Monthly Archives: November 2009

Update: I’m still hanging out over at Twitter. Social studies standards were slated for 10:40 (not 10:20, my bad) — but not surprisingly the State Board is already behind on its agenda. Stay tuned…. A couple months ago I told you about the new social studies standards Colorado is seeking to adopt. Well, thanks to your feedback and others, the latest draft of standards (PDF). But has it improved enough? Today at 10:20 AM, the State Board of Education will be taking public testimony on the social studies standards. And yours truly has been set free to report live on what’s happening: so please check out my Twitter page! What students like me need to learn about history, geography, civics and economics is an important decision — so stay tuned….

Look, I’m not going to mess around with you: I know I’m an exceptionally smart kid. I pay attention to the education reform and policy debates more closely than most big people I know. So when I see the Denver Public Schools talking about draining the choice out of charter schools, as in the Denver Post, it feels really weird to be left scratching my head: District officials want three charter middle schools to become “boundary schools,” which means they must accept every child in the neighborhood the schools serve. The move could silence a long-running criticism about charters schools serving select groups of students.

Colorado isn’t the only state angling for Race to the Top federal education reform grant funds. Some people say our state is on the inside track to get a share of the money. Meanwhile, the results from last week’s Denver school board election has some urban reformers worried that the grant application could be in jeopardy. It may help buoy the hopes of reformers to look at other states who seem to have similar, or even worse, struggles. I’m talking about Wisconsin. As legislators in the Badger State closed out their session last week, they approved a bill being touted as a way to make the state eligible for Race to the Top money. (For more background on the debate, check out the latest edition of School Reform News for a piece written by contributing editor — and my Education Policy Center friend — Ben DeGrow.)

Earlier this week there were some elections. A bunch of big people in Colorado voted, though not nearly as many as voted last year for President. One of the issues many of them had to decide was who would serve on the local school board. That part sure interests my friends in the Education Policy Center. Click the play button below to listen to a new iVoices podcast as Pam Benigno and Ben DeGrow discuss the fallout from the school board elections in Colorado’s three largest school districts: Jefferson County, Denver, and Douglas County. Based on candidates’ support of school choice and other key education reforms, the results for the three districts were very different: It will be interesting to see how things unfold in the near future — especially in Denver and Douglas County.

Can we have an honest discussion about school funding? Not that my friends in the Education Policy Center haven’t been trying. All sorts of numbers are used in various ways to make the case that Colorado (or pick your state) has drastically underfunded schools, and more than once they’ve worked to set the record straight. Certain interest groups and their useful supporters nonetheless want us to aim for the middle of some specific ranking. If that’s their goal, someone almost always can find some category in which Colorado (or pick your state) lags the national average, or even the middle of the pack. And when have you ever heard the same advocates in high-spending states acknowledge that they have enough funding, that no increases are needed? Well, how about a little context? Along comes Vanderbilt University professor James Guthrie with a new piece in Education Next that effectively breaks through the scare tactics and lays the foundation for a serious, honest discussion.

Chalk up another gold star for public charter schools as an education reform success. What am I talking about? The second half of a one-two research combination punch, released in late October but just reported by the smart people writing opinion for the Wall Street Journal: Mr. [Marcus] Winters focuses on New York City public school students in grades 3 through 8. “For every one percent of a public school’s students who leave for a charter,” concludes Mr. Winters, “reading proficiency among those who remain increases by about 0.02 standard deviations, a small but not insignificant number, in view of the widely held suspicion that the impact on local public schools . . . would be negative.” It tuns out that traditional public schools respond to competition in a way that benefits their students. Writing on Jay Greene’s blog, the venerable Greg Forster additionally notes: …Marcus also finds that the lowest-performing students in NYC’s regular public schools benefit from charter competition; in fact, while the benefits for the overall population are statistically certain only in reading, they’re certain in both reading and math for low performers.

As reported in yesterday’s Denver Post, more and more Denver families are becoming smart education shoppers and taking advantage of the choices available to them — even sometimes opting for different schools within the same household: The chaos begins in the Black household on weekday mornings around 6 a.m., when the family’s three children prepare to head off to three different Denver high schools. Keenan, a senior, attends George Washington High School. Griffin the sophomore, goes to nearby Thomas Jefferson. And Addie, a freshman, is enrolled at South. The oldest likes George Washington’s International Baccalaureate program, the sophomore likes the computer center at TJ and Addie is excited about the diversity at South. Interested? Excited? Confused? …

If there’s a musical instrument I could play, it would probably be the drums. (Some of you may think it’s the horn I like to toot, and my mom & dad have already said “No” to any loud percussion instruments, but anyway….) Why? Because I like to keep banging on the drum of how very, very important teacher quality is to improving schools and student learning outcomes. Reforms like performance pay, streamlining tenure, and alternative certification are not merely nice ideas, but vital changes that need to be made to our school systems. On that note (pun intended), all of you — especially the teacher quality skeptics — really ought to check out this new issue brief by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF)’s Brooke Dollens Terry, “Shortchanging Our Kids: How Poor Teacher Quality & Failed Government Policies Harm Students” (PDF). Many of the things Brooke writes about Texas could apply to Colorado as well. While I’m beating on the drum, one of the groups doing great real-world work in adding quality teachers to the instructional ranks is ABCTE. ABCTE has just created a great new resource directed at teachers and leaders of charter schools — designed to help connect […]