Did you miss the opportunity to come see the movie Flunked? Here’s your chance to do the next best thing: Click here to watch Flunked producer Steve Maggi and Education Policy Center Director Pam Benigno (the really nice lady who lets me write here) discuss some of the education success stories featured in the movie… and some Colorado examples, too. It’s the latest Independent Thinking with host Jon Caldara.

If you’d rather watch the episode the old-fashioned way, it will be on KBDI Channel 12 this Tuesday (June 17) at 5 PM.

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My friends who run SchoolChoiceForKids.org have made it even easier for my mom and dad and lots of other parents to find a good school for me and my friends. Now you can search for PK-12 non-public schools (private, religious, and independent schools not operated by the government). For each school you can find:

• Address
• Map of the area
• Phone number
• Web site (when available)
• Grade levels served
• Religious affiliation (if any)

Schools that only teach preschool and kindergarten are not listed, but you can find all of that information on this special page they created just for preschool.

Parents who can’t afford private school tuition may be able to get a scholarship for their kids through one of the private organizations listed here.

And don’t forget that you can also look for public schools near you, too.

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Denver’s Bruce Randolph School, which serves a challenging, high-poverty student population, is really working to change the culture from the ground up. The Rocky Mountain News‘ Nancy Mitchell reports that Bruce Randolph – led by Principal Kristin Waters – is putting a stop to social promotion. The school has signed contracts with the parents to ensure high expectations are kept and that students can avail themselves of needed interventions to help them make it to the next grade:

Bruce Randolph’s part of the bargain was to closely monitor student achievement and to step in as soon as teachers saw a child struggling.

So they launched tutoring Mondays and Wednesdays after school in the fall. They began Saturday school in October. They launched a week of intense remediation, which came to be known as “F-land,” in December.

At the year’s midpoint, letters went home notifying parents if their children were facing retention. Letters went home again three-quarters of the way through the school year. In April, staff started weekly monitoring for failing grades.

“All year long, we’ve talked to the parents,” Waters said. “And every time, parents have been supportive.”

In May, teachers began calling homes to tell them the bad news. In some cases, the message was, “Your child is being retained.” In others, it was, “Your child will be retained unless they go to summer school.”

As of Thursday, the retention tally was relatively small. Two of 90 sixth-graders are being held back, as are 13 of 150 seventh-graders and 16 of 170 eighth-graders.

Bruce Randolph School has been in the news a lot the past six months, struggling with some success to free itself from the red tape of district bureaucracy and union work rules. Bruce Randolph has served as inspiration for the recent Innovation Schools Act.

Kristin Waters and the hard-working teachers who support her have sought freedom so they can go above and beyond to meet the needs of the kids they serve. Today’s story provides some evidence that they are working to get things done.

Kudos to Bruce Randolph. I know it would make me work harder to keep out of summer school.

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Louisiana’s young governor sure looks to be making himself into a school choice hero, with a bipartisan legislative victory nearly under his belt:

Gov. Bobby Jindal moved one step closer Wednesday to final approval for a $10 million pilot program that would pay private school tuition for some children in Orleans Parish public schools.

The 25-12 Senate vote sends House Bill 1347 by Rep. Austin Badon, D-New Orleans, back to the lower chamber for its reconsideration. Some form of the measure, one of Jindal’s top legislative priorities, is now certain to reach the governor’s desk, with the plan slated to start this fall. [emphasis added]

Greg Forster points out that Louisiana now looks to have the nation’s 24th school choice (vouchers or tax credits) program. The Alliance for School Choice notes the dire straits of Louisiana’s public school system, and the “hope and educational opportunities” that a plan like the one moving through the state legislature could provide.

With school choice advancing in one more state, this guy Greg Anrig must really regret having written this article now.

I’m excited for the new opportunity some needy kids in Louisiana are going to get, and hope that Colorado can some day move forward on school choice again.

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Two of the Education Policy Center staff – Pam Benigno and Ben DeGrow – just got done speaking to all those in attendance at the Independence Institute Candidates Briefing. It was hard to fit inside of 30 minutes a real flavor of all these busy people (including Marya DeGrow and Raaki Garcia-Ulam) do.

There were plenty of good questions from the audience. The candidates seemed especially interested in information about school finance, because it’s so hard to find reliable information. And they’re interacting with members of the public, many of whom drastically underestimate how much our schools spend. This stuff is kind of boring and hard to figure out, but ask Mr. DeGrow for help. He’s done a lot of the hard work digging through the data.

But for the candidates here, it gets even better this afternoon, as Pam is going to talk about our School Choice website. Me? I’m going to play outside before it starts raining.

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One of the most common critiques of No Child Left Behind is that its goal of achieving proficiency in reading and math for all students by 2014 is impossible to achieve. While it may be impossible for all American public schools to achieve the 100 percent proficiency marks, should we let that excuse stop many schools from achieving 100 percent proficiency, schools that really are able to get there?

The Washington Post highlights a Maryland elementary school that already has hit the mark:

Last spring, all 184 students in the third and fourth grades at Ocean City Elementary School passed the Maryland School Assessment, or MSA, a battery of tests given by the state every year since 2003 to satisfy the law.

The school was the first in the state, apart from a few tiny special-education centers, to meet the goal that has defined public education this decade.

