Harvard University professor Dr. Paul Peterson, along with colleague Carlos Xabel Lastra-Anadón, has unveiled some new research that underscores one of the top untold Colorado education stories of recent years. The issue is how high are states setting the bar to measure student learning in the basic subjects of reading and math–also known as “performance standards.”

The findings? Since 2007 states have raised the bar a bit on reading performance standards but have made no improvement with math. Essentially every state “deems more students ‘proficient’ on its own assessments than NAEP [the National Assessment of Educational Progress] does.” The researchers measured the strength of a state’s performance standards by how well the state’s proficiency ratings in various subject tests match up with the “gold standard” NAEP test. Continue Reading »

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For most schools and students in Colorado, summer vacation has arrived. Yippee! Time for students to escape from the classroom!

But what about teachers who escape from the classroom during the school year on tax-funded union release time? I’m not talking personal leave days or vacation time, but the special privilege underwritten by taxpayers that allows unions to release teachers for various days to do union business — including most recently so teachers could lobby at the State Capitol.

Shouldn’t tax dollars be focused on the educational mission of public schools? At the least, shouldn’t there be more accountability for how this type of release time is used? If it’s being used for legitimate purposes, there should be no problem in creating and enforcing policies that do as much.

Anyway, rather than listen to me ramble, you really ought to check out the new posting by Education Action Group on their NEA Exposed blog, after they interviewed my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow about the issue of union release time in Colorado.

It’s a long and thorough piece that concludes with a call to action:

“In general, greater public awareness of the problem is required, and taxpaying citizens need to make their voices heard,” DeGrow said.

Amen, brother. Keep up the good work. We’ll do what we can to help you spread the word.

For the excellent write-up and the offer to help spread the word, we all say Thank You.

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Not too long ago I wrote about my Education Policy Center friends’ visit to Adams School District 50 for the Standards-Based Education tour. Some seem to have taken the posting as an unqualified enthusiastic endorsement of the district’s SBS program, or maybe they thought I was being too one-sided and generous with praise.

The intent was to provide a descriptive summary of what my friends saw from the official tour. Okay, though, I own up for not making it clearer, and maybe I gave the district too much benefit of the doubt. But that’s also what happens when my friends let a 5-year-old do their blogging for them. (Not that I don’t like doing it, I’m just saying….)

Anyway, a few facts are plain: 1) Adams 50’s SBS system is new and untested. 2) Buy-in from schools and teachers certainly isn’t universal across the district, and implementation has been rough — at least at times. 3) Test results so far haven’t been encouraging. Continue Reading »

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I’ve written plenty about Colorado’s ongoing quest for Race to the Top federal education grant money. I’ve noted both the promise and the peril within this pursuit. But one issue I have yet to highlight is the Race to the Top requirement that states sign on to the Common Core Standards.

In a new iVoices podcast, Colorado State Board of Education member Peggy Littleton explains how the pull of federal money threatens to lead us down a path towards national testing and curriculum, undermining local control and in some cases watering down the quality of standards. Follow this link or click the play button below to listen: Continue Reading »

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On Friday my Education Policy Center friends took in the presentation and tour of new Standards-Based Education (SBE) system in the local Adams School District 50 (Westminster). It’s the largest school district in the nation to have taken such a bold departure from the traditional system of age-based grade levels and familiar letter grades.

Under the leadership of Superintendent Roberta Selleck, District 50 decided to move outside the box in addressing the challenges of a long-term decline in student enrollment coupled with growing rates of student poverty and limited English proficiency. The district is just completing its first full year using the SBE system, and there’s definitely something exciting and innovative going on. The system is about so much more than can be squeezed into a blog post, but here’s 16summary thoughts about SBE: Continue Reading »

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This week the state’s latest 3rd grade reading test scores came out. As the Denver Post’s Jeremy Meyer points out, the results were disappointing:

Year after year, the number of proficient third-grade readers in Colorado stays mostly the same — hovering around the 70 percent mark — mirroring a trend occurring nationally.

On Tuesday, the state released unofficial and preliminary results of the Colorado Student Assessment Program third-grade reading test, showing 70 percent of the students proficient or advanced in reading, 3 points lower than in 2009.

Of course, the big picture sometimes clouds bright spots: Continue Reading »

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A couple weeks ago I brought your attention to the fact that it was THE week for Senate Bill 191, the monumental effort to reform Colorado’s teacher evaluation and tenure system. Well, now that THE week is over and the bill passed the senate, this week really is THE week — as it goes up for a critical House Education Committee vote on Thursday.

In the meantime, the heated debate over SB 191 has brought attention back to a locally-negotiated special perk for many teachers unions — tax-funded release time from the classroom for teachers to lobby against the bill. I have asked the question before: Where is the accountability for school employee union leave activities?

In an op-ed published three (count ‘em, three) places since Friday, my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow says the latest experience with release time to rally against SB 191 makes the issue as relevant and as significant as ever. Take your pick: Continue Reading »

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My friends at the Education Policy Center recently ordered a couple of new books by big names in the field: Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System and Paul Peterson’s Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning.

If you want to whet your appetite for one or both books, or just to get a flavor of what their argument is, you need to check out the authors debating on the Eduwonk blog. I’ll boil down their arguments for you with excerpted quotes (or you can read Marci Kanstoroom’s summary at Education Next): Continue Reading »

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Yesterday brought news from the U.S. Department of Education of the new state-by-state NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) scores in 4th and 8th grade reading. These tests are the gold standard for comparing student performance between states and over time.

The big headlines note that in the short term (since 2007) the nation’s reading scores stayed flat in 4th grade and ticked up slightly in 8th grade. In the long term (going back to the first comparable tests in 1998), the results are exactly the opposite: with 4th grade scores going up modestly and 8th grade scores essentially remaining the same. Colorado’s achievement at both grade levels remains above the national average, but continues to track at about the same level of progress.

The real long-term winner is still the state of Florida — which, as Matthew Ladner reports on Jay Greene’s blog, not only is boosting student performance across the board but also cutting the achievement gaps based on race and poverty. Continue Reading »

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I’m pretty partial (OK, I’m very partial) to the School Choice for Kids website (or Opcion Escolar Para Ninos, en espanol) as an invaluable source of information for parents in Colorado who want to exercise their educational options. But it’s not the only source out there.

Denver’s Piton Foundation and 9 News have teamed up to create the Colorado School Choice / Escuela Para Mis Hijos site. The site provides some different information than is available on SCFK — with special emphases on schools’ academic growth ratings and student demographics.

Click the play button below (or follow this link) to listen to my Education Policy Center friend Pam Benigno discuss the newer site with Van Schoales of the Piton Foundation on an informative 18-minute iVoices podcast: Continue Reading »

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