READ THE LATEST FROM EDDIE

A few weeks ago I pointed out to you the weak effort of Kansas’ largest school district (Wichita) to implement online financial transparency — an effort I learned about through the great work and analysis of Matthew Tabor of Education Debate at Online Schools. Afterward, I received a phone call telling me about KansasOpenGov.org, a project of the Kansas Policy Institute (KPI). Well, sometime in the past few weeks KPI has posted a searchable version of the Wichita school district’s checkbook on its site with some obvious improvements in accessibility and user-friendliness. Matthew previously gave the school district’s own efforts at financial transparency a D grade for execution. I wonder what grade he would give KansasOpenGov.org?

Anybody who reads this blog knows I have a big soft spot for the kids in the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program — you know, the one axed by the Obama administration. Just type “D.C. voucher” or “D.C. school choice” in the search box on the right sidebar to see what I mean. So it’s no surprise that I was excited to see some leaders in Congress from both parties have decided to re-visit the issue this year by introducing the SOAR legislation to reauthorize the program. Since that has helped to lift my spirits, I’ve taken more notice of great posts like one from Matthew Tabor titled “One Woman’s Experience with School Vouchers in DC”, which brought my attention to Vivian Butler’s guest Washington Post column.

You think school choice just means a state voucher program or public charter schools? Think again. We are living in an age of all kinds of creative school choice ideas. First you have our own Douglas County School District, which is moving forward to create a local voucher program — among several other school choice enhancements. Today in the Colorado legislature we have a big hearing on House Bill 1048, which would provide tax credit relief for parents who switch students to private or home schooling. As a state school choice policy with a twist, Matt Ladner and the Goldwater Institute are touting the idea of Education Savings Accounts, something reportedly being considered as a reform idea by Florida’s new governor Rick Scott. Then there’s the Foundation for Educational Choice, which has researched and promoted the idea of school passports as a way to radically re-think federal education stimulus spending. Writing today on the National Journal’s Education Experts blog, Colorado’s own State Board of Education chairman Bob Schaffer offers up another idea for a school choice initiative using federal dollars but crafted at the state level:

Colorado Springs Gazette editor Wayne Laugesen posted a great piece last night urging citizens to give District 49 leadership a chance with its bold plan that favors students over bureaucrats: The school board has decided the large district will go forward without a superintendent — an experiment educators are sure to watch throughout the United States. If Colorado Department of Education officials approve the district’s anticipated application to become an “innovation” district, a chief executive officer will oversee the education program with less authority than a superintendent. Other day-to-day responsibilities, traditionally managed by a superintendent, will shift to principals, teachers and others directly in contact with students. It’s a decentralization plan, designed to focus resources more directly on students and those who work with them. It’s the Marine Corps approach, in which all personnel work the trenches. You can read his piece and then vote on the question: “Do you support D-49 in eliminating top administrative positions, including the Superintendent?” I hope you join me in choosing the first option: “Yes, it’s a good idea.”

February is a big month for awards. There’s the Oscars for movies and the Grammys for popular music. Before both of them comes the Vince Lombardi Trophy to the winner of the most-watched sporting event: the Super Bowl. So I thought today would be a great opportunity to highlight a couple of freshly-announced education-related awards. First and foremost, the group Stand for Children Colorado yesterday announced well-deserved recognition, along with giving out $1,000 each, to 10 superhero teachers across the state: At Stand for Children, we’ve seen the impact a great teacher can make. And after reading nearly 100 nominations for outstanding teachers across the state, we know you have, too. Please join us in celebrating the ten teachers listed below who have won $1,000 to recognize and reward their commitment. The list includes teachers from Evans to Grand Junction and all along the Front Range, teachers who represent the elementary and middle and high school levels, as well as six neighborhood schools, three charters and an alternative school. Congratulations to each and every one of them! Read the entries to see what their nominations had to say about them. Now for something mostly different. Matt Ladner this morning has […]

If you want to stay informed about school reform and wrestle with some stimulating insights along the way, Education Next is an invaluable publication. To celebrate its 10th anniversary (wow, that seems old!), the Education Next editors paired off into two different teams to take stock of a decade of reform and debate what the movement has achieved and has yet to accomplish. In one corner stand the venerable Checker Finn, Paul Peterson and Marci Kanstoroom, who argue that education reformers (or education transformers, as I prefer) still have some distance to go to claim victory in the battle of ideas: It’s way, way too early to declare victory. Atop the cliffs and bastions that reformers are attacking, the opposition has plenty of weapons with which to hold its territory. They say the battle is fought on too many fronts, the general public has not bought in to reform, and the gap between good policy ideas and effective implementation remains large. On the other side stand Rick Hess, Mike Petrilli and Marty West declare the battle of ideas essentially won but heavily caution reformers of trying to get too ambitious, of overpromising what specific reforms can accomplish, and obsessing with […]

“Cars are cars all over the world…” goes an old song my parents told me about. While cars are cars, it kind of goes without saying that Kids Aren’t Cars, right? But a new series of online short movies by that name reminds us that it’s past time to move beyond the old assembly-line model of education because “our schools shouldn’t be dropout factories.” Produced by Kyle Olson and the Education Action Group Foundation, the first episode debuts today: One of the points hammered home in the film is that many school districts are weighted down by the regulated work rules of collective bargaining agreements — reminiscent of the United Auto Workers. One of the key figures interviewed in the film is Indiana state superintendent Tony Bennett (pictured in the video freeze frame above). Interestingly, the legislature in his state is debating a bill that would limit public school union collective bargaining, including what tax-funded policies can be discussed behind closed doors.

During last week’s National School Choice Week emerged a sad, dramatic story that made the case for school choice better than many policy papers could. I’m finally getting around to commenting on the case of Ohio’s Kelley Williams-Bolar, who was charged with a felony for falsifying papers to enroll her daughter in a different school district where she would be safer. For someone like me living in Colorado, with a strong (but not perfect) open enrollment law, the first reaction was: You have to lie to get your kid into another school district? It’s very sad that some K-12 systems can be so backward and unresponsive, but it’s symptomatic of a larger problem. Using a real-life example, Adam Emerson notes on the RedefinED blog that a tuition tax credit program like the one in Florida also easily would enable a mom to find a safer schooling option without breaking the law.

Aren’t there any child labor laws in effect here? This National School Choice Week phenomenon is great, but the good folks of the Education Policy Center have me blogging overtime. I talked about going on strike, but they just laughed and patted me on the head. How condescending!* Anyway, rather than write any more, I wanted to highlight another one of the great series of Reason TV School Choice Week video interviews. In this edition, Andrew Coulson from Cato’s Center for Educational Freedom talks about the impact of school choice on social conflict and the promise of tuition tax credits:

I’ve got to hand it to Mike Antonucci for coming up with such a great name for an education event as Collaborpalooza (try saying it five times fast). Sounds like some sort of rock & roll festival. But according to the U.S. Department of Education that’s putting it on, the actual name of the event is the Conference on Labor-Management Collaboration. Of 245 school districts that applied, the Department announced this week the names of the 150 that will participate, in addition to 13 districts separately selected to act as presenters. Color me highly skeptical about the whole confab. Of course, all results and other things being equal, collaboration on a project is preferable to having it imposed from the top-down. But how often in the multi-billion, quasi-monopoly K-12 education enterprise are all other things really equal — especially when the Department insists on involving unions? Did Colorado’s 100-plus non-union school districts need not apply?