Retiring Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo - and former president of the Independence Institute (long before I was even born) - has a great piece published in today’s Rocky Mountain News. Most people associate Rep. Tancredo with the issue of immigration, but his deepest roots go back into education as a former public school teacher and as regional representative for the U.S. Department of Education during the 1980s.

As he gives advice to Colorado’s current governor and one of his recent predecessors, the themes in Rep. Tancredo’s Speakout column are not novel or startling, but they’re important reminders we can’t hear enough:

Last week, Gov. Bill Ritter and former Gov. Roy Romer wrote a column about the state of education in America. In it, I believe they’ve unwittingly made a powerful argument for precisely the kind of educational reform that they have publicly opposed for many years: school choice….

If history has taught us anything, it is that solutions to some of the world’s most complex problems have come only when we have unleashed the power of the free market. The answer to the education problem, simply put, is more choices for parents, and more competition by schools for students. It is not another ambitious big government “solution” put together by the same special interests that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo - a status quo that even Romer and Ritter admit leaves our students lagging far behind youngsters from Seoul and Singapore as they enter a newly competitive global economy.

In case someone reading this post is new to the site, I don’t mind repeating myself, too. The best tool to help parents understand and take control of their educational options in Colorado is our School Choice for Kids website. Check it out!

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Probably the best state for Colorado or any other to look to as a model in education reform is Florida. Education reform was the primary focus of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during his eight-year tenure, and he was able to make progress on many fronts. The remarkable success yielded by years of systematic advances in school choice, accountability, standards, and teacher pay makes the Sunshine State worthy of emulation:

Government-gathered data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that Florida has outpaced Colorado and the national average in nearly every measure of math and reading proficiency.

In that light, it was important that Heritage Foundation education policy analyst Dan Lips was able to sit down and interview Jeb Bush (H/T Matt Ladner) at a recent education reform summit in Orlando. Here are a few key excerpts of Bush’s remarks from the interview transcribed at National Review Online:

We need all schools — here in Florida and in 49 other states — to get better for our country’s future. The only way to improve student performance is through continual and perpetual reform of education. America needs a 21st century education system for a 21st century world….

Raising standards, measuring progress, grading school performance, providing educational options and targeting resources to reward success and reverse failure are all tools that are transforming schools and raising student achievement.

However, success is never final. I hope we never stop trying to implement more innovative and audacious reforms….

I also believe we need to better apply free-market principles to the way we deliver education in order to improve the entire system. We should expand educational options so all parents can make the best choices for their children. Teachers and principals should be paid based on performance. Educators that teach subjects with a shortage of teachers, teach in low-performing schools or carry increased responsibilities should be paid more. We should also give merit pay to teachers based on student learning gains and other objective measures….

People from across the ideological spectrum can agree that improving the quality of education for students from every background, from pre-K through high school, is the great challenge of our time. We need to put partisan rhetoric aside and work together to raise student achievement through reforms that produce measurable results.

Go and read the whole thing. For the sake of myself and other kids, too, it would be great if Colorado could have a leader as bold, articulate, and visionary as Jeb Bush.

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My parents and my friends at the Education Policy Center say that school is a place for learning what I need to be successful some day, and that includes hearing both sides of an argument. It’s kind of scary then to see that some schools are busy indoctrinating kids.

As the Heartland Institute points out, the British High Court ruled that due to at least 11 scientific errors contained in Al Gore’s feature-length movie An Inconvenient Truth, schools who show the movie to students in class must balance the presentation with contradictory evidence.

In Colorado, our Governor Bill Ritter has made it clear he wants all K-12 students “to understand the science of climate change.” Yet as more students are exposed to this topic, it is important they receive a balanced presentation and not an uncritical indoctrination from Al Gore’s movie.

The British approach is to make a universal mandate for all their classrooms. But in Colorado, we value local control. One way then to ensure your public school student is not being indoctrinated in climate change hysteria or anything else is to petition the local school board or your school principal. Of course, school leaders are more likely to listen to the concerns of students and parents where they have the power of choice and can use their feet to find someplace that doesn’t indoctrinate.

An important tool helping parents to become good education consumers is our School Choice for Kids website - search to find the right school near you! As for me, I’ve still got a lot of time before school begins again. I’m going to go enjoy it.

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Our governor has placed a lot of attention on the goal of cutting Colorado’s dropout rate in half in 10 years. To get a sense of what it will take to accomplish that goal, inquiring minds should go check out Diplomas Count 2008 by Education Week. (Thanks to John LaPlante at the SPN Blog for pointing it out.)

There’s lots of information at your fingertips, such as:

• State-specific background reports with easy-to-read information … here’s the report for Colorado (almost 26 percent of students failed to graduate in 2005)
• A tool to compare Colorado’s P-20 Council to different states’ education alignment councils
• An interactive mapping tool that allows you to see how successful individual school districts are at seeing kids through to high school graduation

Memo to Education Week: The Education Policy Center staff here says what you have put together is a great resource for looking at the dropout issue. But did you know that there is no way to find Colorado’s largest school district (Jefferson County, where I am right now) on your mapping tool? It doesn’t come up in a name search. It isn’t labeled on a map of the Denver metro area. What’s the deal?

