Tag Archives: education policy

The major publication National Journal has convened a group of “Education Experts” to answer major policy questions on a new blog. Their inaugural question is about the “magical money tree”: Given the bleak budgetary outlook for many states, should stimulus funds be primarily devoted to staving off education cuts, or should the administration focus on leveraging the money to drive its reform agenda? Some key quips I like so far….

Forgive me if I act a little sleepy today. I stayed up past my bedtime last night to watch the finals of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. And after that, I was too excited to go to sleep. When I’m old enough, I want to be on ESPN and national TV, too — competing for the top prize as spelling champion. Think I can do it? For now, I look forward to rooting for Tim Ruiter in 2010. The homeschooler from Centreville, Virginia, finished as runner-up this time around. (Next year, maybe Colorado spellers will advance farther, too.) I like Tim’s attitude. He told the Washington Post: Tim said that he plans to be back next year and that he’ll take only a short break — “I’ll go to bed” — before he resumes word study. “I’m glad that she won, because this was her last year,” he said.

Update: It looks like I have been out-sillied by Jay Greene, who has posted the original unedited draft of “too cool” Kevin Carey’s comments. I’m not very serious. Of course, you probably already knew that. Golly, I’m a little kid who writes about the world of education policy and occasionally cites Kermit the Frog and Cap’n Crunch. But I don’t think you quite get how un-serious I am. At least according to Kevin Carey from The Quick and The Ed blog:

Education policy is often as much art as it is science. But Colorado’s education policy still can benefit from the informed perspectives of non-Colorado experts. Denver’s own Piton Foundation convened a panel of six national education experts who observe what Colorado has done in many reform areas, and asked for their honest assessments. The result is a brand new report Colorado’s 2008 Education Reforms: Will They Achieve the Colorado Promise? (PDF). In today’s Denver Post, education writer Jeremy Meyer sums up the findings: Six national education experts took a look at Colorado’s education landscape and found the state is on track in some areas but has a long way to go in others.

Let’s admit it. None of us likes to take the blame, including the things we really are responsible for. And many times there are easy targets for those of us who like blame-shifting. One of my favorite education policy people, Dr. Jay Greene, put up a great post a couple days ago that is really worthwhile reading, titled “Blaming Special Ed”. In the post, he deconstructs the widely-held myth that special education is to blame for the lion’s share of increasing K-12 costs in recent decades: Blaming special ed is easy. Most attempts to blame special ed don’t even bother presenting data or make the most crude use of data to support their claims. Reporters simply accept assertions from school and state officials without question. Folks accept the blame-special-ed-story so easily because — well, to put it bluntly – it is a a widely held but unstated prejudice. People quietly resent special education because they fear that it is short-changing their regular education students. They assume that money spent on disabled kids is necessarily money taken away from general education. They can’t imagine that resources for general education have also increased at a very rapid clip even as special ed […]

The Obama girls have their first day at their new Washington, DC, private school today. And I’m back from vacation, too. I’d be lying to say I’d rather be doing this than playing with Legos or Matchbox cars, but there figures to be a lot of important education policy to discuss in 2009. Today we start back by wondering what the fallout will be from the big appointment of Denver Public Schools superintendent Michael Bennet to fill a vacancy in the United States Senate. From the standpoint of the Senate and federal education reform policy, there’s no doubt this selection represents a net improvement. The optimism of Democrats for Education Reform is justified. Where Bennet stands on many other important issues of the day, however, is not known. (For a wild and interesting piece of trivia, the last sitting U.S. Senator to have served as a school superintendent was none other than the well-aged and controversial late Strom Thurmond.)

I know, I know. Yesterday there was this big election, and some things happened that will have an impact on education reform in Colorado. I’m going to let you know more about that a little later. For now, regardless of winners and losers at the ballot box, there are real threats to face – like school officials who won’t give up on using the courts to wrest control and choice from parents: The Charter School Act was passed by the then-Republican controlled General Assembly in 2004 to meet a growing demand for charter schools statewide. The legislation established the Charter School Institute, which provides oversight and funding to state charter schools. Over the last four years, the Boulder Valley School District has consistently tried to tear down the law by challenging its constitutionality. The district says the law takes away its constitutional right to govern schools operating within its boundaries. Provisions in the state constitution allow school districts local control on education policy. This particular complaint was first heard in district court with two other similar cases brought forth by Adams County School District 50 and the Poudre School District. However, when all three complaints were shot down in December […]