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Matthew Ladner is right when he says: “This has been quite the week for parental choice in Arizona.” Of course, as my GoBash blogging friend noted, on Monday a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling upheld the state’s private school tax credit program — an important precedent. But Ladner’s statement comes from a posting primarily about an innovative proposal making its way through The Grand Canyon State’s legislature: Yesterday the Arizona Senate gave the final passage for SB 1553, Arizona Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the nation’s first system of public contributions to education savings accounts as a choice mechanism, 21 to 7. Designed to replace Arizona’s special needs voucher program lost to our Blaine amendment, the ESA program will allow the parents of a child with a disability to withdraw their child from a public district or charter school, and receive a payment into an education savings account with restricted but multiple uses. Parents can then use their funds to pay for private school tuition, virtual education programs, private tutoring or saving for future college expenses. Could it really be “the way of the future” for school choice? If so, the future may be now. I have to give more thought to […]

Update, 4/8: Denise at Colorado Charters offers more specific reasons why so many Denver families are exercising public school choice. Interesting news today from the Denver Post today under the headline “53 percent of DPS students opt out of assigned campuses.” Colorado has one of the nation’s very best, parent-friendly open enrollment laws — in effect for nearly two decades — which allows students to transfer to a public school outside their zone of residence under certain basic conditions. Individual districts approve the specific parameters of their own open enrollment policies. What the Post article highlights is the continuation of a steady upward trend in the share of families exercising public school choice. Ten years ago about 3 percent of Colorado public school students were enrolled in a district outside their residence; today it’s closer to 8 percent. You can check out the state department of education data for yourself.

Digital learning. It’s a big educational wave of the future… and of the present. The use of online technology in formal learning can take on so many forms that it’s difficult to imagine all the possibilities of what it could look like. As digital learning opportunities began to expand, we want to keep the focus on ensuring students and parents have access to a great variety of choices. But what about quality? It seems to be the education policy issue du jour. The New York Times’ Trip Gabriel shines light on the debate, but Flypaper’s Peter Meyer says the article “gets lost in the weeds” and should pay more attention to curriculum. New forms of delivering instruction and increasing learning shouldn’t lose focus on the content at hand. That’s where I stand with Harvard’s Paul Peterson, for example:

The good experts at Education Next have come forward with a potent one-two punch on teacher quality with a relevant message for Colorado policy makers, particularly in a time when tightened budgets weigh heavy on some minds. Are they listening? …. Part of the short-term solution to the K-12 budget situation is cutting unproductive spending in the form of rewards for teacher master degrees. Dr. Paul Peterson writes in Education Next, explaining how he and fellow researcher Matt Chingos have added one more proof to the gigantic pile of evidence that shows the ineffectiveness of “master’s bumps.” It’s past time to confront this reality that costs Colorado somewhere around $140 million per year. The second half of the one-two combination is a piece by Dr. Eric Hanushek, in which he quantifies the economic benefit of providing students with more effective teachers:

Maybe it’s a little hometown Colorado bias at work here, but in my mind Douglas County vouchers is the education story of the year. I hope you didn’t think the story was essentially over once the Board adopted the program a few weeks ago. Because it’s not. Now that the official policy for the pilot scholarship program has been posted online for your careful review, there are at least four angles to keep an eye on moving forward:

There are plenty of gag April’s Fools news stories floating out there this morning (my wishful-thinking favorite so far is Edspresso’s “Obama Administration Flips on School Vouchers”). But confusing as it may be, this story is legit: The same Falcon District 49 I lauded for taking a step towards more productive spending, the same district my Education Policy Center friends recently visited for an innovation meeting — yes, even the same Falcon that inspired me to write about the Cookie Monster — is behind this bizarre stunt. From this morning’s Colorado Springs Gazette: The keys [of all 84 district buses] were delivered Thursday morning to lawmakers by District 49 school board members and officials who drove to Denver in a 51-bus convoy — in rush hour traffic —to protest statewide budget cuts….

Baseball season’s Opening Day means it’s not only time to start rooting for my Colorado Rockies. It’s also a great opportunity to introduce you to a relatively new baseball-themed website created by the Center for Education Reform, The Media Bullpen: The Media Bullpen is a dynamic, virtual newsroom that covers the news and the news of education. It’s a sophisticated and unique technological environment that allows everyone to get in the game on the greatest discussions of our day. To understand those discussions, we need great information and reporting on all the issues relating to education—all the time. Each day nearly 500 stories—and sometimes many more—are produced in the media about education, but they often lack the context for the public to get engaged. The Bullpen will empower the public to put in context what they see and hear. The problem is not that education is under-reported; the larger issue is that all too often, it is misreported. Balance, context, sound data, and an institutional knowledge of the many issues are often missing. What I like about the site is how they rate the stories — anywhere from a strikeout to a home run based on “objectivity, proper context” and […]

As reported in the Pueblo Chieftain, today is the day a newly combined union of teachers and classified employees in School District 70 begins its master agreement negotiations. That’s fine as far as it goes. I guess one contract is easier to negotiate than two. At the risk of repeating myself from last June, the best thing that could be done with this fresh start is to get rid of a burdensome provision that afflicted both the old contracts: Both the district’s non-union teachers and classified employees have to file a written form each year within a narrow time frame to opt out of paying a full year of union dues. This negotiated policy affects real people, like school librarian Becky Robertson, a non-union member who missed the deadline a few years ago because of family medical emergencies. When she appealed, do you think union officials were willing to make an exception so she could save the few hundred dollars to help pay expensive bills? Watch the video about teachers unions:

Tomorrow is a big day in Washington, D.C. I’m not talking about any big speeches by the President regarding overseas kinetic military actions or about Republicans and Democrats fighting it out over federal spending cuts. On Wednesday the U.S. House of Representatives is slated to vote on the SOAR Act, which would restore and expand the popular and successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP). The Obama administration and many members of Congress began shutting down private school choice in the nation’s capital in 2009. But it’s never too late to keep hoping. (Update, 3/30: Flypaper’s Mike Petrilli highlights the disingenuous nature of the Administration’s opposition to reauthorizing the D.C. voucher program, while redefinED points to a new Washington Post editorial in support of the effort to bring back private school choice to the nation’s capital.)

A few weeks ago I pointed you to a study that showed Indiana charter schools outpacing their public school peers in making student academic improvements. Another place where charter schools are being done right — and on an unsurpassed scale — is New Orleans. Six of 10 public school students there is served by one of the city’s 51 charter schools. A recently-released study by Stanford’s Center for Research on Educational Outcomes (CREDO) finds significant academic advantages achieved by New Orleans charter schools, as reported in the Times-Picayune: A new analysis of standardized test scores in New Orleans shows a majority of the city’s independent charter schools are improving student performance in reading, math or both, at a notably faster rate than traditional schools.