The faithful readers of Ed Is Watching (I love you, mom and dad!) know that during the past two summers I have dedicated many blog posts to introducing interesting new education options in Colorado. Links to all the posts are compiled on our A Glimpse at New Schools page.

This year, I’ve decided to get an earlier head start while we head for the mid-summer doldrums. To kick off the 2010-11 edition, it seems appropriate to highlight the offspring of some golden oldies. I’ve written before about West Denver Prep middle school and Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST) — both top-notch, “distinguished” charter schools.

The great news is that these schools won’t be contained, but rather are multiplying under successful models and sound leadership. The 2010-11 school year doubles the number of West Denver Prep campuses from two to four, with new sites shared at Lake Middle School (starting with 6th graders only) and Emerson Street School.

And DSST (the original campus in the Stapleton neighborhood contains both a middle school and a high school) will open a second campus in far northeast Denver’s Green Valley Ranch. If DSST II hits the same trajectory of getting 100 percent of students ready to succeed and complete four-year college, it will have done a great service.

For the sake of the students they serve, here’s wishing continued and growing success for two of Colorado’s most remarkable charter schools as they expand into the 2010-11 school year and beyond.

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A little earlier this week the U.S. Department of Education released the research results from the final evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP). What did it say? Basically, an admission that the very small program hasn’t had any tremendous impacts — oh yeah, except for this one:

The Program significantly improved students’ chances of graduating from high school, according to parent reports. Overall, 82 percent of students offered scholarships received a high school diploma, compared to 70 percent of those who applied but were not offered scholarships. This graduation rate improvement also held for the subgroup of OSP students who came from “schools in need of improvement.”

Writing on Jay Greene’s blog, Greg Forster deconstructs the control group (since the graduation rate for D.C. Public Schools is actually 49 percent), and concludes the grad-rate benefit from the voucher program is “somewhere between 12 percentage points and 33 percentage points.” Continue Reading »

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(H/T Colorado Charters) Newsweek magazine has released its annual list of “America’s best high schools,” and Lafayette’s Peak to Peak Charter School tops the competition in the state with a 35th ranking nationally. The next closest from Colorado are Niwot High School at #180, Boulder’s Fairview High School at #201, and Lakewood High School at #228.

But does the list really capture “America’s best high schools”? Two years ago one of the Ed News Colorado bloggers correctly pointed out the weaknesses and limitations that would omit the Denver School of Science and Technology, for example, from this list. And Newsweek’s methodology hasn’t changed since then.

Take the news for what it’s worth. Peak to Peak Charter School is doing something right by encouraging lots of its students to take classes of the challenging Advanced Placement variety. But it’s really stretching the matter to say definitively that it’s one of the 35 best high schools in the nation.

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One of the main ingredients that gives public charter schools the opportunity to thrive in a competitive environment is the degree of autonomy to determine its own culture, curriculum, program, budget and personnel policies. But just how much autonomy do they have?

We know that because of different laws and policies, all states certainly aren’t equal. The Center for Education Reform’s annual report card on states’ charter-friendliness is the leading example.

But today the Fordham Institute released a report that takes a closer look at 100 charter schools in 26 different states, rating them on a carefully-developed metric of autonomy in the areas of: Vision and Culture, Program, Staffing, and Financial and Governance.

An interesting aspect of the report was not only taking into account the effect of state laws but also adding the impact of contracts signed between charter schools and their authorizers (e.g., school districts) on autonomy in these different areas. Continue Reading »

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Back before Christmastime, I told you about the promising work going on in the once-troubled Cole Arts and Science Academy in Denver, thanks to its newfound liberating status as an Innovation School.

Well … freedom and autonomy lend themselves not only to innovation but also toward groundbreaking partnerships not nearly as likely to take place in the traditional public K-12 school system. Determined to place their mostly poor students on a track of college success, Cole parents and leaders recently have reached out to the Denver School of Science and Technology (DSST) charter school as a potential partner. Continue Reading »

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The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or so it seems. The article in today’s Denver Post, headlined “Nearly one in three Colo. graduates needs remedial courses in college, study finds”, almost could have appeared the year before … or two years ago … or the year before that.

To be exact, the new report from the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (PDF) finds that 29.3 percent of Colorado’s 2008 high school graduates who attended a Colorado two-year or four-year college needed formal remedial help in math, reading and/or writing.

Six years ago my Education Policy Center friend Marya DeGrow completed an issue paper on the same topic, titled Cutting Back on Catching Up (PDF). Using the same CCHE data, she noted that 26.6 percent of Colorado’s 2002 high school graduates needed remediation — at a cost of $18.9 million to the state of Colorado and $15.4 million to the college students themselves. Continue Reading »

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As reported in yesterday’s Denver Post, more and more Denver families are becoming smart education shoppers and taking advantage of the choices available to them — even sometimes opting for different schools within the same household:

The chaos begins in the Black household on weekday mornings around 6 a.m., when the family’s three children prepare to head off to three different Denver high schools.

Keenan, a senior, attends George Washington High School. Griffin the sophomore, goes to nearby Thomas Jefferson. And Addie, a freshman, is enrolled at South.

The oldest likes George Washington’s International Baccalaureate program, the sophomore likes the computer center at TJ and Addie is excited about the diversity at South.

Interested? Excited? Confused? … Continue Reading »

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As conservative Mike Rosen notes in his column today for the Denver Post, a big school board race is underway in the Douglas County School District. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow researched and wrote a neat report (PDF) last year on the district’s innovative local licensure program.

For those not in the know, Douglas County is Colorado’s third-largest school district and is located immediately south of Denver, a mix of suburban and rural communities with one of the lowest poverty rates in the state. Education reform in high-poverty urban areas typically receives the most attention, and rightly so. But does that mean a district like Douglas County has reached a plateau, and doesn’t need reform? Continue Reading »

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In what probably will be the final stop on the “A Glimpse at New Schools” tour for 2009-10, I quickly wanted to bring your attention to KIPP Denver Collegiate High School, near West Alameda and Pecos. This August the public charter school opened with a group of 9th graders who are set to be its first graduating class in 2013 before moving on to their goal of college.

KIPP Denver Collegiate, conveniently located next door to the successful KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy middle school, is sharing space with Rishel Middle School (building pictured behind the famous “Knowledge Is Power” slogan from which the KIPP name derives).

I was going to give you more of a detailed lowdown on KIPP Denver Collegiate, but Denver Examiner charter school columnist Donnell Rosenberg already wrote an excellent piece. All the best to KIPP’s first Denver high school as the leaders and teachers work to help students reach college ready to succeed at the next level, and throughout their lives.

Other new schools featured: Continue Reading »

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You probably assume a prolific blogging prodigy like myself eventually will head to a prestigious 4-year university — maybe even with Doogie Howser-like potential. But what if when I turn 16 some day my heart is set on a career as a plumber or a chef? You wouldn’t deny me that, would you?

Writing for the America’s Future Foundation, Liam Julian of the Hoover Institution says we could take a big bite out of our high school dropout problem by engaging more students in vocational education programs — particularly those that integrate academics directly with students’ career aspirations, providing greater relevance to many teens (H/T Heritage Insider):

Imagine a 17-year-old who does not want to attend college (or at least not right away); who finds parsing Macbeth maddeningly immaterial; who yearns to learn a practical skill and put it to use; who feels his personal strengths are being ignored and wasted; who is annoyed by his school’s lackluster teachers, classroom chaos, and general atmosphere of indifference. Too often, such a pupil has no other options. He has no educational choice.

Continue Reading »

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