Tag Archives: support

You don’t think I would be considered a “gifted and talented” student, do you? Because if so, and if I lived in the north Denver metro area, I would take a really close look at getting into the new Westgate Community School. Chartered by the Adams 12 School District and located in Northglenn, Westgate serves students from kindergarten to 6th grade. According to the school’s main web page: Our school offers an innovative, stimulating learning environment to all students, including the twice-exceptional, visual-spatial, and highly/profoundly gifted learners. We specialize in gifted learners whose needs diverge from traditional educational models. Our instruction is organized to support diverse learning styles by using methods that match the strengths of alternative learners. We believe the social and emotional needs of gifted students are as important as their intellectual needs. While making our high expectations clear to all students, we also offer a loving learning environment where it is safe to take risks among peers. Our goal is to make our students feel successful, understood, and appreciated for who they are.

Knowing that teacher quality is so essential to successful student learning, Colorado’s lawmakers and education officials should be doing more to enact policies that promote teacher autonomy, excellence, and accountability. The Maryland Public Policy Institute does just that with its new report calling for “Teachers as Entrepreneurs” (PDF). The idea? Instead of placing all instructors under the terms of a centralized bargaining contract, allow for some individual teachers or teams of teachers to contract with a school district to perform instructional services. Either union or non-union, they could agree on setting terms regarding class size, basic working conditions, performance and differential pay, and retirement plans. This approach would give individual teachers greater freedom to determine whether they want to support and subsidize political activities. It would require state law to take a neutral position on the issue of unionization and exclusive representation.

I like feeling safe. My parents like knowing I’m reasonably safe from all kinds of violence when I go to school, too. A lot of times where we live, we can take that kind of school safety for granted. But as a new report co-produced by the Heritage Foundation and the Lexington Institute (PDF) chronicles the dangers many students face in D.C. Public Schools and the need for greater choice: In 2009, the U.S. Department of Education reported that 11.3 percent of D.C. high school students reported being “threatened or injured” with a weapon while on school property during the previous year—a rate well above the national average…. The data reveal that during the 2007–2008 school year, police responded to more than 900 calls to 911 reporting violent incidents at the addresses of D.C. public schools and more than 1,300 events concerning property crimes. The data reveal a wide variance in the locations of these reported incidents. Some public schools with high rates of 911 calls are located within high-crime neighborhoods. In addition, while one should use these data with care when comparing the relative safety of public, charter, and private schools, this data set shows that a drastically higher […]

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!

I’ve told you how many politicians have been attacking the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, which helps some of the poorest kids in the nation’s capital. Not only does the D.C. City Council support the private school choice program, but a new poll conducted by Braun Research shows that the people who benefit directly from it — D.C. residents, and especially parents of school-age children — overwhelmingly support it: 74% have a favorable view of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program; and 79% of parents of school-age children oppose ending the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. The survey also contains additional findings about residents’ views on the public school system, charter schools, merit pay, and related issues. But it’s their opinions about the successful voucher program under assault by Congress that carries the most immediate relevance. It only makes the situation sadder that the people who are affected the most strongly support the program while politicians put powerful lobbying groups and ideology ahead of kids such as these:

I may get the occasional snarky comment from people who don’t like school choice, but don’t feel bad for me. Instead, get angry about the kids in Washington DC who are in the middle of a political tug-of-war over their Opportunity Scholarships and educational futures. Why get angry? [Illinois Democrat] Senator [Dick] Durbin was busy introducing new, onerous regulations on the program in an appropriations bill last week. In particular, his measures would require participating private schools to take the DC public school test rather than a nationally-normed standardized test, even though they may not have the same curriculum as DCPS. His measures would also require the Secretary of Education to prohibit voucher students from attending any private school that was not deemed “superior” to DC public schools.

My mom and dad have been drilling the importance of sharing into me for years. I’ve finally got it down now (okay, for the most part). But as far as I recall, sharing my Legos or Matchbox cars with other kids has never been encouraged as a way to save money. I guess it’s a little different when it comes to school districts and “sharing” services. A recent article in the Pueblo Chieftain offers an account of a new development in the region’s two largest school districts: Talk of consolidating Pueblo City Schools and Pueblo County School District 70 may be too early right now, but the concept of sharing services is not.

Updated for accuracy (6/9) For 15 years we’ve had charter schools around in Colorado. By giving strong accountability along with a new level of freedom, our state has been one of the leaders in fostering innovation through charters. Going along with that, charter schools have now established themselves with strong bipartisan political support. Witness our own Democrat lieutenant governor Barbara O’Brien, who offered testified before a Congressional committee on Thursday. Denise at Colorado Charters highlighted the factors O’Brien pointed out as reasons for charter school success. But I thought this was the most interesting part of what Lt. Gov. O’Brien had to say:

Hooray for Nancy Mitchell, and so glad she is working at Ed News Colorado these days. Her latest investigation probes the value of our current teacher evaluation system at identifying effective teachers, weeding out ineffective teachers, and providing support where necessary. The results? Not very good: Education News Colorado requested teacher evaluation data from the six largest districts, all in the metro area, which serve more than 40 percent of public school students statewide. The analysis found little difference between the results of evaluations given in affluent, high-performing Douglas County and those doled out in urban Denver Public Schools, where large numbers of students perform below average on state exams. Fewer than 2 percent of teachers in either district – or in Adams Five-Star School District or in Jefferson County Public Schools – were told they needed to improve their instructional skills.

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: