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Last Tuesday I told you about the need to focus on replicating great teaching rather than shrinking class sizes. The post basically did the following: Noted that, according to research by Mike Antonucci, Colorado has been an exception by not hiring faster than student enrollment growth Point readers to an Education Next podcast highlighting the research on effective teaching techniques by Doug Lemov and Steven Farr Connected Lemov’s and Farr’s ideas to Colorado’s statutory push to enhance educator effectiveness So how surprised was I to read this new Colorado Daily piece by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow that well, basically makes the same points?

It’s Friday, and I don’t want to delve into the depths of education policy today. Instead, I’m recommending an interesting Education Next thought piece by Harvard professor Dr. Paul Peterson, a champion of school choice and education reform. Peterson muses that a Republican takeover of Congress this November just might save Obama’s presidency… by saving his education reform program: Will a Republican majority in the House, coupled with a conservative majority in the Senate, throw the president a lifeline? As the presidential election heats up, many Republicans will urge relentless opposition to everything, even if it fits the education reform agenda. But that backward-looking strategy will only give substance to inevitable Democratic charges that Republicans are negative nabobs of Know Nothing. If the president proposes something school reformers like, Republicans will have to sign on. It’s an interesting argument. Feel free to chime in. Judging by the way my mom and dad yell at the TV a lot during the political news programs, I’m guessing there isn’t a whole lot that President Obama and Republicans agree on generally. If school choice and education reform is that one thing, then here’s to making some important progress in that area. Because it […]

Writing over at Education Next, experts Emily Cohen and Kate Walsh explain how reformers should be focused on changing the levers of state policy to improve the quality of teaching, rather than grousing about what locally-negotiated collective bargaining contracts won’t allow them to do. In their piece “Invisible Ink in Teacher Contracts”, Cohen and Walsh pour the spotlight on our backyard: No legislative success, however, trumps that achieved in Colorado in May 2010. The perfect storm—a charismatic, Democratic legislator who is a Teach For America alumnus, the lure of Race to the Top funds, and a whole array of advocacy groups that included the Colorado chapters of Democrats for Education Reform and Stand For Children—pulled off teacher legislation that was bitterly opposed by the state union and which no one dreamed possible a year ago. The success of SB 191 is becoming conventional wisdom nationwide, and it’s hard to disagree about its national significance — even if the implementation of the bill is slow and its actual effects promise to be somewhat modest. Maybe the best news s that Colorado achieved this remarkable legislative success despite the fact our state tends more than most toward the local control end of […]

You’ve got to hand it to the teachers unions. They have so many people conditioned to call for more teachers and smaller class sizes as the leading remedy for what ails public schools. The tide slowly is turning to a greater realization of what the abundance of research shows us: namely, that the quality of the individual teacher is far more important than small differences in class sizes. But what can policy makers do about it? Are great teachers just born that way, and we need to do more to import their natural gifts into the education system? Or are there practical skills and mechanics that teachers can learn from their peers who have achieved remarkable success in the classroom? With plenty of teaching experience between them, authors Doug Lemov (Teach Like a Champion) and Steven Farr (Teaching as Leadership) make a strong case for the latter. The 12 minutes it takes to listen to the two authors’ new Education Next podcast interview with Michael Petrilli is a worthwhile investment of time for anyone truly concerned about how to make our schools better.

The deadline for the Colorado State Board of Education to decide whether to approve Common Core Standards (CCS) is fast approaching, now only two weeks away. The debate continues to pick up steam. Are these academic standards for K-12 students truly high quality and voluntary? Is there truly a benefit beyond the money tied to adopting Common Core? One argument against adopting math and language arts CCS for Colorado — besides legitimate fears of opening the doors to expanded federal government influence on local school curricula — is the potential conflict with existing state standards. Only seven months ago the State Board of Education adopted new academic standards in 11 areas. Which raises some natural questions: Do we really need to re-invent the wheel? Are the quasi-national CCS more focused and rigorous than Colorado’s new standards?

