Tag Archives: administrators

It’s important for Colorado citizens to get involved in local school board elections. A lot of important policies and other decisions are set at the local level, so it’s good to make an informed choice and cast a vote! If you live in Douglas County, you’ll want to know about two forums taking place where you can get to meet the school board candidates, ask them questions, and learn about where they stand on important issues like school choice, school accountability, performance pay, school financial transparency, and more. The first one, sponsored by the Douglas County Federation [local teachers union], is tonight from 7-8:30 PM at Chaparral High School. If you miss that opportunity, I received an email from A Parent’s Voice founder Donnell Rosenberg alerting me to another forum coming up in September:

Every child is always a winner … Children just need better self-esteem … We only need to use positive incentives to help children learn more … Let’s reward the good but pretend like the bad doesn’t exist … I’m only 5 years old, and I get that this is marshmallow world nonsense. In fact, it’s the kind of silliness that makes many people question (sometimes fairly, sometimes not) the value of much of what goes on in public education. It gets even worse when the principle is applied not only to students, but also to teachers. At least if the union has its way. Witness the evidence from Chicago, a city with many failing schools: principal evaluations found only 3 out of every 1,000 teachers had unsatisfactory performance. While unions thrive on fears of bogeyman administrators who take out their vindictiveness on good teachers they don’t like, this evidence at least indicates the problem tips in the other direction. In any case, wouldn’t a more objective data system be better?

It’s going to be a tough fiscal year for education officials used to managing ever-expanding tax-funded budgets. 2009 just might be a year in which policy makers and administrators find ways to cut out the fat and focus the lean spending on classroom success. One way to help is to empower everyday citizens – like my mom and dad, and thousands of other Colorado taxpayers – with detailed financial information online so they can help find cost savings. What am I talking about? It’s called online financial transparency. Can you imagine if school districts and other local education agencies all had searchable databases on their websites that allowed you to see exactly how money is being spent? What once was a distant dream is fast approaching reality. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow explains it all in his new backgrounder Shining the Light on Colorado School Spending. Transparency promote greater public accountability and confidence that local schools are being run efficiently and effectively. In many cases it also pays for itself. Today’s technology means it requires little time and cost to put up these databases. Hopefully, some Colorado school district will take the lead and do this on its […]

The big story in the news is about President-elect Obama’s giant “stimulus” plan – better known as a giant spending spree that hangs even more debt on the shoulders of me and other kids growing up around America. That part is bad enough. But three leading education reformers – Michael Petrilli, Checker Finn, and Frederick Hess – see other serious problems that it will create for trying to improve our schools and help students learn. In the column they wrote for National Review yesterday, the authors challenge the suggestion that tons of federal government money “invested” in education will yield more positive results down the road: In concept, of course, well-delivered education eventually yields higher economic output and fewer social ills. But there’s scant evidence that an extra dollar invested in today’s schools delivers an extra dollar in value — and ample evidence that this kind of bail-out will spare school administrators from making hard-but-overdue choices about how to make their enterprise more efficient and effective.

On Tuesday, voters in Colorado’s largest school district rejected both a mill levy increase and bond proposal: “When you are a people intense organization those reductions will be people,” [superintendent Cindy] Stevenson said. “That’s teachers, counselors, librarians, um, special education staff. That’s where we’re going to have to look for cuts. And that’s going to be difficult because that will result in increased class size, fewer choices for our kids, less teacher training.” Stevenson said the money from the ballot issues would’ve gone toward teachers, books and significant structural improvements. The first reaction many may have is: Why doesn’t the district threaten to cut the number of administrators rather than classroom staffing? No doubt there are some additional efficiencies that could be found by rearranging these priorities. But no matter how good it makes some people feel to say so, just cutting the size of central administration isn’t the answer.