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For being so young, it feels like I’ve really had to repeat myself a lot lately. Not “Get off my lawn”-type of repetition, but still… it gets a little annoying sometimes. Just in the last couple weeks, the theme applies to Colorado’s need for course choice and the same old results for our state from the Parent Power Index. Thankfully for you and me both, this one will be short, sweet, and to the point. It relates to the continued bias of an important question in the PDK/Gallup annual public education survey. A couple of years ago (when I was still 5), I pointed out how the following wording fell well short of reasonable expectations of objective answers:

It’s Friday again, my friends, and that means it’s time for a more colorful look at education policy as we head into the weekend. I really wanted to highlight the American Federation for Children’s “Education Revolution” video, which was released a couple months ago but only just made it to my desk. But you’ll have to watch that on your own. We have colorful interactive maps to play with! The Center for Education Reform (CER) recently released its 2015 Parent Power Index. It is absolutely stuffed with colorful, clickable goodies that are entirely too much fun to be considered education policy. But I’ll leave you to play with the report on your own time. We have important business to discuss! If you’ll remember, Colorado came in 12th in the country last year, which was a very slight improvement from 13th in 2013. At the time, CER described Colorado this way: Parents here are an active lot but have often been rebuffed at the legislative level when trying to expand their choices. That said, there is a strong charter law here. Many elements of digital learning are offered. The citizens of Colorado get to vote in school board elections when they […]

Hey, I’ve got a crazy idea! Why not have school districts base their budgeting on students like me (or any student, for that matter)? It just makes sense to do it that way, right? Especially since the whole K-12 education enterprise is supposed to be about the kids. It’s not that simple, however, and it’s not usually the case. Things like staffing formulas and seniority rules — not to mention bureaucratic traditions and old-fashioned accounting systems — generally rule the day. But in Colorado, the practice of Student-Based Budgeting is on the rise: Through student-based budgeting (SBB), six school districts have prioritized student need over administrative convenience with a cost-effective approach that places more funds under individual school control. This is from one of those long issue papers by my Education Policy Center friends that little me may never get around to reading cover to cover. SBB isn’t terribly glamorous, nor (like any other reform) is it a silver bullet. Even so, I’ve learned just enough to know that it’s something that very much should be on your radar. Plus, it has a fun and inspiring cover:

I’m not exactly a fortune teller, but every now and then I surprise myself with my prescience. Last May, I wrote a post just before Thompson’s second vote on an only slightly revised version of the first junky tentative agreement brought back from the negotiating table. The post was called “Thompson Gears up for the Final (?) Battle.” It turns out that question mark meant more than I knew back then. The teachers union is many things, but timid is not among them. Still, I was legitimately surprised to see the tenacity with which they have opposed the Thompson reform majority’s attempts to make very reasonable changes to the district’s union contract—particularly because their bigger, meaner, more powerful cousin in Jeffco seems perfectly capable of making compromises. Well, other than that whole strike threat thing. While JCEA was busy actually negotiating, TEA was dragging the district into expensive non-binding arbitration proceedings and arguing that the board doesn’t have a right to reject a tentative agreement with which it disagrees under the 2014-15 contract’s “good faith” provision. Poppycock, you say. Colorado school boards have constitutional authority to exercise local control over their districts, and no statute requires a school board to […]

It’s often been said “you can’t argue with success” (or Success). But that doesn’t stop some from trying. Last year, I pointed out the collective jaw-dropping that took place when test results came back from students in the Harlem Success Academies, a New York City charter network that overwhelmingly serves poor and disadvantaged families. Just to revisit for the record: Seven out of the state’s 15 top-scoring schools on math proficiency tests this year were Success Academy charter schools….An astounding 93.9 percent of Success students passed the Common Core math exam and 64.5 percent passed the English proficiency test…. After a closer look at the results, all that critics and skeptics were left to stand on was the suggestion that the astounding, off-the-chart scores for poor kids in the Big Apple must have been some kind of a fluke. With the release of the latest achievement scores, as reported by Reason blogger Jim Epstein, that line just became a lot harder to defend.

