Monthly Archives: August 2012

Foiled Again? Colorado School Finance Project Data Summary Skews Story

The Colorado School Finance Project (COSFP) has released its latest batch of funding data. Thanks to this morning’s Ed News Colorado brief for bringing it to my attention. Guess who gets to play the foil? Yours truly: The conservative Independence Institute, which has a different philosophy about education spending than does the project, argues that school spending has risen consistently during the early part of the decade. See this recent blog post for their take on things. In case you skipped the link, “this recent blog post” is a hat tip to little old Eddie. But it’s more than an argument to observe “that school spending has risen consistently” until the past couple years. It’s what the numbers say. (If you want to go check them yourself, the data all come from the Colorado Department of Education (CDE).)

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Winters Just Made It Even Harder to Argue with Florida's Education Success

Last time I wrote about Florida, it was touting their “silver medal” among the 50 states for growing student achievement in the past 15 years. The Harvard study that handed out the imaginary awards analyzed how much progress 4th-grade and 8th-grade students have made on the national NAEP test. Second place out of 50? Not too shabby. But how valid is it? Some critics have said the remarkable gains Florida 4th-graders have achieved, particularly in reading, are dramatically overblown because of their student retention policy. Since 2003 most of the state’s 3rd-graders who have failed to demonstrate reading proficiency have been held back, of course the test results for the smaller pool of 4th-grade pupils is going to look better. End of story, right? Not so fast. A recent Independence Institute guest speaker has gone behind the numbers to figure out just how much the retention policy can explain away Florida’s remarkable gains. In a newly published analysis for Education Next, Manhattan Institute senior fellow Marcus Winters finds the truth lies between the two claims, but closer to those made by Florida’s boosters than those made by its critics:

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Eagle County Teacher-Technology Controversy Calls for Blended Learning

Several days ago Education Week published a story about a large Colorado school district replacing French and German language instructors with software-driven programs: Of all the recent budget cuts made by the Eagle County, Colo., school district —the loss of 89 staff jobs through attrition and layoffs, a 1.5 percent across-the-board pay cut, and the introduction of three furlough days—none sparked as much anger or faced the same scrutiny as the decision to cut three foreign-language teaching positions and replace them with online instruction. Since I’m not too familiar with the details underlying the decision in Eagle County, I’m more interested in discussing policy ramifications and other ideas in general terms. Clearly, the decision was driven by the need to tighten the budget belt. The 6,300-student mountain district is not alone in this circumstance.

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State Board OKs Two More Falcon Innovation Schools; One Banishes Tenure

When Colorado passed the first-of-its-kind Innovation Schools Act in 2008, observers knew that the law was primarily tailored to transform the most challenging campuses in Denver Public Schools (DPS). And so it largely has played out. No one else has matched the 24 DPS schools who have taken advantage of the Act’s process to transform existing public schools by setting them free from many state laws, board policies and bargaining provisions. But if the state’s second-largest and most heavily urbanized district takes a look in the rear view mirror, they may begin to see a different district creeping up behind them: Falcon 49. Now, in one sense, Falcon cannot catch up, because there aren’t even 24 schools in its boundaries. But as a share of schools with officially approved innovation status, the El Paso County district is now clearly past DPS and behind only tiny Kit Carson, with its only two schools recognized under the Innovation Schools Act. Two months after granting innovation status to six Falcon schools, on Wednesday the Colorado State Board of Education unanimously approved innovation plans for two more Falcon schools–bringing the total to eight. In addition to the positive potential unleashed by achieving freedom through […]

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How Much Colo. Teachers Union Member Losses Tied to Greater Options?

A couple months ago I clued you in to the sentimental sounds of national union officials bemoaning historic losses in membership this year. The Colorado Watchdog reports that the union in our own backyard faces an even bigger decline: State-by-state membership data disclosed last month to delegates at the union’s national convention and obtained by the blog Education Intelligence Agency show the [Colorado Education Association] lost 1,512 of its 36,991 active members — or 4.1 percent — between the 2009-10 and 2010-11 school years. Meanwhile, a CEA official in Denver acknowledges the state union experienced another loss of approximately 2,000 members during the most recent academic year.

