Not surprisingly, a few small provisions to the report have been posted. One case was an error. A couple of others posted the missing financial documents online at the close of the 11th hour. Those details have been ironed out, but the big picture findings remain unchanged:

1. While there are some glaring exceptions, too many districts didn’t get off to a good start in fulfilling the law’s requirements of online financial transparency; but
2. Raising awareness of the issue through the Independence Institute report is helping to accelerate the trend of K-12 agencies in compliance.

Let me elaborate on point #2 a bit. The idea behind the paper was not so much to punish less-than-compliant school districts with a “gotcha,” as it was to encourage more to get it right. And since my friends released the paper, they have seen a few districts reach out to ask for guidance, or to indicate they were going to improve: Branson, Stratton and Kit Carson come to mind. I’m sure the media attention didn’t hurt.

One final thought to ponder: Even if all 195 K-12 agencies in Colorado were perfectly compliant with the state’s transparency law, it wouldn’t be time to rest on our laurels and say that everything is good. The report points out a couple ambiguities and loopholes that are of concern and could be fixed immediately (e.g., excluding “wire transfers” from expenditure reporting because they are not “check registers” or “purchase card statements”). Next, for further upgrades, look at the guidelines of the 2010 brief Education Policy Center report, What Should School District Financial Transparency Look Like? Not to mention what the next generation of technology might make possible.

For now though, at least, Colorado is one of the leaders nationally in improving the practice of financial transparency from school districts. Citizens have more tools than ever before to help ensure they can track local fiscal activity in public education, especially the use of scarce tax dollars, but we still have a ways to go. Think about what a nearly-perfect online snapshot can do.

Among the many topics covered at the September school board candidate briefings were examples of Colorado local K-12 innovation. Since 2005 the Education Policy Center has released a series of six papers in the “Innovative School District” series — including homages to Douglas County for its “home-grown teachers” waiver program, and to Delta County for its student-centered VISION program.

Well, believe it or not, school district-level innovation is by no means isolated to our own Centennial State. An article by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow published in the new November issue of School Reform News highlights the initiative of Michigan’s Oscoda Area Schools, which created its own performance-based teacher evaluation system without waiting for state agencies and officials to guide them along:

The district partnered with an in-state software company to tailor a computer program that manages and processes the essential evaluation data quickly. This helps administrators spend more time mentoring teachers and less time filling out and duplicating paperwork, [then-Oscoda superintendent Christine] Beardsley said.

Other districts have shown interest in the customizable software, for which Oscoda owns the copyright. This could generate a stream of new revenue for the district.

Yes, a Michigan state legislature hungry for federal Race to the Top dollars passed a 2010 law requiring all school districts to incorporate student academic growth into professional teacher evaluations. Rather than wait until the last-minute deadline to comply, Oscoda seized the idea by meeting during the summer to craft its own locally-suitable program that incorporates the legislated state requirements. And now as other districts scramble to comply, Oscoda has the rights to a customizable data management software tool that it can share for a fee to generate revenue. Sounds kind of entrepreneurial, doesn’t it?

Hey, whether it’s Colorado or Michigan, good K-12 innovation is good K-12 innovation. News like the story from Oscoda is encouraging to see. If you want to learn more about what exactly the district did, I encourage you to check out a video created by my friends’ sister think tank, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.

Exit thought: Here in Colorado, our state senate president is pushing ahead with an audit of “for-profit” online schools. Have to demonize anyone who happens to make money, you know. Setting aside for a moment the larger debate that could take place, should school districts that make money off innovative software tools be subject to audit, too?

A database compiled by the state Department of Education shows schools districts have adopted a mixture of criteria, giving teachers points for everything from student attendance to graduation rates and writing assessments.

The result: A laboratory of pay-for-performance methods in a state that has long debated whether teacher pay should be tied to things like student test scores.

At least 29 school districts statewide have since developed merit pay plans based, at least partly, on parental involvement.