When it comes to great mapping tools on education websites, I’ll stick with the one that helps my parents to find the best school for me.

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Do private school vouchers help kids graduate from high school? A new study about the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) suggests that might be the case:

In “Graduation Rates for Choice and Public School Students in Milwaukee: 2003-2007,” John Robert Warren, Ph.D., compares graduation data for students in the MPCP and the MPS. Dr.Warren concludes that “students in the MPCP are more likely to graduate from high school than MPS students.”

According to Warren, had MPS graduation rates equaled those of MPCP students, there would have been almost 20% more public high school graduates between 2003 and 2007. Over the five years studied, that would have meant nearly 3,000 additional MPS graduates.

The very smart Jay Greene also points out the need for caution: Warren acknowledges “he can’t say whether the voucher program caused their higher graduation rate.”

But our Governor - who has promised to cut the state’s dropout rate in half - ought to pay attention over the next few years, as Jay Greene is working on a study that will help answer the question: Do private school vouchers help kids graduate from high school?

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It’s always a little scary when the legislature is in session making new laws that affect education. But one bill the governor signed yesterday gives a little hope for some real positive changes:

Bruce Randolph Middle School led the way and now all schools in Colorado will have the opportunity to become autonomous.

“A status quo approach is no longer working and in fact is hindering our ability to graduate our students with skills they need to succeed in a global economy,” said Colorado Senate President Peter Groff.

Wednesday morning, Gov. Bill Ritter was joined by staff members and students at Bruce Randolph during a bill signing that would allow schools to break free of a certain district to have more decision making power as it relates to students, staff, and budget.

National education reform writer Joe Williams took the opportunity to send “bigtime kudos” to Senator Groff for his leadership in bringing forward this bill - known as the Innovation Schools Act.

The bill certainly didn’t end up as strong as it could have, after being watered down by the teachers union. But it should be easier now for schools to break free from some of the red tape that keeps them tied up. Only time will tell just how much easier it will be. But Denise, the Colorado charter school lady, explains why the waivers made available through this new law can be so important to school success - success that will matter to kids like me.

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Update: Pam let me know that a couple things quoted from her interview with 9News weren’t quite right. So I’ve marked them below.

Yesterday, Education Policy Center Director Pam Benigno spoke out about a proposal to raise school property taxes in Jefferson County:

“Well, I think this is definitely not a good time,” said Pam Benigno, director of the Education Policy Center within the Independence Institute. The Independence Institute is a Golden-based, non-partisan government watchdog group.

Benigno says the homeowner should not have to shoulder the burden of JeffCo’s increasing costs.

“I think that this is, this is too much,” said Benigno. “However, the system is the problem. They will always need more money.”

Benigno claims that while attending a meeting on the 2004 bond election [it was actually many years before that], a district staffer told her JeffCo plans on a bond issue or mill levy increase once every four or five years.

“As a citizen of Jefferson County, that really makes me uncomfortable to know that they’re planning on raising my taxes every five years,” said Benigno. “And, this time, this has been only four years.”

Benigno says the district should take a hard look at the way teachers are paid and restructure the system so it is more efficient. She says JeffCo should concentrate on offering students more school choice and be a stronger advocate for charter schools instead of just asking for more money from a population that is aging and contains fewer school-aged kids.

“Well, the problem is nobody really knows how much they need,” said Benigno. “Part of the government bureaucracy is to always need more money.”

I know you often hear some people say that they want to do things “for the children,” but in this case it’s not clear actually how much this money will help the children. We’ve seen there is no connection between spending increases and improving student outcomes. Pam is right: Jeffco needs to start responding better to parents’ demands for different kinds of school choices for their kids first.

Still, seeing Colorado’s largest school district begging for money once again leaves me with a lot of questions, like: How much of the hundreds of millions Jeffco spends gets to the classroom now? How effective is that money being used in the classroom? Shouldn’t it be easier for my parents and other people who pay taxes to see just exactly how that money is being spent? And besides, didn’t the Governor already raise school property taxes?

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Roy Romer is the former governor of our state and leader of a national group that wants politicians to talk more about education.

This very important man sat down with Berny Morson from the Rocky Mountain News to answer five questions. Here’s the very first thing Gov. Romer said:

Since ‘83, we’ve really made relatively little progress, we’ve really been static. The rest of the world has been going up very rapidly.

Among 30 industrial nations, we’re 25th from the top in math. We’re 21st from the top in science. Other countries have made great progress. Poland, South Korea, Singapore, Finland, Canada - we simply have not kept pace with the progress in education worldwide. Graduation will occur in a couple of weeks, and nearly 1.2 million kids won’t graduate who should have graduated. We have a real crisis on our hands.

A good reminder for people around Denver to come out this Wednesday, May 21, to see Flunked: The Movie. Gov. Romer might want to see the successful innovations featured in the film, innovations that offer hope to America’s public schools.

Time is running out to sign up for this exciting, limited-space event.

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