It’s now official. The latest Issue Paper in the *Innovative Colorado School District Series, written by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow, has been released: Douglas County’s Home-Grown Teachers: The Learning Center Waiver Program (PDF).

The Independence Institute website explains what the paper is all about better than I can:

Seeking a creative solution to shortages in various teaching positions, Douglas County School District received a waiver from the state of Colorado to license and train its own teachers through the Learning Center. The district currently is able to license teachers in areas such as math, science, and world languages; to provide special education endorsements to teachers in other specialties; and to equip unlicensed professionals with the basic skills to teach more highly specialized courses to high schoolers. The waiver is scheduled to be renewed at the end of 2008, contingent on Douglas County meeting certain performance goals.

If it’s true that this means a way for schools to get more skilled and effective teachers in our classrooms to help kids learn better, then more power to Douglas County. And I hope other school districts pick up on it, too.

Anyway, the paper is kind of long. As usual, the Independence Institute also has created a podcast to give you a flavor of the topic. This time, author Ben DeGrow interviews Learning Center executive director Mike Lynch about the waiver program:

This story first made the Denver news way back in May 2006, as Douglas County made its case for waivers to the State Board of Education. Ben wrote an op-ed back then. The story may reappear in the news next month when the school district is scheduled to go before the State Board to get the waiver renewed. Stay tuned. I’ll do my best to help keep you informed about that.

*The Innovative Colorado School District Series also includes the following papers (note: all links are PDFs):

• The Ignacio Market Driven Compensation Plan and Why It Fell Short (2005)
• Delta County School District Has VISION for School Choice (2005)
• Contract Schools Bring Innovative New Choices to Denver Public Schools (2005)
• Denver’s ProComp and Teacher Compensation Reform in Colorado (2007)

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A couple months ago I told you about the state of Florida’s amazing success in improving early reading test scores. Here were the main things to which former Gov. Jeb Bush attributed the successful gains:

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….

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….

But blogger Charlie Barone says, hey, wait a minute, let’s take a closer look at Delaware, too. It seems that the First State has shown remarkable improvement, as well. As Matt Ladner points out, some of the same success story themes emerge that have come from Florida:

It turns out that Delaware is discretely a haven for parental choice. Delaware has the nation’s 7th ranked charter school law according to the Center for Education Reform, and active inter and intra district choice programs. Add all of those up, and 15.5% of all K-12 students in Delaware are exercising choice through public options.

Delaware also has a large number of students attending private schools, and a little less than 2% home-schooling. Combine those, and you get over 20 percent of students exercising private choice.

If you add it all together, 35.7% of Delaware students are attending schools other than their assigned district school.

It just goes to show- standards and parental choice are two great tastes that taste great together.

I don’t know anyone who has ever been to Delaware, but it sounds like good things are going on there. I hope Colorado lawmakers are paying attention. The same sort of authentic, systemic reform that took place in a large Republican state like Florida also took place in a small Democratic state like Delaware. Are we paying attention to what works?

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One option more and more parents take for their kids is homeschooling. Thousands of Colorado kids are being educated at home by their parents. Despite a great diversity in the families that undertake home education and the different kinds of programs used, there’s still a tendency among some to have stereotyped conceptions of what a “typical” homeschool family looks like.

People who want to pigeonhole homeschoolers into a box really ought to read this Pajamas Media column by Kansas parent and writer Tony Woodlief. A key excerpt:

Given preconceptions about this practice, I should note that we are not anti-government wingnuts living on a compound. We like literature, and nice wines, and Celeste would stab me in the heart with a spoon if I gave her one of those head bonnets the Amish women wear. We are not, in other words, stereotypical home-schooling parents. But neither are most actual home-schooling parents.

Even though Ma and Pa Ingalls sent their children off to the little schoolhouse in Walnut Grove, we’ve decided to start our own. In the eyes of Kansas authorities that’s exactly what we’ve done; regulations require us to establish a school and name it. Ours is the Woodlief Homestead School. I wanted to go with something like: “The School of Revolutionary Resistance,” but Celeste said that was just inviting trouble.