“We think of MSA as the floor, as sort of the basics of what all students should be doing,” Principal Irene Kordick said. “We shoot for the ceiling.”…

The school serves 568 students in a coastal resort town with an odd mix of families — in oceanfront condominiums, middle-class colonials and Coastal Highway trailers. The student population is 89 percent white, 5 percent Hispanic, 3 percent black, 2 percent Asian and 1 percent American Indian. Twenty-nine students have limited English proficiency, and 134 qualify for subsidized meals because of low family income.

If you read the story, you get a strong sense of some of the things school leaders have done to make its performance exceptional. Yet with all the tax money funding K-12 education, Jonathan Butcher at Jay Greene’s blog points out wasteful examples of federal education spending, and the absence of focus on replicating school models, like Ocean City, that work.

I guess the moral of the story is that kids like me deserve schools that make fewer excuses, and parents deserve the power of choice to demand these kinds of schools to serve them. After all, as our own Pam Benigno wrote several years ago, No Child Left Behind Mandates School Choice. But if you leave it up to politicians to fund education programs, the money is going to feed all sorts of crazy pet projects before it reaches places that work.

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Thinking about last week’s Denver teacher sick-out, it doesn’t make me happy to see teachers walk out on the kids in their classes. But seeing Ben Hummel’s latest cartoon at least made me chuckle a bit:

The leader of the the non-union teacher group PACE is right that “children deserve teachers who are dedicated to their education.” I might add, and not so much teachers who are dedicated to sunbathing.

But then I see what’s going on in Los Angeles – requiring teachers to skip an hour of school each day to carry picket signs (H/T Flypaper blog) – and Denver’s situation doesn’t seem so bad.

Still, I would like to have good teachers, professional teachers, who are there for me during school hours. But you’ll have to excuse me now … it’s summertime, and I’m ready to play in the sun, too!

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Over at Jay Greene’s blog, Greg Forster takes on the issue (via the extraordinary education investigator Mike Antonucci) of states with growing teacher workforces and flat – or even shrinking – student populations:

Maryland, for example, expanded its teacher workforce 10 percent from 2001 to 2006, while enrollment grew less than 1 percent. California, which is still carrying around an extremely bloated teacher workforce from its apparently failed experiment in class size reduction, has just announced that it’s cancelling the large majority of its planned teacher layoffs.

Greg goes on to point out that growing teacher-to-student ratios largely have not resulted in smaller class sizes – in part because teachers have their classroom time limited or some are working in non-classroom positions. So who gets the best of this arrangement?

Well, the teachers’ unions make out like bandits. More teachers means bigger budgets without the hassle of selling the membership on dues hikes, and more political clout because the public school gravy train is larger.

Jay Greene himself has made the point that to an extent more teachers in the system pushes down the overall quality of the teaching workforce, because there is a limited pool of talent. It’s just as if more chefs were added to the restaurant workforce, eventually the quality would come down. And in an education system with a finite amount of resources, more teachers likely means less earning potential for the most effective teachers.

The kids of Colorado like me deserve better teachers, not more teachers taking administrative jobs or just adding more teachers to fill the system’s payrolls. Both the good teachers and the students benefit from more focus on teacher quality.

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Last week I gave a “cautious hooray” to the new Innovation Schools Act, which makes it easier for individual schools to free themselves from the red tape and union rules that crush reform efforts. The movement came to life last December when Bruce Randolph School asked for autonomy.

Bruce Randolph and Manual High School have had a hard time getting the local teachers union to approve their requests. Now another Denver school – Montclair Elementary – has come forward, reports the Rocky Mountain News, only to face similar obstruction:

Montclair teachers voted 22-1 in favor of seeking autonomy, and the staff sent the request to DPS and to the teachers’ union on April 18. DPS board members unanimously approved the request on May 15.

But Kimmal and his principal, Shannon Hagerman, say they’ve had no response from the union. So Friday, the last day for teachers in DPS, Hagerman, four parents and 21 teachers went to union headquarters downtown.

“We don’t want to go through the summer without any agreement with them,” Kimmal said.

Union leaders, including Denver Classroom Teachers Association President Kim Ursetta, were out, attending a Teachers Union Reform Network conference in Vail.

At least they weren’t sick in bed.

Let’s hope that the teachers and leaders at Montclair get the freedom they need soon so they can better help serve the needs of their students.

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Ben received this email from the Colorado League of Charter Schools:

On May 22, a destructive tornado tore through the town of Windsor in northeastern Colorado. Thankfully, Windsor Charter Academy (WCA) avoided a direct hit and all of its staff and students are safe.

Unfortunately, it is estimated that nine WCA families lost their homes in the tornado.

The Colorado League of Charter Schools is accepting donations of money, food, clothing and gift cards to help these charter school families. Please send your donation to the Colorado League of Charter Schools, 725 S. Broadway, Suite 7, Denver, CO 80209 — or drop it off at our office. We will deliver the items to Windsor Charter Academy on your behalf. Please make any checks payable to the Colorado League of Charter Schools–100% of your donation will be directed to WCA for distribution to its families that were affected by the tornado.

If you prefer to take your donation directly to Windsor Charter Academy, please call them at 970-674-5020 to make arrangements.

If you have any questions, need additional information, or know of other charter school families in northeastern Colorado that need assistance, please contact Stacy Rivera at 303-989-5356, ext. 112.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Kudos to the League for taking the lead in providing relief to these families. If you are able to help, please be sure to get in touch with either the League or the Academy.

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