It’s the middle of July. It’s hot outside. If they’re not swimming in the pool, people are more interested in political scandals than education stories. That’s too bad. Whether we realize it or not, I’m beginning to believe I am lucky enough to be coming of age during a truly transformational time in public schooling and education reform. I mean now. On that note, here are a couple of items I stumbled across today that may not seem to go together. Maybe it’s kind of a hodgepodge, but so what? First, in the Wall Street Journal (H/T Matt Ladner), John Fund’s Political Diary highlights a speech made by mega-billionaire Bill Gates right here in Colorado at the Aspen Ideas Festival:

Six months ago I told you how Colorado was flattered by the attention from the National Education Association’s political giving during the 2007-08 political cycle. Now we have some rock-solid numbers to back it all up. In his new report for Education Next titled “The Long Reach of Teachers Unions,” the inimitable Mike Antonucci looks at the big picture of NEA and AFT spending, and then breaks it down state-by-state. He writes: In the 2007–08 election cycle, total spending on state and federal campaigns, political parties, and ballot measures exceeded $5.8 billion. The first-place NEA spent more than $56.3 million, $12.5 million ahead of the second-place group. That’s not all. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the smaller of the two national professional education unions, ranked 25th in campaign spending, with almost $12 million, while NEA/AFT collaborative campaigns spent an additional $3.4 million, enough to earn the rank of 123rd. All told, the two national teachers unions distributed $71.7 million on candidate and issue campaigns from California to Florida, Massachusetts to South Dakota. Millions more went to policy research to support the unions’ agenda. A look at the state-by-state chart Antonucci created (PDF) reveals that Colorado was the third-largest target […]

As I write this, I’m listening to the Mike Rosen Show on AM 850 KOA Denver as he interviews director Madeleine Sackler about her newly released edu-documentary The Lottery. A month ago my Education Policy Center friends attended a special screening of this film. The Lottery is back in Denver this week, and you can watch it at the Starz Film Center at the Tivoli.

Ed News Colorado reported last Friday that a new Denver Public Schools policy has started to reap some small dividends: Fewer Denver teachers unable to find jobs on their own were placed into the city’s highest-poverty and lowest-achieving schools for 2010-11, according to district figures. That’s a reversal of what’s occurred for at least three years, when the poorest schools were more likely to be assigned teachers who either did not apply to be there or were not chosen for hiring by the principal. Because of collective bargaining agreements and standard bureaucratic practices in most larger urban school districts (81 out of the nation’s 100 largest district, Education Week reports), the reality for some time has been that the unwanted teachers get shuffled around and force-placed in the poorest schools with the neediest students. A much bigger problem for Denver than the surrounding suburban districts, this “dance of the lemons” is not exactly a formula for closing the academic achievement gap. The new Denver Public Schools policy makes it more difficult for forced placement of teachers into high-poverty schools and prohibits forced placement into low-performing schools. In addition to easing the effects on high-need schools, it looks like the policy […]

It’s almost too obvious to say, but worth repeating to those who don’t want to listen: Not all public charter schools are good. But nearly all are offering families a viable education alternative, and many are outperforming their traditional counterparts — some by a significant amount. Like KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program). A new study conducted for KIPP by Mathematica shows exactly that. KIPP charter schools are making a positive impact on the primarily poor and minority student populations they serve. The examination of academic progress at 22 KIPP middle schools yielded some glowing results, including: Nearly all 22 schools have significant positive effects on student math performance over three years, mostly in the second and third year Most schools have significant positive effects on student reading performance over the second and third years, not as many in the first year “Estimated impacts are frequently large enough to substantially reduce race- and income-based achievement gaps within three years of entering KIPP.” Most KIPP schools have more students held back a grade (largely because they don’t practice social promotion) but have no higher levels of student attrition than their public school counterparts Perhaps most interesting of all is the way this […]