The reason we’ve broken with tradition, or perhaps reverted to a deeper tradition, is not because we oppose sex education, or because we think their egos are too tender for public schools. It’s because we can do a superior job of educating our children. We want to cultivate in them an intellectual breadth and curiosity that public schools no longer offer.

We know that kids benefit from having an array of educational choices, but sometimes we don’t realize the diversity within an option or the variety of reasons that lead parents to the particular choice. The Woodlief Homestead School will have different structures and emphases than many of their counterparts, but they’re working toward a similar end. The author effectively makes a point that many still need to get:

Folks in our neck of the woods embrace the proper goal, which is not supporting public schools, but supporting public education — the education of the public, which is only ever you and me and our neighbors. The goal is educated children, after all, not allegiance to some institution or ideology.

Based on the individual needs of the child, there are many ways to reach that goal. Home-based education is an option that just happens to work for many.

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For those who educate their children at home, and for all those who support the rights of homeschoolers, recent news from California comes as a relief. A little more than five months ago a state appeals court issued a ruling that many worried would have the effect of shutting down homeschooling in California. Supporters in other states rallied to their defense, in part from fear that the dangerous precedent would have a ripple effect in their own backyards.

Last Friday brought a happier ending to this saga:

In a decision widely praised, a California appeals court this morning affirmed the right of parents who don’t have a teaching credential to educate their children at home.

A three-judge panel overturned a lower-court order in February that had created an uproar among home-schooling parents when it required that they be credentialed. An estimated 166,000 California children are home schooled.

The Second District appellate court in Los Angeles ruled that individual parents, like private schools, are exempt from the requirement that those who teach children be credentialed by the state.

This court decision (follow the link to read the actual ruling) is truly a victory for parental rights and personal liberties. The growing voice of the homeschooling community certainly was heard, now more clearly protected by a strong legal foundation.

Any time educational freedom either grows or fends off a repressive attack, there is reason to celebrate. This latest decision is such an occasion.

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CNN commentator Roland Martin hits the nail on the head today by proclaiming the need for more school vouchers, and highlighting the interest group politics that has blocked or slowed down the needed reform (H/T Mike Antonucci). His article is titled “McCain right, Obama wrong on school vouchers,” but the larger point is that it’s time to move school choice beyond partisan politics on a national scale.

Here’s some of what Martin has to say:

I fundamentally believe that vouchers are simply one part of the entire educational pie. There simply is no one sure-fire way to educate a child. We’ve seen public schools do a helluva job — I went to them from K through college — and so have private schools, home schooling, charter schools and even online initiatives. This is the kind of innovation we need, not more efforts to prevent a worthy idea from moving forward.

Obama’s opposition is right along the lines of the National Education Association, and the teachers union is a reliable and powerful Democratic ally. But this is one time where he should have opposed them and made it clear that vouchers can force school districts, administrators and teachers to shape up or see their students ship out.

It is unconscionable to ask a parent to watch as his child is stuck in a failing school or district, and ask him to bank on a politician coming up with more funds to improve the situation. Fine, call vouchers a short-term solution to a long-term problem, but I’d rather have a child getting the best education — now — rather than having to hope and pray down the line.

The current election may yet change the terms of the debate surrounding school choice. For years, acceptance of vouchers and tax credits has grown among minority communities, traditionally represented by the Democratic Party, many of whom have seen the failed schools and the hope provided by choice firsthand. Many in the Republican Party support expanding school choice because of their beliefs in competition or smaller government. But no matter how they come to the conclusion, the time for real and lasting positive change.

This really isn’t the simple partisan political issue some have made it out to be - nor should it be. And after this year, maybe more Americans of all political persuasions and affiliations will come to see we need to stop limiting possibilities and opportunities in education for American students.

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