Tag Archives: glimpse

Update, 8/18: Denise at Colorado Charters offers more information on the new Thomas MacLaren School, as well as an account of the ribbon cutting ceremony. If you live in the Colorado Springs area and have a student heading into the middle school years, you may want to take a look at the new Thomas MacLaren School. The tuition-free public charter school opens this month with classes from 6th to 9th grade. Eventually the school will serve students all the way up through high school. Many things set MacLaren apart from traditional public schools, but most prominent are: A classical education curriculum that builds from the basics of grammar (6th-8th grade) to the logic of finding “implications and relationships that exist among the ideas already learned” (9th-10th grade) to the higher-level rhetoric (11th-12th grade) “wherein students begin to synthesize and relate concepts already learned” — all students will be required to take four years of Latin Student uniforms Single-sex classrooms (that’s right: No yucky girls! I may have to look into this school….), except the fine arts classes (including choir, drama, etc.) and lunchtimes will be co-ed

Okay, okay … so Denver’s Montclair School of Academics and Enrichment isn’t exactly new. In fact, at more than 100 years of age, it’s one of Colorado’s older public schools. So what’s new about it? Montclair is one of the state’s first two Innovation Schools — as approved by the local school board and by the state board of education under the 2008 state law — and the only school to be recognized both as an Innovation School and as a DPS Beacon School. What does that mean, you ask?

It’s Monday, which means it’s time again to highlight a new public school opening here in our great state of Colorado. Today we look south along the Front Range to the Colorado Springs area, where the Atlas Preparatory Charter School has kicked off its very first classes today. One hundred fifth-graders represent the first cohort of what is slated to take students all the way up through eighth grade by 2012-13. Using an intense college-prep model, the leaders of Atlas have set specific goals to make high academic achievers out of their students, and will incorporate a longer school day with extra focus on reading and math to get it done. While as a tuition-free public charter school Atlas is open to all comers, they are especially geared toward instilling a focus on achieving a four-year college education in young people who may be the first in their family to take that academic step.

Can you picture it? Envision Schools are coming to Colorado, and the first one opens this fall: the Envision Leadership Prep in Denver. Believe it or not, the morning bell will ring sixth- and ninth-grade students in for the first time in only three weeks! Envision Leadership Prep will share campus space with the Smiley Middle School program in Denver’s North Park Hill neighborhood. Eventually, the school will serve a sixth-through-12th grade student population. What makes Envision Schools different from school as you remember it? Well, as they describe their curriculum:

Guess what? It’s that time again — time to highlight some of the exciting new educational options opening up for Colorado students and parents this fall. Last year we were able to give readers a glimpse at 10 new schools. My goal is to do at least that many for 2009. First on the list, we start at the far end of the state in Durango for the opening of a new public charter school for 9th graders. Authorized by the Charter School Institute, Animas High School. Animas, which is intentionally modeled after San Diego’s innovative High Tech High, is slated to add grades each year so the first class will graduate in 2013.

Next week I’ll be on vacation at the beach, and blogging won’t be high on my priority list. But before taking off, I want to leave you with a glimpse into a school model based on the “rock star” teacher idea. This doesn’t mean bringing in real-life rock stars to teach. To my mom and dad, that probably would be some guy named Bon Jovi. To my gramps, maybe some ancient dude named Elvis I’ve heard him talk about. But they’d all be wrong. In a nutshell, the idea is to free up funds to pay the best teachers more by allowing for larger class sizes. The question is: Will it work? Over at Jay Greene’s blog, Dr. Matt Ladner has written about the “rock star” teacher idea several times. The latest highlights a New York Times story about a Washington Heights school scheduled to open in the fall that will pay its eight teachers each $125,000 a year, with a chance to earn more in performance incentives.