Monthly Archives: December 2014

It’s days like today that bring home the fact little Eddie is sort of, well, unique. While I didn’t exactly hang my stocking by the chimney with care last night, or try to overcome insomnia with dreams of sugar plums (which are what exactly?), I have been looking forward to today with considerable excitement. Don’t get me wrong: Christmas will be great when it comes in a couple weeks, but there’s only one Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program hearing before the Colorado Supreme Court! Today at 1:30 PM, to be exact. You can bet little Eddie and many of his bigger friends will be in the vicinity of Denver’s courthouse building. The Denver Post‘s Eric Gorski set the stage with an article earlier this week:

Last week, I gave you quick rundown (okay, it wasn’t that quick) of two big charter reports. But a little guy can only write so much in one sitting, and there was still one more big report on public school choice from the Center for Reinventing Public Education to cover. We’ll do that today. The report sums up the results of a survey given to 500 parents in each of eight chosen cities, including Denver. There are some pretty big differences between the cities, so we’ll just focus on our capitol. Among other things, the survey finds that Denver parents have a more positive outlook on the direction in which their education system is heading than parents in most of the other cities. It also found that Denver parents feel pretty comfortable with their ability to find information on public school choice, don’t tend to struggle greatly with the choice application process, and feel that they have good public options available. Pretty rosy, right? Well, that’s just the good news.

It’s Friday, time to stick to something a little lighter and perhaps more upbeat. This week the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) publicly celebrated its annual award winners. While 27 districts, including Douglas County, earned recognition for topping the state’s accreditation system, today I particularly would like to bring attention to the school-level results from 2013-14 in three major categories:

As a junior education policy explorer, I’ve noticed a couple of things. First, education stuff is complicated. Second, complicated education stuff leads to a whole bunch of reports and studies. Lastly, those reports  and studies tend to come in spurts—a fact that often results in a whole lot of reading for yours truly. Let it never be said that I don’t get enough reading practice! Today, I’m going to outline a couple of recent reports on our good friends in the charter sector. The first report comes from the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. In addition to highlighting the explosive growth of charters in many areas, the report details the largest and fastest growing charter communities in the nation by examining districts with over 10,000 students. Not surprisingly given the city’s education efforts after Katrina, New Orleans remains at the top of the list for its percentage of students enrolled in charter schools (90 percent). Michigan and Ohio also take home prizes for having the most cities with a top-ten spot for charter enrollment share. Some Colorado districts also earn honorable mentions; Weld came in 15th, Brighton in 16th, Colorado Springs D11 in 20th, and DPS in 21st on the […]

We often talk about the value of educational choice for students and parents, and rightly so. Less frequently do we strike the theme of the importance of letting teachers choose. As I am fond of doing, a spate of recent stories today presents me with the opportunity to tie this theme together with a big red bow. Without further ado…

I really love snow days. Every time a storm rolls into town, I wake up, rush to the window, and rip the curtains open, hoping to see those tiny, beautiful flakes of hope drift past my wide little eyes. And while my dad usually grumbles to his coffee about the morning commute as he surveys what he calls the “mess” on our street, I see nothing but the pure white promise of fun and freedom. Brings back fond memories, doesn’t it? Well, you’d better put those safely away in the vault. Today, we discuss the impending death of the snow day. I’ll give you a minute to recover emotionally if you need it. In states across the country, districts are experimenting with ways to avoid weather-related cancellations. Pennsylvania has created a pilot program that allows virtual learning on snow days to count as normal instruction, a school district in Georgia is doing something very similar, and New Jersey has a piece of pending state legislation aimed at making at-home, technology-based learning on snow days permissible under state law. Meanwhile, a rural district in Kentucky will allow up to ten at-home learning days due to the area’s traditionally heavy snowfall. But […]