“This regulation would negatively impact nearly all charter school teachers in the country,” Board Chairman Bob Schaffer said. “In essence this regulation would strip charter schools of their status as government groups when it comes to retirement system participation.

“If that were to happen, teachers at those charter schools who now participate in the Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association would be forced to find jobs elsewhere or forfeit their accrued pension wealth.”

Writing at the Weekly Standard, Joy Pullmann notes the same consequence for charter school teachers nationwide and wonders what the motivation might be:

It’s odd for a government agency to try to strip, rather than enlarge, public-sector benefits. So is this just an oversight, or a sneaky backdoor attempt to please unions piqued at Obama’s pro-charter education policy so far?

Meanwhile, the Manhattan Institute’s Josh Barro takes a different tack in his February 8 Forbes column:

But the regulation also offers us an opportunity to discuss a broader issue: why do charter schools even want to participate in defined-benefit pension plans? As it turns out, they often have good reasons for wanting in—but those have to do more with the dysfunctional structure of the system than with inherent advantages of DB pensions. With a more rational retirement system, many more charter schools would give up DB pensions voluntarily.

Both raise excellent points, noting the inequitable and unjustified short-term devastation the rule would cause while exploring the possibility for a more sound policy through long-term changes. Colorado and other states definitely need to pursue dramatic pension system overhauls like those Barro highlights. But the drastic, selective, and backhanded approach currently under consideration is absolutely the wrong medicine for students and educators who have chosen public charter schools.

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:

Award winners were selected based on a variety of factors, including academic performance and growth, percentage of students qualifying for the Federal free and reduced lunch benefit, school culture, leadership, and instructional effectiveness.

So states the media release from the benefactor Foundation For Great Schools, a coalition of five private Colorado foundations, including the Daniels Fund (which also helps support my Education Policy Center friends). When they cite “academic performance and growth,” they aren’t kidding. All 16 recipients earn an A or B from the new Colorado School Grades site:

• Montview Math and Science Elementary (Aurora)
• Tollgate Elementary (Aurora)
• South Elementary (Brighton)
• Ricardo Flores Magon Academy (Charter School Institute – Westminster)
• Community Leadership Academy middle school (Charter School Institute – Commerce City)
• Beach Court Elementary (Denver)
• Bryant Webster Dual Language K-8 middle school (Denver)
• Denver School of Science and Technology CMO (Denver)
• Girls Athletic Leadership School (Denver)
• Greenwood ECE-8 middle school (Denver)
• KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy (Denver)
• West Denver Prep CMO (Denver)
• Deane Elementary (Jeffco)
• Stein Elementary (Jeffco)
• East Elementary (Littleton)
• Valley View K-8 elementary school (Mapleton)

I haven’t seen any reports indicating increased street-dancing activity taking place near any of the above schools. Yet while various kinds of celebrations may take place at each of those centers of learning, I will study up on the definition of this great word philanthropy. Remember: You can find more information on Colorado schools and the open enrollment process at the fantastic, parent-friendly School Choice for Kids website.

In the video, Bowdon highlights the wonderful news about last July’s decision rejecting the NAACP lawsuit. Justice Paul Feinman wrote in that opinion:

The court is not permitted, nor would it be appropriate, to substitute its own view of this complex societal question of how best to educate our children for the conclusions already reached by the legislative and executive branches.

I am pained to say this, but the Manhattan judge’s demonstration of humility could serve as a lesson to Colorado judges who have presumed authority in the Lobato school funding lawsuit. That 2009 ruling has opened the door for the costly postlude to the original round of legal debates. Now that the judiciary has said it can determine school finance policy, they have started getting their chance to weigh in. And it’s not been pretty.

Professor Joshua Dunn, the CU-Colorado Springs scholar who broke down the conclusions in Part 2, Round 1 of the Lobato case on an iVoices podcast, has followed through with a Colorado Springs Gazette op-ed that drives the point home:

Shockingly, Judge Rappaport claimed that “the interpretation of the Education Clause does not need to be harmonized with either TABOR or the Gallagher Amendment.” In other words, the judge believes she is free to ignore those inconvenient amendments.

To illustrate what a preposterous, and dangerous, position that is, imagine the U.S. Supreme Court saying that the President’s commander-in-chief powers did not have to be harmonized with the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press. Outrage would be the appropriate response.

I guess there’s a lot of outrage going on then. Outrage that a group like the NAACP would play legal hardball to deprive poor children of color of educational opportunity. Outrage that the anti-charter forces there still haven’t given up. Outrage that a New York judge shows more humility than our Colorado bench. Outrage that parts of our state constitution get ignored. On and on it goes….

But it’s Friday, so I’m going to mellow out. And just smile…. And play Legos. Have a great weekend!