Twenty-nine school districts: An impressive number. But how effective will the reform laboratory be? All in all, it sounds like a report published earlier this year by my Education Policy Center friends, a look at local Colorado K-12 educator pay innovations titled Pioneering Teacher Compensation Reform. There aren’t 29 districts in our state moving the ball on this issue yet, mainly because there was no state law like in Idaho to activate them. But my guess is the deep and thoughtful work districts like Harrison 2 and Eagle County have done could be a guide for our friends in the Northwest.

An interesting aspect not touched on a lot in my friend’s report or in the two districts I cited, the emphasis in the AP story is on Idaho’s requirement that plans factor in teachers’ engagement with parents. No doubt an important factor in improving learning, but one that can be difficult to measure the quality and effectiveness to use in a pay system. Still, you have to credit Idaho for trying.

The Challis School District’s idea of requiring teachers to initiate at least two contacts with parents every three months seems like an eminently reasonable policy, one that some teachers surely already exceed. On the other hand, Gooding’s plan of counting parent attendance at three school conferences for 25 percent of teacher bonuses seems like it could have some unintended consequences — depending on what sort of safeguards are built in. But maybe these are just the sort of answers the reform laboratory will end up sharing.

So I kind of gave up on my original thought about sharing a spooky education story with you on Halloween. But thinking about Idaho education reform and yummy tater tots has given me another thought. Maybe I could dump my Buzz Lightyear costume for another Toy Story 3 character: Mr. Potato Head. Nah. Better yet, maybe I could get my mom or dad to wear a Potato Head costume when we go out for candy tonight. It’s probably too late, but it would be fun….

“My son Kaleb is a pencil sharpener –” his mother Angie Hiller started.

“– Writing tool assistant,” Coffeen’s school counselor Jennifer Black corrected, smiling.

Kaleb is one of many students who hold volunteer “leadership jobs” at Coffeen — one of several new initiatives at the elementary school that encourage responsibility, accountability and prepare students for the real world, according to Coffeen [Elementary] Principal Nicole Trahan.[link added]

Hey, I’m totally for personal responsibility and all that… at least in theory. Though when it comes to picking up my toys, making my bed, or helping with the trash around the house, it sometimes looks different in practice. I confess. All right? But I can’t quite imagine being charged with such responsibility at school. Maybe when I’m older.

Unless perhaps there were a position as school blogger. I wonder if Coffeen’s “Leader in Me” program has contemplated that? Or maybe my school would need someone to specialize in playing with Legos. Yeah, I could be the “executive plastic construction engineer”!

I know of at least some charter schools here in Colorado where upper elementary students spend some time aiding teachers of lower grades. So this doesn’t appear to be necessarily some sort of radical idea, though it may be more comprehensive than most other places. The Fox News article does suggest the program has had a positive effect on student test scores, and more significantly on student discipline problems. Luce finds that “impressive,” and it’s very hard to disagree.

The topic also happens to be something fun to write about for a Tuesday. Especially if it helps me someday become a school’s “senior online communication specialist.” This is kind of preparing me for the real world, isn’t it?

The timing of my update turns out to be really good. This morning I found out that a school district in Michigan, of all places, is pushing forward with a plan to pay its 60 teachers more like attorneys and less like blue-collar factory workers:

Suttons Bay Public Schools has achieved a rarity – a teachers union contract that pays teachers for performance and not seniority. While most every other Michigan district has a salary schedule that gives automatic raises to teachers for every year they work, Suttons Bay approved a four-year contract that groups teachers based upon performance, starting in the 2012-2013 school year….

“This is a vast improvement over the factory model compensation system used in nearly every school district throughout the country,” [Mackinac Center for Public Policy education policy director Michael] Van Beek wrote in an email. “Teachers are going to be rewarded for their classroom performance and leadership, not simply for years on the job or number of college credits completed. Effective teachers will be able to secure higher pay more quickly, but highly paid teachers will also have to constantly demonstrate their value to the district. This creates a much more professional environment, and one that’s zeroed in on a singular goal — increased student learning.”

