Hard to believe it was five months ago I asked the question: Is major education reform about ready to give Iowa a try? At the heart of the story is a local connection. Jason Glass, appointed the state’s education chief a little more than a year ago by incoming Governor Terry Branstad, has some notable Colorado roots.

Branstad and Glass forwarded a fairly bold plan for the Hawkeye State. Ideas included significant changes to teacher preparation, pay and retention; focusing on literacy through cutting back on social promotion; school accountability enhancements; and more flexibility and student opportunity through charters, online programs and other public education options.

Of course, the state’s top executive certainly can’t — nor should he be able to — update laws by fiat. Still, Gov. Branstad’s plan has faced a particularly difficult time since being launched in the Iowa legislature in February. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow provides some of the detail in a new story for School Reform News: Continue Reading »

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Today is the birthday of the late, great Dr. Seuss (aka Ted Geisel). Millions of school children across Colorado and the rest of the United States will hear one or more of his stories as part of the Read Across America campaign. The nation’s largest teachers union is one of the event’s key sponsors. Hey, the NEA needs to show off its softer side, too — especially when mired in a losing PR battle.

So in the spirit of the day, I decided to reach out to some NEA officials and invite them to become regular readers on my blog. Here is an unofficial transcript of the dialogue*: Continue Reading »

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Last spring I told you about a growing movement to oppose the Common Core standards and accompanying assessments, as well as the momentum toward a national curriculum. Well, a recent spate of evidence suggests that the Common Core cause has fallen on hard times, to say the least:

• Two recent Pioneer Institute reports not only call into question the legality of the Common Core push but also estimate the transition costs at a daunting $16 billion
• South Carolina leaders have pushed back hard against the nationalization of education, prompting a loud response from Education Secretary Arne Duncan
• The only expert Education Next could find to defend the Common Core math standards in an online debate turned out not to be much of a Common Core supporter after all
• Once a backer of the U.S. Department of Education’s efforts, nationally-respected Washington Post education columnist and author Jay Mathews came out a couple days ago with his evidence-backed case for why Common Core standards will fail

Since before I pointed out the anti-national curriculum petition nine months ago, many key Colorado education leaders (including my Education Policy Center friends) have added their names. The momentum (and the case) against the Common Core push continues to grow stronger. Depending on which side you take, February 2012 will be a month to remember — or a month to forget.

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One of the strengths I’ve touted about the charter school model is the greater flexibility to close down poor performers. In fact, it’s pretty rare for a charter to enter the “turnaround” process instead of being shuttered. But that’s what happened in 2010 with Denver’s Northeast Academy, having suffered through a healthy share of turmoil. The school district authorizer, Denver Public Schools, then signed a three-year contract with Northeast, but since has decided it wants to force a “phased closure” of the school by removing kindergarten and sixth grades.

My Education Policy Center friends took a tour of Northeast Academy (385 students K-8, 87.5% Free and Reduced Lunch) last week and saw some clear signs of progress. New leadership is in place. The Core Knowledge program has been reinstated. The instructional workforce is being reshaped, and many dedicated teachers are getting high-quality, hands-on professional development. Serious discipline problems have declined. Some internal skill assessments show significant student growth since the start of the school year. Is it enough? Only time will tell.

A third grade class Northeast Academy responds to the teacher's question during a class exercise in language arts

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There’s a little controversy trickling out of Washington, D.C., that you may not have heard about. A proposed regulation from the Internal Revenue Service would effectively deem charter school teachers to be private employees and not eligible for government pension benefits. Yesterday the Colorado State Board of Education made the bold and unanimous move of expressing opposition to the proposal, as outlined in a press release:

“This regulation would negatively impact nearly all charter school teachers in the country,” Board Chairman Bob Schaffer said. “In essence this regulation would strip charter schools of their status as government groups when it comes to retirement system participation.

“If that were to happen, teachers at those charter schools who now participate in the Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association would be forced to find jobs elsewhere or forfeit their accrued pension wealth.”

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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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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:

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Education policy gurus, brandish your dustbins. Last week Mike Antonucci brought attention to a report from Georgia that the state is looking to abandon the once vaunted “65% Solution,” the idea (popular circa 2005-06) that schools should be required to spend 65 percent of funds “in the classroom.” Antonucci writes:

This made for useful sound bites, but was always problematic because the definition of classroom spending was amorphous. Principals and curriculum specialists weren’t classroom spending, but teachers’ dental benefits were. There was bound to be a lot of cheating to reach the magic number. Unions hated it. And even though unions hated it, I didn’t like it either. In 2006, I wrote that I remained “doubtful that meeting such a threshold has any effect on the quality of instruction or on student performance.”

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Yesterday I peered ahead at the upcoming legislative session. Today I take a look back at a landmark piece of national education legislation. Yes, I sometimes get confused like that. Anyway, it was 10 years ago this week that then-President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). A whole decade? That makes me feel pretty young, as I wasn’t even a gleam in my daddy’s eye at that point — whatever that means.

To commemorate the occasion, Colorado’s own State Board of Education chairman Bob Schaffer penned his thoughts on the National Journal Education Experts blog. At the time NCLB was debated and passed Congress, Schaffer was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. So his perspective on what he describes as “an enormously bad idea” is especially insightful: 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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