This report shows that Charter Management Organizations (charter organizations that manage more than one school, currently DSST, West Denver Prep and KIPP) are not only outperforming district and other individual charter schools, but are having a significant impact on the district’s overall growth and achievement scores at grades six and above.

For those who have been following the success of the three charter school franchises (two of them completely home-grown) serving high-need students, this report is not terribly surprising. But it is good, encouraging news nonetheless. It especially gives a great deal of hope for the middle school years, in far too many cases a brutal academic wasteland that leaves many students almost irreversibly behind. For 6th through 8th graders DSST, West Denver Prep and KIPP are blowing the roof off traditional DPS schools and other charters.

The A+ Denver report raises some significant questions for future direction in DPS. Taken together with a couple of recent national studies, this report should help the knee jerk anti-charter crowd to withdraw and reassess for awhile. Bad charters are closing at a significant rate, while high-quality charters in Denver maintain their excellence as they grow. Meanwhile, across the board, charters at the elementary and middle school level continue to outperform their peers.

A well-deserved hurrah once again to the KIPPs, West Denver Preps, and DSSTs. What can be learned and implemented from these schools? Are we holding back too much? What are we waiting for?

Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl as usual does a great job previewing the session and legislative initiatives likely to emerge. If you want the in-depth take, you simply have to go check out the story. According to the story, action is likely to be seen on the following fronts, among others:

• School finance reform
• Standardized testing implementation
• Charter authorizing standards
• Educator effectiveness rules ratification
• Online education oversight and regulation
• School construction funding
• School discipline policies
• A new version of the “parent trigger”
• “Restrictions on automatic salary increases for teachers who earn master’s degrees” (yee haw!)
• Private tuition tax credits

Many, not all, of these present some welcome changes. And of course, the devil remains in the details. In the meantime, word on the street is that another bill is coming to require school district-union bargaining transparency.

It looks like 2012 could bring some more Colorado legislative activity on K-12 education than a slow 2011 did. How much legislation passes, not to mention how much will be worth passing, remains to be seen. But now that my Education Policy Center friends are so much closer to the State Capitol, you can bet that little Eddie will have more of a front seat to observe what’s going on….

Denver Public Schools students and parents have from now until January 31 to exercise their school choice, using a new process that allows families to list up to five schools in order of preference. The Denver Post opined recently that the new, streamlined system is fairer and ultimately will prove more user-friendly. Parents can learn more from DPS at meetings either tomorrow morning at East High School or Wednesday evening at George Washington High School.

The range of educational options is expanding within DPS, and sometimes coming directly to families as schools compete for students. Viva Colorado’s Roxana Soto reports (H/T Ed News Colorado) that leaders from the newest West Denver Prep school are going door-to-door in the city’s Montbello neighborhood to recruit fifth-graders into their highly successful program:

On this particular morning, the recruiting team, which includes the principals of the two new schools, hopes all this favorable information will help them persuade parents on the fence. All recruiters are equipped with marketing materials and Google maps showing where current fifth-graders live.

“It’s just a time for us to make sure that every fifth-grader knows there’s an awesome option in their neighborhood,” says [WDP enrollment manager Alicia] Lucero.

Yes, there’s no doubt the first four West Denver Prep middle schools have been “awesome,” and there’s every reason in the world to believe the new Montbello and Green Valley campuses will follow suit. But the success also may create a dilemma as the charter franchise reaches out to families in these neighborhoods. Does “West Denver Prep” create too much confusion among denizens of the city’s northeastern corridor and necessitate adjustment, or do all the successful schools retain the well-earned brand of distinction?

A minor issue, I guess. Whatever the name is, the beautiful, real-life chaos of school choice expands and thrives, bringing more opportunity along with it. And families in our state can find the information they need by visiting the incredible duo of fantastic informational sites, School Choice for Kids and Colorado School Grades.

Onward and upward for Colorado educational choice in 2012. In the meantime, don’t forget that now is an ideal time to exercise the right to search for a better learning option while the first round of open enrollment lasts. It will be over before you know it.

Along with our fantastic School Choice for Kids website, this is definitely something you’ll want to know about for 2012, if you are at all interested in looking for a new public school for your child here in the great Centennial State. Many school district open enrollment periods really get rolling in January. This kind of guide can be very valuable if you think the cyberschool option might be right for your family.

Shortly thereafter comes the first-ever national Digital Learning Day on February 1. Colorado is one of at least 27 states to have signed on as a partner to this effort. Participating in Digital Learning Day is something I definitely look forward to!