Well said. Suttons Bay superintendent Mike Murray raised a great point in the Michigan Capitol Confidential report about the old system’s incentives driving teachers to earn master’s degrees that added no value to classroom performance or student learning. Some of you out there might wish that I’d give out dollar bills every time I raised the point about these ineffective “master’s bumps.” Instead, you’ll just have to revel along with me in the 34-0 football-style blowout.

Speaking of football, the Wall Street Journal today features a great opinion piece by legendary NFL Hall of Fame quarterback (even before my parents’ time) Fran Tarkenton on the very same topic. Here’s a snippet to whet the appetite:

Imagine the National Football League in an alternate reality. Each player’s salary is based on how long he’s been in the league. It’s about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he’s an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player’s been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Let’s face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?

Of course, Tarkenton is making a strong analogy to the way most public school teachers are paid and retained today. I don’t know if he is aware of what Colorado’s Harrison 2 and Michigan’s Suttons Bay School District are doing. But if so, the former Vikings quarterback might be pleased to see at least two public school district pay systems much more closely aligned to the NFL and most private-sector businesses.

Spike the ball, Mr. Tarkenton. And give out a couple big high-fives to Mr. Miles and Mr. Murray. We know what clearly isn’t working. We know it’s neither easy nor simple to change bureaucratic cultures for the better. But we can and should celebrate the small breakthroughs that are happening to help transform 21st-century American education into a more productive and successful enterprise.

Touchdown!

President of the Northwest Allen County Education Association Alan Bodenstein told NewsChannel 15, they’ve been talking about it for about a year. He said it came to a “perfect storm” of a lot of different issues that finally made them vote on it.

“The financial piece of it, there’s always the political part of it, but I think for me, the biggest part was our membership was starting to dwindle and we needed to figure out a way to build a stronger local,” he said.

There are about 150 members right now and the vote Thursday night was 111-17 in favor of the separation….

In his insightful new book Special Interest, Stanford’s Dr. Terry Moe points to strong survey data that show teachers union members are significantly more satisfied with their local than with the state or national bodies (though even the latter has majority support). It’s only somewhat surprising then to read the news article’s claim that 12 other Indiana local unions already seceded before the one in Northwest Allen County.

The phenomenon isn’t isolated to the Hoosier State. Back in February, the Education Policy Center’s Independent Teachers blog brought attention to the fact that teachers in two Iowa districts decertified their affiliations with the state teachers union and the National Education Association in the same week. A similar development out of Kansas was a big story in 2009.

The local-only union model is one of many membership options available to Colorado educators — especially worth noting during the busy September season, when union members in many school districts have very little time to decide if they want to end their payroll dues deductions for the rest of the year. Yes, Colorado teachers have options, but often a less-than-perfect freedom to exercise those options accordingly.

Nearly a quarter of Colorado school districts have applied to participate in field-testing of new principal and teacher evaluation methods.

It was “a surprise and an encouraging message” that the Department of Education received 41 applications, said Diana Sirko, deputy commissioner. “We look at is as very encouraging.” She said CDE had expected a couple of dozen applications at the most.

According to the Denver Post, another CDE official indicated realistic hopes were for only about 10 positive responses from Colorado’s 178 school districts. Talk about the second local major education reform program of the year in which participation has exceeded all expectations. The more than 30 private schools that applied to be partners in Douglas County’s groundbreaking local voucher program (19 have been approved, as of this date) inundated staff who planned for about half the response.

All in all, it appears to be a positive sign that a large number, and wide variety of (rural, suburban, urban), Colorado school districts want to be a part of piloting the educator effectiveness law, which garnered national attention last year as SB 191. You know, the bill that ties teacher and principal evaluations — and ultimately job status — more closely to measured student growth. A lot of thought has gone into the process of making the law a reality across the Centennial State, and those who have worked on the implementation deserve some commendation.

