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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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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Raise your hand if you agree with me that the USA — and Colorado in particular — can do a better job preparing enough students for success in the areas science, math and technology. Don’t worry about feeling self-conscious if you are in a room with other people. If you can’t overcome it, at least mentally raise your hand. That’s right. If you agree with me, and I don’t see how you couldn’t, then you should be excited by some news I have to share.

The National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) is a four-year-old program (younger than me!) that has demonstrated successful results in increasing the number of students who pass Advanced Placement (AP) exams in math and science, particularly among underprivileged students. The Colorado Legacy Foundation has reported similar positive results here in our state for the seven schools who participated in a less-than-fully-vamped version of the program in 2010-11.

The news? The effective math and science program is expanding dramatically in Colorado: Continue Reading »

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With all the breathless attention on K-12 online education these days, you’d almost think it was a brand-new phenomenon — not something that got its start in Colorado more than a decade ago. This time it’s the Washington Post, chiming in to note that some are questioning the educational value of cyberschools.

Am I surprised? No. Let me repeat what I’ve said many times: Full-time online education is by no means the best option for all students, or even most students. But it works very well for many families who have chosen the learning option. Which some might have a hard time understanding if you believe the straw man presented by an opponent in the Post story: Continue Reading »

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As a nation and a state, we’re on the brink of a digital learning explosion. I’m talking about a system of education characterized by flexibility, freedom and personalization — one where online courses and opportunities are embraced wholeheartedly in a family or community context, or blended in various ways with traditional classrooms and school functions.

But we just can’t flip a digital learning switch, and solve all the ills of public education. One of the biggest obstacles to the important transformation is a dusty old system of school finance that delivers money to district administrative offices and allots it to schools through staffing formulas. Dr. Paul Hill, in his thoughtful new Fordham Institute issue brief titled School Finance in the Digital-Learning Era, notes:

This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to move money from concrete facilities, established programs, and entrenched staff roles to new uses like equipment, software, and remote instructional staff. Yet to encourage development and improvement of technology-based methods, we must find ways for public dollars to do just that—and to follow kids to online providers chosen by their parents, teachers, or themselves.

Will “disruptive innovation” overtake the existing K-12 education system, or will Colorado lawmakers make some serious changes to how it is funded first? As my Education Policy Center friends contemplate how to craft a school finance system for digital learning and the 21st century, they and others couldn’t find a better resource than Dr. Hill’s new piece. Continue Reading »

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Twelve weeks seems like a long time to someone my age, and I know it can be really hard for almost anyone to plan beyond the Christmas holiday and into the New Year. But I wanted to let you know about a great opportunity so you can mark your calendar right away for Wednesday, February 1, 2012, the first-ever Digital Learning Day:

a year-long campaign to celebrate bold, creative innovative teachers in classrooms across this nation. These front-line innovators are already embedding digital learning into new instructional practices to ensure that every student leaves the classroom ready for college, career and life success. We ask you to join with us, as with them, as we launch an unprecedented, collaborative effort to expand innovation into every city, town, school and classroom in America!

Former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise explains a little bit more in this 3-plus minute video: Continue Reading »

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Yesterday I told you that effective education reform might be ready to give Iowa a try. A major piece of the plan proposed by Gov. Terry Branstad and education department leader Jason Glass is to end social promotion for 3rd graders who can’t read. Well, my timing as usual is golden, since key Colorado education leaders yesterday gave serious discussion to moving the very same reform issue forward. Ed News Colorado reports:

The anxiety level in the room rose quickly after Rep. Tom Massey, R-Poncha Springs and chair of the House Education Committee, briefed the group on his idea for a bill that would hold back third-graders who are the furthest behind in literacy. [link added]

About five years ago my Education Policy Center friends hosted an event with a couple experts who explained some major reasons behind Colorado’s “reading crisis.” Not all kids will be reading as well at the 3rd grade as I am, unfortunately. Let’s hope the issue of teacher training doesn’t get overlooked in this policy discussion. Not surprisingly, though, the idea to end social promotion already has opposition: Continue Reading »

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At my Education Policy Center friends’ recent series of Colorado school board candidate briefings, one of the local reforms they highlighted was Harrison School District Two’s groundbreaking pay-for-performance system, known as Effectiveness and Results (E & R). Well, who knew during the briefings that a little sensational news would give certain local bloggers a platform to bash performance pay?

Let’s help put the overeager presumption to rest. First, Harrison superintendent Mike Miles points out that the Sierra High School student walkout is not the first of its kind in the district, and that its connection to the performance pay changes is tenuous at best. Second, as Ben DeGrow noted earlier this year in his issue paper Pioneering Teacher Compensation Reform, Miles emphasizes the comprehensive approach to performance pay. Effectively overhauling established, inefficient teacher compensation structures is extremely difficult without also taking on other key changes, like Harrison has done: Continue Reading »

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Last week I pointed you to a provocative new Rick Hess essay that asked whether education reform has paid too much attention to focusing on urban, high-poverty areas and on closing achievement gaps. Well, almost as if on cue, Jay Greene and Josh McGee write in Education Next about their new study on how suburban U.S. school districts compare internationally in math (based on most recent 2007 data):

Affluent suburban districts may be outperforming their large urban neighbors, but they fail to achieve near the top of international comparisons…. White Plains, New York, in suburban Westchester County, is only at the 39th percentile in math relative to our global comparison group. Grosse Point, Michigan, outside of Detroit, is at the 56th percentile. Evanston, Illinois, the home of Northwestern University outside of Chicago, is at the 48th percentile in math. The average student in Montgomery County, Maryland, where many of the national government leaders send their children to school, is at the 50th percentile in math relative to students in other developed countries….

It goes on, but you get the flavor. If you’re wondering about your own school district, you can check out the handy new web tool Greene and company created called The Global Report Card. All in all, it’s an interesting tool that may be worth further exploring. The findings reported by Greene and McGee do raise some cause for concern: Continue Reading »

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What’s going on in the world of education reform? Every once in awhile, even a precocious 5-year-old like myself can benefit from stepping back to try to get a better look at the big picture. With a penetrating eye and a nuanced approach, the prolific Rick Hess takes on one of K-12 reformers’ sacred cows–the focus on the achievement gap:

…The legacy of achievement gap mania isn’t necessarily undesirable. Focusing on the neediest students is admirable, as far as it goes. With limited time, talent, and resources, we can’t do everything–and it’s not unreasonable that some think our priority in every case should be the most in need.

The real problem has been the unwillingness of gap-closers to acknowledge the costs of their agenda or its implications. And yet, the groupthink consensus that the business of education is “closing achievement gaps” has made it tough to talk honestly about the costs–for fear of being branded a racist or thought unconcerned with inequities. It has dreadfully narrowed the potential coalition for reform. It has distorted the way we’ve approached educational choice, accountability, and reform. It has warped and retarded the pace, reach, and power of school improvement efforts. And it has yielded a stifling and ultimately troubling vision of schooling.

Before you follow the natural urge to respond, you really also ought to read Hess’s entire National Affairs essay that got this rolling. No one can ever say he is afraid to stir the pot. Continue Reading »

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