My Education Policy Center friends asked me to stop playing around in the snow long enough to give a quick update and comment on something I mentioned last week. As Ed News Colorado reports, Rep. Don Beezley’s “Parent Trigger II” successfully passed its first obstacle with a favorable 7-6 party line vote in the House Education Committee yesterday.

In other words, the proposal that represents a small, positive step for parental empowerment stepped out from beneath the groundhog’s shadow. And not a moment too soon, for such a commonsense piece of legislation.

Yes, it’s sad to see only Republican representatives showing a modest support for the education consumer. Is it just Colorado where Democrats seem so universally wed to protecting K-12 institutions of power (the Colorado Association of School Boards and Colorado Education Association both testified against HB 1149) at the expense of a little extra parent voice in the school turnaround process? Continue Reading »

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I’m still catching my breath from an amazingly successful National School Choice Week, including the Kids Aren’t Cars movie night put on by some of my friends right here in Denver.

And now today it’s the first-ever Digital Learning Day, centered at a site where you can participate in a live chat and watch a series of webcasts, including an online national townhall meeting at 1 PM Eastern (11 AM Mountain). Colorado is well represented, as the townhall features National Online Teacher of the Year Kristen Kipp from Jeffco Virtual Academy. Also, at 1:30 PM ET / 11:30 AM MT, our local Englewood High School will be one of numerous school sites around the country interacting online via Skype.

I tell you what. There is so much more going on in the digital learning arena here in Colorado, and my Education Policy Center friends are right in the middle of it. If you haven’t seen their helpful guide for parents that came out within the past couple months, you really need to check out Choosing a Colorado Online School for Your Child. Continue Reading »

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Now that School Choice Week is over, and I’m able to relax a bit after my manic phase of hyperactivity, it’s back to the (fun) edublogging grind. Right out of the gate, it’s time to tackle an important education reform item that emerged last week but falls a little bit outside the school choice arena. A January 25 Denver Post story by Yesenia Robles proclaimed that “Colorado gets a C for teacher policies”:

Colorado has developed good policy for dismissing unqualified teachers, but not for increasing the pool of well-prepared teachers entering the workforce, according to a report out today.

The National Council on Teacher Quality, a national nonprofit, released the report today grading every state’s teacher policy. Colorado averaged a C letter grade, up from a D+ in 2009, but was ranked as No. 12 among the states making the most progress.

Yes, this is the same respected NCTQ I’ve talked about before regarding their study of teacher preparation programs. In fact, my Education Policy Center friends last year recorded an iVoices podcast with NCTQ’s Sandi Jacobs about the then-latest version of their State Teacher Policy Yearbook. Continue Reading »

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While School Choice Week has me in a happy frenzy, it doesn’t leave me as much time for blogging. But in my few spare moments, I wanted to share a few timely developments fitting for this week’s big festivities:

• The Alliance for School Choice has released the latest version of the School Choice Yearbook… The big news? More than 210,000 students nationwide are enrolled in publicly-funded private educational choice programs, a 25 percent increase in just four years!
• Remember Education Savings Accounts, the cutting-edge school choice program with a superior design? Well, today a Maricopa County judge ruled that Arizona’s first-of-its-kind ESA program for special needs student was constitutional!
• Finally, speaking of special needs students, the Columbus Dispatch reports that Ohio is about to launch its fourth voucher program, the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship!

Good news on all three fronts. Before my hyperactivity takes over and my short attention span fades away, here’s one last call to invite you to this evening’s Kids Aren’t Cars movie night at the Independence Institute in Denver. Hope to see you there!

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Today’s lead story at Ed News Colorado highlights the disparity in private parent and community giving within Denver Public Schools. Reporter Charlie Brennan notes that no school raked in more than the nearly $230,000 at Bromwell Elementary, a school with a low 8 percent study poverty rate. The general findings are no surprise, yet nonetheless disappointing:

At the other end of the poverty – and fund-raising – spectrum is Johnson Elementary in southwest Denver, which reported fewer than $3,000 in private gifts in 2010-11.

If a donation of five or six figures came through the door of the school, where 96 percent of students are low-income, said Principal Robert Beam, “You’d be writing a story about a principal who is dancing in the streets all day long.”

The timing of the story is remarkable. Why? Yesterday substantial checks went out to 14 metro area public schools and 2 public charter management organizations (CMOs) serving high-poverty student populations, with awards totaling $500,000. And they didn’t just go out to schools based on need, but to schools with a proven record of serving their students well: Continue Reading »

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Has it really been almost three months since I told you about a new Choice Media video on the Douglas County Choice Scholarship program injunction? Well, award-winning director Bob Bowdon has triumphed again with this hard-hitting, six-minute video about the New York City NAACP’s lawsuit trying to remove a charter school that successfully serves inner-city minority students:

Continue Reading »

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Update, 1/18: Information was added about the Colorado Coalition of Cyberschool Families event

The second annual National School Choice Week is coming up soon. It’s almost time to stop gearing up and to start getting into action. For most of my fellow Coloradans, there aren’t any good excuses to not be able to attend even of the numerous events going on during the week of January 22-28: Continue Reading »

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Just a quick post today. More good news emerging from DPS today. Ed News Colorado highlights an intriguing new report from A+ Denver that breaks down some key performance data from the state’s second-largest school district:

This report shows that Charter Management Organizations (charter organizations that manage more than one school, currently DSST, West Denver Prep and KIPP) are not only outperforming district and other individual charter schools, but are having a significant impact on the district’s overall growth and achievement scores at grades six and above.

Continue Reading »

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If I were to write “it’s that time of year again”… again, you’d probably be ready to chew me out. And my little ears are too sensitive for that. So I’ll just take note that Colorado’s legislative session kicks off on Wednesday. Which naturally means (pardon me if you’ve heard this before) get ready and hold on to your wallets.

Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl as usual does a great job previewing the session and legislative initiatives likely to emerge. If you want the in-depth take, you simply have to go check out the story. According to the story, action is likely to be seen on the following fronts, among others: Continue Reading »

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The hubbub about New Year’s is past, the Christmas toys have grown old and boring. What’s to get excited about around here — except for maybe the Denver Broncos in the playoffs? Well, ’tis the open enrollment season for families in many Colorado school districts who are looking for a better, more effective educational option for their child. Like Jeffco Public Schools, the state’s largest district, where the first round of choice enrollment began a couple days ago and continues until January 24.

Denver Public Schools students and parents have from now until January 31 to exercise their school choice, using a new process that allows families to list up to five schools in order of preference. The Denver Post opined recently that the new, streamlined system is fairer and ultimately will prove more user-friendly. Parents can learn more from DPS at meetings either tomorrow morning at East High School or Wednesday evening at George Washington High School.

The range of educational options is expanding within DPS, and sometimes coming directly to families as schools compete for students. Viva Colorado’s Roxana Soto reports (H/T Ed News Colorado) that leaders from the newest West Denver Prep school are going door-to-door in the city’s Montbello neighborhood to recruit fifth-graders into their highly successful program: Continue Reading »

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