Monthly Archives: February 2010

Maybe you have heard of Coverdell Education Savings Accounts. Maybe you even have one for your kids. They were created by Congress in 2001 as a way to save $2,000 per year per child for qualified education expenses tax-free. It’s a good way for parents to save money to cover some K-12 private school tuition expenses, or school supplies, or even to provide some savings for a college education. But it appears, according to the Heritage Foundation’s Patrick Tyrrell, that Congress — by doing nothing — soon may limit what you can use your Coverdell ESA money for:

Ed News Colorado’s Alan Gottlieb has excellent coverage of last night’s lottery event in which 170 mostly poor and Hispanic 5th grade students were vying for 130 slots to enroll into the new West Denver Prep charter school. The original West Denver Prep is the highest-performing middle school in Colorado’s largest city (as opposed to some Michigan school districts that paid money to deceive parents into thinking their schools were the best). Alan posted a video that might be difficult to watch, if you have a hard time watching the disappointment of parents who recognize their children’s educational futures may be on the line. Here’s a poignant and powerful reminder of why we work so hard to expand school choice and promote other important education reforms:

It may be a little off the topic of K-12 education, but it’s very relevant to many who work in Colorado’s public school system. The Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) has published a new book titled Sweeping the Shop Floor: A New Labor Model for America. The old industrial labor monopolies that seemed to work for a different era have wreaked damage on Detroit, California and many other places. In its press release, EFF proposes something different: In response, the study proposes that the United States modernize its labor laws based on reforms successfully implemented several decades ago in New Zealand. The highly regulated nation found itself on the brink of bankruptcy by the late 1980s. New Zealand’s political leaders passed a series of sweeping economic and labor policy reforms modernizing the nation’s labor laws. In 1991 the Employment Contracts Act gave workers the choice of whether or not to be represented, and also made unions compete for members. Over five years, unemployment dropped from 11 percent to 6 percent and productivity increased significantly. “This new piece of legislation was not only a boon to New Zealand’s economy, but also had a strong social impact on its citizens,” says Mike Reitz, […]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or so it seems. The article in today’s Denver Post, headlined “Nearly one in three Colo. graduates needs remedial courses in college, study finds”, almost could have appeared the year before … or two years ago … or the year before that. To be exact, the new report from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (PDF) finds that 29.3 percent of Colorado’s 2008 high school graduates who attended a Colorado two-year or four-year college needed formal remedial help in math, reading and/or writing. Six years ago my Education Policy Center friend Marya DeGrow completed an issue paper on the same topic, titled Cutting Back on Catching Up (PDF). Using the same CCHE data, she noted that 26.6 percent of Colorado’s 2002 high school graduates needed remediation — at a cost of $18.9 million to the state of Colorado and $15.4 million to the college students themselves.

Ed News Colorado reports on an attempt by Denver Public Schools leadership to help its struggling schools break out of their struggles: [DPS superintendent Tom] Boasberg, in an email to principals Friday afternoon, said “it is our intention” not to place any unassigned teachers at year’s end into schools now on probation under the district’s school rating system. He also said DPS “will seek to limit forced placements” in the district’s poorest schools, or those receiving Title 1 federal grant money based on student poverty rates. Whether the teachers are poor performers, or they just aren’t warm to the school’s culture and its program to achieve excellence (presuming an effective one is in action), it does more harm than good to force teacher placements — at least as a policy on paper. If the current approach is the best we can do to deal with the “dance of the lemons,” then we might as well give up on urban school reform. But I’m too young to give up, and you should be, too! Writing at the Ed News blog, Alexander Ooms lauds what DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg is trying to do: “Changing the lemon dance to a game of musical […]

It’s a busy day in Eddie’s world, so I don’t have a lot of time to write. But I would feel badly if I didn’t point you to some good news about the success of the Milwaukee Voucher Program. Research by the University of Minnesota’s John Robert Warren (PDF) confirms that voucher students have significantly more success in terms of graduating form high school than their public school counterparts. Hip, hip, hooray for school choice!

Being the cute little kid that I am and all, you’d probably think I’d be all on board for raising more federal dollars to fund the long-running, early childhood school readiness program known as Head Start. If not as a blogger, at least as a stage prop … right? Wrong. I mean, it sure sounds like a nice idea on paper. But when you look at the long-awaited comprehensive research on Head Start that finally was released last month, you realize the billions of dollars spent every year is not accomplishing a whole lot of results beyond making us feel good about ourselves. What do I mean? Check out the report by the Heritage Foundation’s David Muhlhausen and Dan Lips. In the dozens of measurements that made up the areas measured — cognitive development, social development, child health and parenting outcomes — virtually none showed a positive impact from Head Start. Their conclusion?

As Ed News Colorado reports today: The number of full-time students attending online programs across the state grew 12.5 percent to 13,128, or the equivalent of the 19th largest school district in Colorado. The remarkable point in the story is that 12.5 percent is the second-lowest rate of annual growth for Colorado public online programs in the last six years. Still, it’s gigantic compared to the state’s overall enrollment growth of 1.7 percent. Ed News Colorado points out one reason why the demand continues to grow:

February is here, and that means my friends at the Education Policy Center have a special event right around the corner. Here is the information — I hope you can join us: Randy DeHoff, Vice President of the State Board of Education will speak at our offices about 21st Century Learning. Is 21st Century Learning truly the wave of the future, or just another educational fad? Reception begins at 5:30 PM, followed by the program at 6:15 PM. Educators are invited to a private 5:00 PM meeting with Mr. DeHoff. I’m not sure what’s such a big deal about the 21st Century — it’s the only one I’ve ever lived in. But 21st Century Learning is an issue on the minds of a lot of parents, teachers and other educators. Just how important and how relevant are “21st century skills” like problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration and self-motivation, as opposed to the good, old-fashioned mastery of content? Where is the balance? What will it take for today’s students (like me) to succeed in a globally competitive economy? I hope you can make it on February 11. RSVP online here.