Not that there isn’t room for some healthy skepticism about the implementation. After all, the last line of the Post story raises some eyebrows:

Statewide implementation of the system will be required by the fall of 2013, though tying the evaluations to probationary status and tenure will not go into effect statewide until 2016.

Amy Spicer from Stand for Children Colorado assures readers that the rulemaking development is positive, though she has a somewhat different (and more reliable) take on what the rule actually is:

During the 2013-2014 school year, the evaluation system will go statewide. Those ratings will only count for probationary teachers and will go toward earning non-probationary status. During the 2014-2015 school year, ratings will start to count for all teachers—both for earning and losing status.

Sounds better. But the law — Colorado Revised Statutes 22-9-105.5(10)(IV)(B) states:

During the 2013-14 school year, teachers shall be evaluated based on quality standards. Demonstrated effectiveness or ineffectiveness shall begin to be considered in the acquisition of probationary or nonprobationary status.

My Education Policy Center friends read that to mean that the evaluation ratings earned will have an impact on all teachers’ probationary or non-probationary status in 2013-14. If I am missing something, please let me know. Maybe this is a question for the Educator Effectiveness crew at CDE. Just want to make sure everything is done right, and done to help students. Wish the whole process were simpler, but sometimes that’s the way it is.

A staffing plan that eliminates 143 jobs, including teaching positions, in Falcon School District 49 was approved Wednesday by the school board.

Board members also voted to reinstate the Transportation Department as fee-for-service operation with no budget other than the money necessary to bus special education students. That vote caused the crowd at Falcon High School to erupt in applause.

After that cheerful moment, Chief Education Officer Becky Carter delivered her staffing plan, which was approved but not released Wednesday. It eliminated 108 positions in schools; 16 in learning and pupil services; 10 in special education; six in facility maintenance, and three 3 in other/administration.

Of course, Falcon 49 is the 15,000-student school district in the Pikes Peak region that’s pursuing innovation district status. The school board set the budget parameters for each of the four zones of innovation and left specific decisions on staffing positions (except for proposed cuts at the shrinking central administration level) up to the building principals and zone leaders.

Using admittedly year-old Colorado Department of Education data, the result looks like about an 8 percent reduction in the workforce — or moving from roughly 1 staff member per 8 students closer to a ratio of 1:9. Much of the downsizing will be achieved through attrition, but school- and zone-level proposals to change programs will also impact some existing support staff, paraprofessionals, and non-probationary teachers who end up applying unsuccessfully for other positions within the district.

Falcon 49 is reducing 2011-12 spending by $10.5 million – $11 million, a result of federal ARRA stimulus dollars drying up; required contribution increases to PERA, Colorado’s public employee pension system; pressing capital and technology needs; and uncertainty about state K-12 spending. Board treasurer Andy Holloman told the Education Policy Center’s Ben DeGrow that plans were made based on the originally proposed $332 million cut to K-12 rather than lesser reductions that have been promised in the current iteration of the School Finance Act.

“As much as we want to believe in the state, they often will come back and pull [some money] out later in the middle of the year,” Holloman said. “We decided to make deeper cuts now rather than later, so we hope to be better prepared for that.”

As the Gazette article explains, the Falcon 49 Board also opted against cutting the district’s transportation services, but required the department to self-fund. That likely means fees will be put into effect. Still, the big story in Falcon remains the district’s forward-thinking innovation plan. “We believe we will come out of this not just more efficient but more effective, too,” said Holloman.

Key to that success is increasing parental involvement, as well as empowering individual teachers. “If there were problems in the classroom, the central office was blamed,” he said. “We took that excuse away.”

Tough decisions are being made, as Falcon pursues a bold and innovative path. A lot of interested eyes will continue to watch and see just how this leads to better results for students.

The State Board of Education voted 6-1 Wednesday to grant an innovation application from the Kit Carson school district. A key feature of the plan grants the district waivers from some provisions of Senate Bill 10-191, the landmark educator evaluation and tenure law.

The vote is noteworthy because board members faced a seeming conflict between the 2008 Innovation Schools Act and last year’s educator effectiveness law.

