Can you believe it was one year ago today that the Douglas County Board of Education voted to adopt the groundbreaking Pilot Choice Scholarship Program? (Can you also believe that I was 5 years old then and am still 5 years old now? I need to talk to my Education Policy Center friends about this.) Time certainly flies.

So rather than diving into the news of the day, it seemed fitting to feature a brief retrospective. A lot has happened since then. To refresh your memory, here are some of the highlights: Continue Reading »

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If I weren’t so little, I might have stayed up to hear the first result for Colorado’s most talked about education bill of the session. But it went past my bedtime before the House Education Committee agreed to adopt HB 1238, as Ed News Colorado reported:

The House Education Committee Monday gave a full hearing – more than seven hours – to House Bill 12-1238, the proposal that would require improved literacy programs in the early elementary grades, create a preference for retention of third graders with weak reading skills and add early literacy results to the factors in the state’s accountability system for rating schools.

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Today the group Sunshine Review (“a national nonprofit organization dedicated to government transparency”) unveiled its 2012 Sunny Awards to the 214 government agencies that have the most transparent websites. Colorado is represented by six agencies, including three school districts:

• Jefferson County Public Schools
• Denver Public Schools
• Mesa County School District 51 (Grand Junction)

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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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The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has released an interesting new study titled “The Fiscal Effects of School Choice Programs on Public School Districts.” Author Benjamin Scafidi took a state-by-state look at total per-pupil spending, breaking out the fixed costs from the variable costs.

Here’s the basic idea. Take a state’s K-12 “expenditures on capital, interest, general administration, school administration, operations and maintenance, transportation, and ‘other’ support services” and set them to one side. Subtract these “fixed costs in the short run” — as Scafidi conservatively considers them — from the total spending.

What’s left over are the expenditures tied more closely to actual enrollment, which districts have shown can be easily reduced when numbers of students leave. A voucher or tax credit given to student up to that amount safely can be considered not to have any fiscal harm on the district.

On a national scale Scafidi finds: Continue Reading »

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The big news from the education reform world this week is the release of the School Choice Demonstration Project’s final reports evaluating five years of matched student comparisons between the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the Milwaukee Public Schools. What can we learn about vouchers from the results of this program?

The American Federation for Children summed up the top-level findings in a Monday press release:

Students enrolled in the Milwaukee voucher program are more likely to graduate from high school and go to college than their public school counterparts, boast significantly improved reading scores, represent a more diverse cross-section of the city, and are improving the results of traditional public school students, according to a comprehensive evaluation of the program released today.

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Once in awhile an article comes along that makes you stand up and cheer. For me, the latest is a new Education Week column signed by “nine scholars and analysts” that lays out clearly what the research says about school choice. I was tempted to re-post the whole thing, but the big people in my life assure me that wouldn’t be right to do. So I’ll sum up.

The article observes that a number of high-quality studies have been done measuring academic results for students in choice programs, somewhat less rigorous studies examining the competitive effects choice has on the surrounding public school system, and a few studies of the fiscal impacts on public schools. The clear consensus of the highest-quality research is that vouchers and tax credits show modestly positive results on all three fronts, with none demonstrating negative effects. Results for charter schools are decidedly more mixed in the academic and competitive results, with more positive impacts in the earlier grades.

But the highlight and big takeaway of the jointly-authored Education Week piece is this: Continue Reading »

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A good thought-piece to read this week is John Katzman’s new Education Week article “Putting the Schools in Charge.” While I don’t agree with everything in the piece, the author has a laudable vision about sweeping systemic K-12 changes and makes some very sound assessments of the best ways to get there. And as I so often like to do, his main point particularly has a strong Colorado connection worthy of highlight.

First and foremost, Katzman recommends sparking needed innovation by giving more power to school-level leaders, including greater choice over how and where they purchase central services:

Right now, every state distributes state and federal funds to districts; in turn, the districts distribute funds to schools. Imagine that states instead channel funds directly to schools and require that the schools contract with a school support organization (SSO) for an array of services similar to what its district’s central office now provides….

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One of this blog’s themes that regular readers are familiar with is the power of digital technology to help transform the capability and productivity of public education. Combined with the right policies and innovative direction of resources, this technology has tremendous potential to effect positive change. Digital Learning Now’s Roadmap for Reform released last October — not to mention a forthcoming (or so I’m told) Colorado version — highlights some great ideas.

One policy action endorsed by Digital Learning Now is that the “state ensures all public school students and teachers have Internet access devices.” Definitely a worthy goal, inasmuch as it helps to equip students for a 21st century career. But it also can be a double-edged sword. As a new article by Kristina Iodice in the Colorado Springs Gazette points out, giving students take-home access to iPads is fraught with danger if not done right:

Manitou Springs School District 14 is in the middle of a two-year rollout of iPads to many of its roughly 1,420 students. In the fall 2011, about 490 students in fifth through eighth grade, and 90 high school students, received the devices. About 500 high school students will get them in the coming 2012-13 school year.

Some parents are concerned that the district is not doing everything it could to safeguard students, although school officials insist it is compliant with state and federal law. Internet browsers on the iPads do not include parental controls…. Continue Reading »

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Colorado’s legislative bid to enhance early literacy is getting some national attention. The bipartisan House Bill 1238 enlists parents and educators to focus on interventions for struggling readers in the early grades and requires the local superintendent to sign off before a non-proficient reader can advance past 3rd grade. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow was sought out for comment by American Family Radio News reporter Bob Kellogg:

“Something needs to be done to provide consequences and hold schools accountable for helping students learn to read,” he says, “because if students just keep getting passed up through the system and graduate without those skills, we’re not preparing them well for life.”

Also in the story, Ben highlights the success Florida has experienced by cutting back severely on 3rd grade social promotion. Indeed, research by Jay Greene and Marcus Winters shows the average student held back for extra reading help gained more than a half-year’s learning proficiency on struggling students who were pushed up through the system. HB 1238 isn’t exactly the same, nor quite as strong, as Florida’s law. But it does represent a significantly positive step. Continue Reading »

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