Tag Archives: State Policy Network

A lot of my Education Policy Center friends have been on the road this week at something called the State Policy Network conference in Scottsdale, Arizona. Okay, so I don’t exactly get what it’s all about, they told me about a visit they had yesterday to a couple of excellent schools in the area. I’m only going to talk about the one today, because it seems this Millennium Worldwide Academy in south Phoenix has a pretty special approach to educating kids in my age group. No, it’s not in Colorado, but maybe there are some school leaders or entrepreneurs looking to start a school who could learn a thing or two from Ms. Kelmer and her success with helping low-income kids from preschool to 4th grade. My Education Policy Center friends said they were amazed to watch the knowledge put on display. They heard about the “Are You Smarter than a Kindergartener?” challenge. Not too many adults could name all 43 U.S. Presidents in order like the small group of 5-year-old children at Millennium Worldwide Academy did yesterday. The older kids knew the planets in our solar system and their distances from the Sun, as well as had a solid […]

Our governor has placed a lot of attention on the goal of cutting Colorado’s dropout rate in half in 10 years. To get a sense of what it will take to accomplish that goal, inquiring minds should go check out Diplomas Count 2008 by Education Week. (Thanks to John LaPlante at the SPN Blog for pointing it out.) There’s lots of information at your fingertips, such as: State-specific background reports with easy-to-read information … here’s the report for Colorado (almost 26 percent of students failed to graduate in 2005) A tool to compare Colorado’s P-20 Council to different states’ education alignment councils An interactive mapping tool that allows you to see how successful individual school districts are at seeing kids through to high school graduation Memo to Education Week: The Education Policy Center staff here says what you have put together is a great resource for looking at the dropout issue. But did you know that there is no way to find Colorado’s largest school district (Jefferson County, where I am right now) on your mapping tool? It doesn’t come up in a name search. It isn’t labeled on a map of the Denver metro area. What’s the deal? When […]

The Michigan Education Report, run by a sister think tank Mackinac Institute, highlights an innovative cost-saving, Catholic school model in Detroit: Tuition costs have been cited as a factor in the closing of more than 1,000 Catholic parish schools across the country in the past two decades. The Cristo Rey model addresses that problem by requiring students to spend four days in the classroom and one full day working each week. Their earnings go toward their school costs. In Detroit, the work-study program will bring down the family contribution to an estimated $2,200 per year, according to Earl Robinson, president of Detroit Cristo Rey. The school will work to help parents who can’t afford even that much. The Cristo Rey model not only brings costs down, but introduces students to the working world, helps them develop work ethics, assists them in making career choices and, Robinson pointed out, lets them write a resume upon graduation that includes four years of work experience and four references. At the State Policy blog, John LaPlante suggests this kind of innovation helps to answer the objection that vouchers won’t fully cover private school tuition costs. Those raising the objection could also look to the […]