It’s interesting, because as Ed News’ Todd Engdahl notes, the lead Democratic sponsors of the two pieces of legislation both come from the same northeast Denver Senate District 33. SB-191’s Senator Michael Johnston succeeded former Senate President Peter Groff, who championed the Innovation Schools Act. On both bills the lead Republican sponsor was Senator Nancy Spence, who gave Kit Carson’s proposal her blessing in advance of yesterday’s meeting.

To get the full scoop on Kit Carson’s proposal, you can go back and read what I wrote back in February or listen to a podcast with Kit Carson superintendent Gerald Keefe.

Kit Carson’s proposal ended up winning near unanimous approval in part because it won unanimous local support from the staff and school board, a fact that seemed to allay some of Senator Johnston’s concerns. Nevertheless, the proposal raised some eyebrows (and some significant legal questions) by asking for an exception from a couple key parts of last year’s groundbreaking Senate Bill 191 — most notably the provision concerning how teachers earn and keep non-probationary status (aka tenure).

Under SB 191, in order to secure the job protection teachers will need three consecutive years of effective evaluations, half of which will be judged by accepted measures of student academic growth. Non-probationary status then can be lost with two consecutive years of ineffective evaluations. It’s hard to be more specific right now, since the Council on Educator Effectiveness is still finishing up its work and the State Board has yet to draft formal rules.

Under Kit Carson’s plan, teachers would take five years to get tenure and then be up for automatic tenure review at years 10, 15, 20 and 30. It embodies the spirit of Senate Bill 191’s valuable reform promoting teacher quality and teacher professionalism, though not in precise detail. Just another case of one size doesn’t fit all.

Congrats to Kit Carson R-1, Colorado’s first official Innovation District.

I doubt the proposal will breeze through, and some details may need to be worked out. As reported in Ed News Colorado, Kit Carson’s superintendent caught some preliminary pushback from one State Board member:

Angelika Schroeder, D-2nd District, said, “I haven’t heard the innovation” in the plan. She suggested Kit Carson should help pilot implementation of SB 10-191.

A challenge for Keefe will be exactly that: justifying the need for the innovation proposal so shortly after the passage of a nationally hailed piece of legislation to reform Colorado’s teacher tenure and evaluation system. The 109-student Kit Carson R-1 seeks to include student academic growth as a smaller share of evaluations than prescribed by SB 191. The district also seeks to extend the probationary period for earning tenure from 3 years to 5 years — with periodic reviews thereafter — but without SB 191’s requirement of proving an educator’s effectiveness first. On another note, they also propose to waive licensure requirements so non-traditional experts could be allowed into a classroom to teach.

What do I know? Kit Carson got 100% support from staff and board members for its innovation proposal, and Superintendent Keefe knowledgeably and confidently asserts that it’s right for his rural district. From a policy perspective, some aspects of the proposal are clear improvements on the status quo, while some appear more mixed. But that may only matter as it ties to the lingering question in this discussion:

To what extent will Kit Carson’s proposed actions be seen just as a good step for its district and to what extent will they be seen as forging a template for other districts (especially rural ones) who might seek innovation status?

Overall, I feel confident about Kit Carson taking a flexible approach to SB 191 — much more than with most medium- or large-sized districts who need improvement in this area. (The waiver from teacher licensure is a different matter altogether.) But even that could be determined on a case-by-case basis, which means the State Board has an important role to play in deciding exactly how to handle Kit Carson’s proposal.

Phew! File that all away in the back of your mind. Kit Carson’s innovation proposal is slated to be formally heard and voted on by the State Board at its March meeting. For now, I’ll leave you with this lighthearted note from the Ed News Colorado story:

Keefe pointed out the absurdity of applying SB 10-191’s requirement that principal evaluations be based 50 percent on student growth. Noting that he’s both superintendent and principal, Keefe asked, “What’s the school board going to do, fire half of me?”

I honestly never thought of it that way before.