I’ve got to be honest, the Denver Post’s Editorial Board has kind of been knocking my socks off recently. First, they wrote good, thoughtful columns on the Dougco voucher decision and the abuse of democracy that is the Jeffco recall. Now they’ve come out with a new column praising Jefferson County School District’s new tentative tentative agreement with the Jefferson County Education Association. No, the second “tentative” is not a typo. As exciting as this new contract is, it still needs to be ratified by JCEA’s more than 3,000 members. That said, I join the Denver Post in praising Jeffco adults’ newfound ability to “gather their senses,” and I sincerely hope cooler heads will prevail when it comes to contract ratification among union members. While we wait for the results of the union ratification vote scheduled for August 21, it’s helpful to take a look at why this agreement is such a big deal. From my edu-wonk perspective, it accomplishes some very important things: Prioritizes teacher performance in cases of layoffs or displacements instead of basing these decisions solely on seniority. Under the current agreement, displacement decisions between teachers of equal seniority are decided not by effectiveness, but by “a […]

There’s a lot of attention on the school board politics in Jeffco these days. Dealing with it sometimes is a necessity. But to me it’s a shame, given the pockets of great need for students in the Jefferson and neighboring Alameda articulation areas, just west of Denver. Last November I first highlighted the significant positive efforts for change, then followed it up with anticipation of an important March 5 Board vote to approve a hopeful plan of action. The Board ended up approving it unanimously! Since that time I have been watching off and on (there are a bunch of things out there that Ed Is Watching), but have been remiss about providing an update. Yesterday, the good people at Chalkbeat Colorado published a piece about some specific efforts to upgrade academic standards at Jefferson High and surrounding schools:

Back in June, I used a precious Friday post to say goodbye to State Board of Education chairwoman Marcia Neal after her eyebrow-raising departure from the board. Last week, a 3rd Congressional District vacancy committee selected Marcia’s replacement: Joyce Rankin of Carbondale. Today was Joyce’s first day on the job, and I want to take a few minutes to welcome her to the Colorado education scene. That’s not to say that she’ll need much of an introduction to the issues, however. From a Chalkbeat article about her selection for SBOE: Rankin has a direct line to one legislator — her husband Bob, a House member who represents District 57 in northwestern Colorado. Rep. Rankin is a member of the Joint Budget Committee and has taken an interest in school finance issues. Rankin has worked as her husband’s legislative aide and indicated that she plans to continue in that role. “I don’t see that’s going to be a problem at all,” she said, adding that her exposure to the legislative process should be an advantage in her board work … … Inspired by a teacher, Rankin said she decided when she was in 5th grade to go into education. She holds […]

It has been said far more than once: “Repetition is the key to learning.” Given the number of times I’ve been told the importance of cleaning my room and eating my vegetables, my parents are firm believers in this statement. But hey, little Eddie gets it, too. Sometimes you have to make the same point over and over again — in new and creative ways, or just to new audiences. The lesson applies today to the subject of Course Access, or Course Choice. Back in 2012, my Education Policy Center friends published the paper “Online Course-Level Funding: Toward Colorado Secondary Self-Blended Learning Options.” The idea? Allow education funds to be unbundled so students can take a portion of the money to complete their learning path with their own selection of quality course providers. At the time Minnesota, and especially Utah, were the models for Colorado to study and follow in order to ensure a highly flexible and student-centered system of funding and delivering education. Many kids get all they need from their home secondary school — whether it’s traditional public, charter, or private; brick-and-mortar, online, or blended.

Happy Friday, friends! I’ve written a lot of words this week, and I suspect you all need a bit of a reading break. You know what that means: Video time! Fortunately, the Reason Foundation has provided a great new video that will suit our needs perfectly. Yesterday, we talked about how much teachers unions dislike being treated like everyone else—particularly when it comes to recruiting and making sales pitches. As it turns out, they are similarly disinclined to allow teachers to get out of funding them in many states, even if those teachers don’t actually belong to a union and would rather not give money to organizations with which they strongly disagree. Frustrations with teacher tenure protections convinced public school teacher Rebecca Friedrichs that she didn’t want to support the teachers union. Yet she was still forced to pay them a bunch of money through “agency fees” after she opted out of membership. That (rightfully) made her pretty mad, and resulted in a suit against the California Teachers Association challenging the practice. The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear the case, called Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, on the basis of Friedrichs’s 1st Amendment complaint. Here’s her story in […]