Tag Archives: program

Some day I might grow up to be cynical about education politics, but for now I see a big glimmer of hope. What do I mean? Look at yesterday’s Wall Street Journal: Low-income families in the District of Columbia got some encouraging words yesterday from an unlikely source. Illinois Senator Richard Durbin signaled that he may be open to reauthorizing the Opportunity Scholarship Program, a school voucher program that allows 1,700 disadvantaged kids to opt out of lousy D.C. public schools and attend a private school. “I have to work with my colleagues if this is going to be reauthorized, which it might be,” said Mr. Durbin at an appropriations hearing Tuesday morning. He also said that he had visited one of the participating private schools and understood that “many students are getting a good education from the program.” This could be the sign of a big turnaround for the influential Democratic senator, whom I have rightly critiqued in the past. At the Flypaper blog, Andy Smarick says Durbin’s statement “was a major step in the right direction”, and wonders if the D.C. 6’s dramatic sit-in a few weeks ago had an impact.

It seems almost everyone is getting in on the virtual public school act in Colorado these days. But that’s a good thing, because having more options is better for students and parents. One of the latest options, opening new for fall 2009, is Jeffco’s 21st Century Virtual Academy. Operated by the state’s largest school district — Jefferson County Public Schools in west metro Denver — the program offers a wide range of high school course offerings for students ages 14 to 20 who are Colorado residents (and not necessarily of Jefferson County). Courses are aligned to state standards and local graduation requirements, but also feature an array of electives as well. Besides the core areas of English, math, science, and social studies, subjects available through the virtual program include:

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

It’s Friday. What better time to kick an institution that’s down, and deservedly so? If anyone is taking nominees for an American school district to tear down and start over the education system from scratch, I vote for the Detroit Public Schools. Anyone with me? The district’s well-documented failures and financial deficits are exacerbated by the latest findings of far-reaching corruption. The Detroit Free Press reports today about what was found in a pair of audits of Detroit Public Schools (H/T Intercepts): Among the findings: 160 outdated BlackBerrys, 11 motorcycles, 97 two-way phones and 50 handheld radios sat unused. One audit also showed that 411 people — including some who are dead — were receiving health insurance even though they weren’t eligible. Ending those benefits will save the district an immediate $2.1 million, [emergency financial manager Robert] Bobb said. Health insurance for dead people? To cover future embalming needs? Protection money from grave robbers? If we take away their benefits, will they be added to the rolls of Americans without health insurance? Unbelievable stuff. Do you see what I mean?

The more parents know and experience school choice, the more satisfied they are with it. The Friedman Foundation’s newly-released survey of 808 parents who have participated in Florida’s scholarship tax credit program is just the latest and most overwhelming proof. Florida’s eight-year-old program provides full tax credit to corporations donating to qualified scholarship granting organizations. Those groups provide scholarships worth up to $3,950 (or full tuition) for low-income students to enroll in the private school of their choice. According to the Friedman report, the latest numbers show 23,259 Florida students attending private school on a tax credit scholarship. Simply put, participating parents love it:

Last week I told you that a new poll came out showing overwhelming support among Washington D.C. residents for their private school choice options. But you may have missed that a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators has introduced legislation to help save the successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Among them is Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman. As Jay Greene points out, the bill addresses areas that opponent Senator Dick Durbin said were his concerns. We’re about to find out how genuine his concerns are, or whether he just acts as a puppet and follows the bidding of the teachers unions as they seek to kill the program. Anyway, thought you would want to know that while there are many other big issues going on in Congress, our Representatives and Senators may not be hearing much from citizens across our great land about the inner-city kids in our nation’s capital and their opportunity for a better education. Colorado, I’m especially talking to you!

Alyson Klein, one of the ladies who cover happenings related to education on Capitol Hill for Education Week, reports about an important committee vote yesterday: A bipartisan effort to boost funding for the Teacher Incentive Fund by an extra $100 million went down to defeat today during the full Senate Appropriations Committee’s markup of the bill funding the U.S. Department of Education in fiscal year 2010. The bill already includes $300 million for the TIF, a teacher performance-pay program that is currently funded at $97 million. The proposed increase in the failed amendment would have been paid for by taking $100 million out of the federal State Grants for Improving Teacher Quality program. TIF provides competitive grants to state agencies, school districts, and charter schools that develop quality performance pay programs for teachers and for principals. As my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow has outlined in his issue paper Denver’s ProComp and Teacher Compensation in Colorado (PDF) and elsewhere, local Colorado school districts have applied for and received a significant share of TIF grant money. Besides Denver, they include Eagle County, Harrison (El Paso County), and Fort Lupton. Our K-12 education compensation system badly needs a serious overhaul, and […]

With a variety of programs and greater flexibility from state laws and district policies, public charter schools can provide a great alternative for parents and students looking for something different. Because of that same flexibility, charter schools can serve as great laboratories of innovation for different practices that work. A couple months ago, while school was still in session, my Education Policy Center friends visited KIPP-Sunshine Peak Academy, a charter middle school located in west Denver. The national KIPP network of 82 charter schools has been made famous recently by the book Work Hard Be Nice, written by Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews.

Update: The good people of Ed News Colorado have also written about The State of Charter Schools in Colorado (PDF), breaking down some of the key information if you don’t have time to dig through the whole report. Do you need a good reference digest of important information on charter schools in Colorado? Well, my friend and Education Policy Center senior fellow Krista Kafer has done it again, joining Dr. Dick Carpenter to co-author another valuable report for the Colorado Department of Education. The brand new report is called The State of Charter Schools in Colorado (PDF). Skim through it, and you’ll see there really is no such thing as an average charter school. As the movement has grown in our state over the last 15 years, both the number and the diversity of charters has increased.

I’ve told you before about Westminster School District’s program to move from seat time to standards — re-thinking the whole traditional grade system that has dominated American education for decades — and the Doogie Howser-like potential such a system could offer me. Well, earlier this week, Rebecca Jones at Ed News Colorado chronicled the fact that the moment of truth has arrived for Westminster (aka Adams 50): It’s the last day of the 2008-09 school year in the district. The last day of life as most students and teachers there have always known it. The last day that categories like “third grade” or “sixth grade” – or A or B+ or C- — will exist in most of Westminster. The district is scrapping traditional notions of grade level and doing away with letter grades. Students will instead progress through academic levels 1-10 based on their mastery of subjects, not on the length of time they’ve been in school. This concept, known as standards-based education, has been tried in individual schools and in some small districts in Alaska, but never before in a large, urban district such as Westminster. The bold step is bringing national attention to the district.