on the dotted line that taxpayers learn the details of the deal – even though the contract directly impact citizens’ children, community, and checkbooks.