Meanwhile, as we here in Colorado are fighting back against the overwrought attacks on full-time online schools, yesterday comes this excellent commentary in the Detroit News by Ingrid Jacques:

…Eleven years ago, Michigan became one of the first states to open a statewide virtual school. This year, the Michigan Virtual School facilitated around 18,000 course enrollments to middle and high school students, giving more children access to advanced and specialized courses.

The state additionally offers several multidistrict and numerous single-district virtual programs, according to a report on virtual learning by Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

And starting in 2010, Michigan opened two full-time virtual charter schools — a result of legislation passed in late 2009 to bolster the state’s chances of winning money from the federal Education Department’s Race to the Top program. [emphasis added]

Yes, this is the same Michael Van Beek who I have cited in writing about transparent union negotiations, taxpayer-funded union release time (where have we heard about that recently?), public school open enrollment and teacher performance pay. Sounds like he covers a lot of the same ground as my Education Policy Center friends, huh?

Speaking of which (in addition to the new publication and the February 1 celebration) 2012 also will kick off with my friends pushing forward in the fight to break down Colorado policy barriers that limit effective online and blended learning opportunities. One key example that Van Beek mentions in the same column for Michigan would also apply to our state — namely, that “the Legislature remove seat-time requirements and instead reward schools based on student mastery of a subject.”

Sure, maybe we can take a break now so we can unwrap the presents from Santa and spend a little extra time playing in the snow. But we need to be prepared to come back next year to take part in this important work!

One of the oft-cited advantages of charters is the greater level of accountability that allows them to be closed down much more easily than other public schools when they aren’t working as they should. Until now, though, I’m not aware of any comprehensive data telling just how many charters have closed over the course of nearly 20 years since the first states adopted a law.

The Center for Education Reform finds that 15 percent of all American charter schools that ever existed — 1,036 out of about 6,700 — have closed for a variety of reasons. CER’s original research breaks down the frequency of these different reasons as follows:

• Financial (41.7%)
• Mismanagement (24.0%)
• Academic (18.6%)
• District Obstacles (6.3%)
• Facilities (4.6%)
• Other / Unknown (4.8%)

The authors of the report make a salient point:

A closure rate of 15 percent is nothing to boast about. Yet it is still lower than the small business failure rate and dramatically higher than the percentage of conventional or traditional public schools ever closed.

State-by-state closure rates are not included in CER’s breakdown. But every individual closure is listed, 16 in Colorado over the course of time. It seems like that would make Colorado’s charter closure rate lower than the national average of 15 percent, but I defer to Denise at Colorado Charters for her insights on the new CER research.

News like this sadly means an opportunity for some to retread discredited arguments against charter schools. I prefer a different approach. It wasn’t that many weeks ago I introduced you to a new comprehensive national study by the Center on Reinventing Public Education that took the air out of knee-jerk anti-charter mythology. One of the things we learned was:

Despite considerable variation among charter schools, there is ample evidence that charter elementary schools on average outperform traditional public schools in both reading and math, and that charter middle schools outperform in math.

No need to rehash the explanations of the problems with over-generalizing about charter schools vs. traditional public schools nationally. It’s a fruitless line of argument you can go back and review at your leisure. Even so, it allows for many local data-driven observations, like the new one showing overall “superior gains in charters versus traditional public schools” in our nation’s capital, along with a handful of charters subject to be closed down if they continue to show sub-par results for students.

Yet broadly speaking, the numbers indicate that parental demand for charters, both in our state and across the country, continue to grow. More and more families are looking for something different, something better and more effective, for their child.

Some still may be mired in mythology as an excuse to sling mud at the whole charter school movement, but many more all the time are moving on. Like the terrific Colorado Charter Schools blog, they are discussing and working toward improvements in how charters are authorized, managed and deliver services to families. It’s their greater flexibility and nimbleness because of fewer regulations on educational inputs that makes it so much more possible — and something to celebrate, as more people embrace the charter idea.

Expanding to the 100 largest districts, as Biddle urges, would include some of Colorado’s own. I’m pretty sure Denver Public Schools would do well on the ECCI, given the commitment to expanding charter and innovation school options. Interestingly, the Denver Post featured a piece yesterday about how DPS schools are increasing their efforts to market themselves to parents.

For those paying attention, it’s not the first time the local media has brought attention to this trend of a more active, consumer-oriented approach going on in Denver schools. Which means it’s not the first time I get to tell you about the important role our fabulous School Choice for Kids website has to play in arming parents with some key information.

Of course, the site covers not only Denver but all of Colorado. Which makes me wonder how Douglas County — with its one-of-a-kind local board-initiated voucher program (not to mention a healthy charter sector) — would fare on the ECCI. An index worth its salt would have to relate Jefferson County and Cherry Creek lower. So I guess for now, little ol’ me will just have to content myself with wondering what an expanded version of the Brookings educational choice index would look like.