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Local Breakdown of Colorado K-12 Spending Further Highlights Need for Reform

Since I got so long-winded yesterday (and because I know you’re tired of me hammering on the school funding issue once again), today’s post is going to be a short one. I’ve recently pointed out that the statewide K-12 financial trends are not quite as dire as some have proclaimed. But what about at the local level? The Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci has been doing his homework. Using the latest Census Bureau data, he has assembled a district-by-district comparison of Colorado K-12 spending between 2004-05 and 2009-10. It’s worth a look to get a localized sense of funding effects. On a per-student basis, all but 10 of the state’s 178 school districts spent more in 2010 than in 2005.

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Colorado School Finance Partnership Report Fails to Inspire Real Reform Hopes

I’ve recently been asked whether I actually take the time to read every piece of hate mail, er, fan mail that I receive with not only compliments but also with thoughts and suggestions to improve this blog. Let me tell you, I’ve never let a piece go unopened. And yes, all your suggestions have been heard loud and clear. But this time, it really is important for me to talk about school finance. You see, Ed News Colorado reports today that the School Finance Partnership has released a new and expanded version of a report released five months ago, highlighting some guiding principles to develop a new school funding system for Colorado. The Partnership includes several groups from CASE, CASB and CEA to a few more reform-minded organizations, and is co-chaired by former state treasurer Cary Kennedy. To approve any and all recommendations required the full consensus of all these groups on the steering committee. Unsurprisingly, then, the result is not exactly tilted in a fiscally conservative direction. That’s seldom how these things work. But it’s worth a closer look:

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AFT National Teachers Union Resolved to Protect Power in Douglas County

Summer vacation is almost over (for some students, it already is). Any reason why I can’t write about Douglas County again? That’s what I thought. So here goes… Education Week‘s Stephen Sawchuk reported last week from the annual the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention that members sounded off on a local Colorado issue: The union passed, unanimously, a special resolution pledging solidarity for AFT affiliates that it asserts have been attacked, beseiged, or had their contracts superceded, as in Detroit, Chicago, and Douglas County, Colo. Today a friend found and brought my attention to a copy of the resolution. Truth be told, it contains more Whereas‘s than you can shake a stick at, including the paragraph that honed in on Colorado’s third-largest school district:

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Thompson School Board Mulls Paying Directors to Cover Official Expenses

Here’s a good question I haven’t thought a lot about before: What kind of payments should school board directors be eligible to receive? I’m not talking about campaign contributions, which most districts unfortunately allow from groups that get dues collection services from government payroll systems. Special interests stopped Colorado from cleaning up that unethical cycle four years ago. No, I’m talking about publicly-funded compensation for official service. Last week a school board member from Loveland proposed that her Thompson School District might help cover expenses: Board member Denise Montagu sparked the conversation during a special meeting this week in which the application deadline for the vacant District A board seat was extended. Specifically, she asked if the board members could be reimbursed for mileage or receive a stipend towards their personal cellphone bills.

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Fordham Reports Adds Popular Views to Debate on K-12 Budget Realities

I need a sidekick. No, I really, really do. Someone maybe a little naive and idealistic (even more than yours truly) who can feed me lines like these: Sidekick: What are we going to do today, Eddie? Me: Why, same thing we do every day: Blog about education, of course! Sidekick: Oh, yeah. Of course. But what exactly are we going to blog about? Me: Same thing we blog about every day: How schools need to spend money more effectively in tight budget times…. Ok, so I exaggerate a bit. Just a little bit! I mean, in the past couple weeks alone, we’ve covered the issue of reforms focused on productive spending here, here, here and here. It’s a common theme for a very practical reason. As Checker Finn and Amber Winkler explain in the preface of the new Fordham Institute report How Americans Would Slim Down Public Education:

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