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You know how much I have to restrain myself when it comes to using the “it’s for the kids” mantra, so I simply couldn’t resist quickly bringing your attention to some important new insights from local pension system analyst Joshua Sharf. With the tongue-in-cheek title “PERA – It’s All for the Kids,” he paints full-color pictures showing that dollars per student spent on the state retirement system have been growing dramatically, the heaviest burdens borne by taxpayers. Is it any wonder why many school districts might be feeling the pinch? Does it make sense now why I told you a few months back that a better solution than yelling at TABOR is fixing PERA?

In the education reform world, you’ve got to be comfortable with the idea of assigning states grades and putting them on a scorecard. Why, it was just last week I highlighted Colorado’s top 10 finish — aided by the curve — on Student First’s inaugural State Policy Report Cards. Well, once again Colorado has landed in the top 10 (just barely), though this time it’s a B we earned rather than a C. And it’s a familiar place to be. What am I talking about? The Center for Education Reform’s 2013 Charter Law Ranking Chart. As I noted last year when dissecting the rankings:

It’s great to see more Colorado citizens demanding their tax-funded school districts conduct important business about personnel policies and special interest privileges in the public eye. A petition by the grassroots group Liberty Watch to bring negotiation transparency and other union reforms to Thompson School District made its way onto the pages of today’s Loveland Reporter-Herald, collecting the petitions of more than 180 local residents. Liberty Watch director Nancy Rumfelt is trying to get the petition’s reform proposals onto the February 20 school board agenda. You can learn more about the proposals and their rationale by listening to Rumfelt’s 20-minute on-air radio interview last week with one of my Education Policy Center friends. Not surprisingly, though, most Thompson leaders seem more than a little reluctant to take on transparency and the other issues:

Little Eddie has been so busy, his head is spinning. But I didn’t want to leave everyone hanging. If you are a teacher or know a teacher, you might encourage them to check out this new report from Mike Antonucci at the Education Intelligence Agency: [National Education Association] Gave $15 Million to Advocacy Groups in the 2011-12 fiscal year. The report includes a list of all the reported beneficiaries, everyone from the AFL-CIO and America Votes to We Are Ohio. Of course, that money overwhelmingly comes from member dues.

One of the education proposals giving me the 5-year-old equivalent of heartburn as Colorado’s legislative session gets rolling is the attempt to add regulations to the state’s full-time online schools. For those who have been following the scene for any length of time, that probably sounds like a broken record (“like a damaged MP3 file” is probably more up to date, but doesn’t have the same ring to it). Over the past couple years there’s been a lot of controversy in Colorado about cyberschools. No time to rehash here all charges, counter-charges, questions, and concerns. It’s also escalated at the national level with a report from the National Education Policy Center (NEPC). And this week brings a great response from the Brookings Institution’s Matthew Chingos at Education Next. A quick taste:

A couple days ago I brought to your attention the looming heartburn the Colorado legislative session portends for those who support parental choice, school accountability, and the transparent, effective use of tax dollars in K-12 education. If you want to keep tabs on your needed antacid intake by checking the status of introduced legislation, you ought to join me in bookmarking Ed News Colorado’s bill tracker for the next four months. Anyway, as has been pointed out, the big education issue before the state legislature this year will be changing the School Finance Act with a tax increase referral to voters tied at the hip. From now to May, the drum will continue to bang loudly for “adequate funding.” Before the tears and drama take over, it will be important to remember that Colorado’s K-12 funding debate really could use some important facts. But in the meantime the state’s largest teachers union — its concrete headquarters stationed a good stone’s throw away from the State Capitol — has produced a series of videos calling for greater “economic investment” in education. It’s for the children, of course. Yes, this is the same Colorado Education Association that resists commonsense entitlement reform that […]

If a person asked why he is doing something gives the response, “Because everyone else is doing it,” that usually won’t pass muster. If that person happens to be 5 years old, even if an accomplished blogging prodigy, you’d cut them a little slack… right? Today, it seems like everyone out there has something to say about the Gates Foundation’s newly released findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) Project. Ed News Colorado’s Julie Poppen highlights a study conclusion that meshes very well with Colorado’s SB 191 teacher evaluation reform: “Our data suggest that assigning 50 percent or 33 percent of the weight to state test results maintains considerable predictive power, increases reliability and potentially avoids the unintended negative consequences from assigning too-heavy weights to a single measure,” the much-awaited MET study found. The implementation of SB 191 by school districts looms large across Colorado’s education policy landscape. Local boards are empowered to stop the “Dance of the Lemons” with ineffective teachers, and to put in place compensation systems that truly reward performance. By and large, these represent positive developments. But does the new Gates study really validate the law’s formula that 50 percent of teacher evaluations should be […]

Run for cover, and hold onto your wallets! Tomorrow marks the beginning of the first session of the 69th Colorado General Assembly. At first, I thought about just re-posting last year’s pre-session warning. Yet while there may be some similarities between 2012 and 2013, it would end up being a lazy thing to do, and less than accurate to boot. At the risk of being repetitive, though, I first will point readers to the legislative preview by Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl. He notes that: The question of school finance is expected to overshadow all other education issues. Democratic Sens. Mike Johnston of Denver and Rollie Heath of Boulder are crafting a plan that would significantly overhaul the school funding formula – contingent on subsequent voter approval of new revenues for schools. A big looming question then is just how significant the proposed school finance changes will be. If they’re not pushing toward real student-centered backpack funding — as Senator Johnston and others discussed last month at a packed Capitol event — then selling voters on a tax hike will become that much more difficult. While the statehouse shouldn’t be as consumed with K-12 education issues last year, Engdahl does […]

Not too long ago I was telling you about new information out grading Colorado schools’ performance. But how is Colorado doing in applying policies that promote an excellent, equitable and efficient education system? Today the national group Students First released its first-ever State Policy Report Cards. How did Colorado do? Depends how you look at it. When you look at our ranking among the states, it makes you feel pretty good:

A Friday quickie for readers to chew on. Back in late November, the U.S. Department of Education released the first-ever data where we could truly compare the rates at which students in different states are graduating high school on time. Unfortunately, Colorado’s 74 percent graduation rate put us in the bottom third. But now that we can finally look at all states based on a common measure of how well students are completing their secondary education (more than 43 years after we put a man on the moon), someone has to ask: Just how accurate is the comparison? In an insightful new EdFly blog post, Florida’s Mike Thomas reminds us that different graduation standards can seriously cloud the picture. After highlighting some different headlines that take to task certain states’ graduation output, he notes: