Two days ago the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE) released its annual report detailing the in-state academic remediation rates for post-secondary students. The bottom line?

Overall, the percentage of first-time recent high school graduates placed into remediation in at least one subject increased by 11 percent from the previous year (31.8 percentage points in 2010-11 from 28.6 percentage points in 2009-10).

Those figures include all schools. If you isolate public schools, the statewide remediation numbers rose from 30.7 percent in 2009-10 to 33.9 percent in 2010-11. Ed News Colorado has performed the valuable service of breaking out the last six year’s numbers for users to search by school district, or even individual high schools.

For an even longer-term view, you can check out an analysis of remediation rates from eight years ago (2002-03) in my Education Policy Center friend Marya DeGrow’s issue paper Cutting Back on Catching Up. The CCHE report then revealed that 26.6 percent of public high school graduates needed some kind of remediation — which amounts to more than a 27 percent increase over the past eight years!

Going back to Ed News’ posted data, we see a mixed bag of largely negative trends among Colorado’s five largest districts from last year (2009-10) to the most recent results (2010-11):

• Jefferson County: 25.8% to 28.6%
• Denver Public Schools: 59.0% to 58.9%
• Douglas County: 20.5% to 21.5%
• Cherry Creek Schools: 26.8% to 28.5%
• Adams 12: 31.0% to 39.1%

Hopefully, someone out there can dive deeper into some of the numbers and give us a better picture of which schools are struggling… and perhaps even some concrete answers to the question “why?”. I’m sure almost no one is satisfied with the progress or the results in the area of remediation. Any suggestions that more money simply be poured into the status quo model need to be greeted with a hefty dose of skepticism, though. Bring on the education transformers…

And now today it’s the first-ever Digital Learning Day, centered at a site where you can participate in a live chat and watch a series of webcasts, including an online national townhall meeting at 1 PM Eastern (11 AM Mountain). Colorado is well represented, as the townhall features National Online Teacher of the Year Kristen Kipp from Jeffco Virtual Academy. Also, at 1:30 PM ET / 11:30 AM MT, our local Englewood High School will be one of numerous school sites around the country interacting online via Skype.

I tell you what. There is so much more going on in the digital learning arena here in Colorado, and my Education Policy Center friends are right in the middle of it. If you haven’t seen their helpful guide for parents that came out within the past couple months, you really need to check out Choosing a Colorado Online School for Your Child.

What’s more, last week they also co-sponsored an event with the Donnell-Kay Foundation that brought together nearly 50 of the state’s online education leaders to help craft a digital learning policy roadmap! The keynote speaker and facilitator for that event, Susan Patrick from iNACOL, also is speaking out on this important day:

“By embracing the transformative power and promise of online learning, kids everywhere can have access to the best teachers, engaging content and mastery-based learning opportunities. With new learning models, we can overcome achievement gaps, level the playing field and ensure America’s kids rise to meet the demands of a world that is increasingly globally-competitive,” said Susan Patrick, president and CEO of iNACOL.

Her group highlights four key areas of need policy change to expand effective digital learning opportunities not only in Colorado but also throughout the nation:

• Break down barriers of student access
• Move away from seat time to “competency-based” learning
• Provide equitable, student-centered funding
• Embrace new models of accountability and assessment

Hear, hear, time for Colorado to step up! You’ll be seeing more from me on this front in the near future. In the meantime, Happy Digital Learning Day!!

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.

Guess what! Just over a week ago I banged on a drum that may have started to hurt some of your ears by now. The drum is the madness of taxpayer-funded release time for Colorado teachers unions. And then (out of the blue?) yesterday the front page of the Denver Post shouts about “Colorado teachers unions under fire for taxpayer subsidies from school districts.” Thanks so much to reporter Karen Crummy not only for taking note of this issue my Education Policy Center friends have highlighted for years but also for doing lots of her own digging to tell a pretty disturbing story.

The Post’s findings about the number of districts paying tax dollars for union officers and other teachers to leave the classroom, and the lack of accountability for the practice, track very closely with the findings in Independence Institute papers from 2004 and 2010. That’s probably why Crummy saw fit to interview and quote one of my Education Policy Center friends:

“It’s bad enough that they pay for union release time at all, but to not even have a basic level of accountability, especially in these tighter budget times?” said Ben DeGrow, an education policy analyst at the Independence Institute who has advocated that schools change union leave policies. “It’s kind of appalling.”

Yes, you could say that, especially when the article identified more than $5.8 million in taxpayer subsidies to teachers unions over the past five years. But don’t worry, the state’s largest teachers union gave the Post an answer for that:

“This impacts student achievement. People don’t understand the value of our role in helping the district function,” said Beverly Ingle, president of the Colorado Education Association.

Wow. Taking days to go the CEA Assembly and elect officers and conduct business for a private organization impacts student achievement? Lobbying against educator effectiveness legislation impacts student achievement? Negotiating a new union contract with taxpayer-paid employees on the other side of the table impacts student achievement? Enlisting volunteers for partisan political campaigns impacts student achievement? I could go on….

But strangely enough, it’s the comment only paragraphs later in Crummy’s story by a local CEA official — from the only one of Colorado’s largest 20 school districts identified as not having any taxpayer-subsidized union leave — that sends the most stinging rebuke:

“The way we look at it is, ‘Why would the district pay us not to be in the classroom?’ ” said Jim Smyth, president of the Mesa Valley Education Association.

I am told that way back in 2003 a bill to outlaw taxpayer-subsidized union release time almost passed the legislature. Too bad it was almost. In these tough budget times, it might make a difference for a few teachers who are being laid off. If publicly-funded union perks aren’t on the chopping block now, then how can the cries of abject poverty be taken seriously?

Maybe, just maybe, the attention this time will make a difference for fiscal sanity and educational accountability.

Today brings the launch of another helpful site that complements the work of SCFK. As the name ColoradoSchoolGrades.com suggests, the new site does something that SCFK does not. Namely, it rates schools and gives them a grade based on measures of academic performance (static numbers) and academic growth (progress over time). In a sense, it’s like the next generation of the school report cards the Independence Institute pioneered once upon a time before the state adopted — and later discarded — School Accountability Reports.

The Institute also is one of the 18 organizations that make up the coalition behind the site. So it’s only natural for me to be proud of the immediate coverage the site received in the Denver Post:

Under the coalition’s grading system, most schools are given a letter C for average, allowing the top performers to be highlighted.

The coalition grades on a curve, allowing only schools with the top 10 percent of scores — based on the state’s calculation — to receive an A.

If there is one disappointment I have, it would be that the site wasn’t able to issue ratings based on an objective standard. Still, grading on a curve has more value than not grading at all, as it enables parents to make relative comparisons between schools across the state of Colorado. And just like School Choice for Kids, it’s not only a great, accessible data set that’s parent-friendly, but it’s also available in both English and Espanol. Much more parent-friendly than the state’s School View site, which serves its own distinct purpose.

If you haven’t visited ColoradoSchoolGrades.com yet, time to spend 30 seconds and get your assignment:

With public school open enrollment season upon us, it’s great to have one more helpful resource out there for Colorado families to use.

The contract provides an estimated $900,000 in annual release time for police union work, including lobbying. Six officers are released from city work on a full-time basis (each receiving 160 hours of overtime at 1.5x their regular salary). PLEA also uses 35 representatives. These representatives are not given a set amount of release time. Instead, they are authorized to use an unspecified amount of release time to accompany fellow officers to grievance meetings, use of force hearings, etc…. Release time harms police officers….

Then yesterday, the national website Real Clear Markets featured commentary from the Manhattan Institute’s Diana Furchtgott-Roth that the federal government is dishing out huge sums of taxpayer dollars for bureaucrats not to work:

…The Office of Personnel Management reports that taxpayers paid Federal workers over $137 million in 2010 to work as representatives for government unions, up from $129 million in 2009.

The time that union representatives spend not working for taxpayers is labeled “official time” by OPM. According to the report, “Official time is time spent by Federal employees performing representational work for a bargaining unit in lieu of their regularly assigned work.” Under the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, this is perfectly legal.

I’m not sure whether to be completely outraged that money I’m going to have to pay back when I grow older is being wasted like this, or relieved to learn that Colorado school districts aren’t alone in having this problem. Back in 2010 my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote his latest analysis of the union release time boondoggle. Previously he uncovered the hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars annually used to subsidize teachers union activities. His 2010 report simply asked for a little commonsense accountability… Please?

As I noted months ago:

The privilege remains embedded in many collective bargaining agreements. The Jefferson County Education Association, for example, gets 275 days each year releasing teachers from the classroom to do union business with the district responsible for paying the substitute costs. Evidence showed an earlier president of the Poudre Education Association engaged in political activities while most of her salary was paid from public funds. The same arrangement remains in place.

Did I mention some of the taxpayer-funded leave days have been used to lobby at the State Capitol?

I get it. There’s only so much attention out there that parents and other citizens can give. There’s only so much outrage to go around before forehead veins start popping everywhere, before the stress does all the big people in. And the federal government in Washington, D.C., is eating up some people’s quota for outrageous and disturbing news.

But I’d like to think if there was a little more awareness of the problem, a little more reporting of the wasted taxpayer dollars — maybe some open union negotiations to expose the “release time” subsidies more widely to the general public — that we might see some positive changes. A little accountability? Some taxpayer savings, or maybe rewards for better teachers?

I don’t have to be a dreamer, though. Any school board members or legislators out there paying attention?

Being of a decidedly reform-minded bent, the group has offered up some expected developments in their five choices for each of the “Best” and “Worst” categories. Most of the items I’ve covered at one time or another during 2011. Naturally I can’t make you vote for any particular events (or even vote at all), but I am making some strong suggestions that fans could select on my behalf as one of the most inexpensive Christmas gifts you’ve ever purchased. This is my blog, and I like to save the best for last. So which of the five choices should you recognize as the worst education event of 2011?

Worst: As time goes on, I have less and less patience for the big people in Washington, D.C., so the bungled re-authorization of No Child Left Behind (#2) mostly makes me shrug. The magical money tree hasn’t done much for real education reform in many of the Race to the Top-winning states (#3), either. Maybe California’s new governor further messing things up (#4) just seems too far away for me to get too worked up. And as tempting a choice as it is, the chief reasons for the repeal of Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 (#5) are little connected to education reform and teachers unions.

So by default, I am casting my vote for #1: the Atlanta cheating scandal. As I wrote months ago when the story first emerged, the problem here is the predictable overreaction from reform opponents. If the scandal led to better testing security and/or greater use of online adaptive assessments, I would have to vote for something else as the worst development of the year. But the Koret Task Force page explains what really has transpired:

…[W]hat the public has “learned” is that testing is bad because it creates so much stress that well-meaning educators are pushed to the limit and eventually succumb (for the children’s sake, of course!) to the temptation to cheat, lie, and break the law.

Best: My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote an op-ed explaining the sensible rationale for rolling back government employee collective bargaining privileges in states like Wisconsin (#2). expressed my admiration for the sweeping range or reforms legislated in Indiana (#5). While California made some progress in establishing working rules for its “Parent Trigger” (#3), here in Colorado the idea faltered. And my edu-crush on Michelle Rhee is no secret, so I had to give some consideration to her teacher evaluation system surviving her tenure in DC Public Schools (#4).

But in the end, we can’t do any better than recognizing 2011 as the Year of School Choice (#1). Especially when the “reinvigoration of school choice via opportunity scholarships and vouchers” hit so close to home with the passage of the groundbreaking Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. Forget the injunction for now. Cast your vote for the accelerating national trend toward educational freedom.

Vote for the #1s, and I’ll say: Thank you very much! Of course, I could point out that there are still nearly four weeks left in 2011, and maybe we haven’t yet experienced the “best” or “worst” education event of the year. But that’s just the pesky little provocateur in me speaking….

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.

Colorado’s top senator says he’ll introduce legislation to “rein in” online schools after his request for an online education audit was rejected Tuesday on a party-line vote by the Legislative Audit Committee.

The gridlock in question is yesterday’s 4-4 audit committee vote, which prevents Senate President (and Congressional candidate) Brandon Shaffer from making a selective attack on K-12 online providers and the families that choose their services for a full-time educational program. At least through the audit process, that is. Ed News writer Nancy Mitchell explains that opponents of Shaffer’s request proposed a more comprehensive audit:

Rep. Cindy Acree, R-Aurora, immediately questioned the scope of the audit, asking why all K-12 schools weren’t included.

“I can tell you I think there is tremendous problems right now in all of our public schools, regardless of whether they’re online or not,” she said. “So I’m concerned at why we need to do this audit.”

Hey, how about an audit of school districts granting taxpayer-funded release time to unions with little or no accountability? Among other troubling revelations, we have seen many union leave days used to lobby at the State Capitol during the school day. My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote a paper documenting the abuse.

The problem is “gridlock” would probably eat up any such commonsense audit request — unless perhaps it could be included in the comprehensive K-12 audit request? Now there’s an outcome I would be reluctant to bet any of my precious piggy bank pennies on.

And so we’re left with a case of Audits for thee, but not for me, and a state senate president still bent on regulating the online education option to death when we know that’s just a terrible idea.

How many more nights of sound sleep for little Eddie until the legislative session starts?

If that’s the case, then the timing couldn’t be better for the release of my Education Policy Center friends’ new issue paper Time to Show the Money: Complying with Colorado’s Public School Financial Transparency Act. Research associate Devan Crean was the lead author, and senior policy analyst Ben DeGrow was the co-author.

In 2010 our state legislature passed HB 1036, a bipartisan measure requiring local K-12 agencies to post budgets, financial audits, financial statements, salary schedules, and as of July 2011, expenditures in the form of check registers and purchase card statements. So how well are they doing?:

During the summer of 2011 the Independence Institute examined the extent to which local education providers have complied with the financial transparency law by observing the substance and presentation of online financial information for each of 178 school districts, 16 BOCES and the Charter School Institute. Each website was evaluated on the requirements of the law, as well as other criteria. The findings were unsettling, as there were only eight school districts fully in compliance as of the law’s July 1, 2011, deadline, and 24 school districts fully in compliance 90 days later. (Extra time was allowed due to an ambiguity in the law that allows for diverse interpretations.)

Ouch. The remarkable thing is that many agencies are doing a truly bang-up job, some even exceeding the basic requirements of the law — with searchable expenditure databases. Most of them are larger districts, like Jefferson County and Cherry Creek and Colorado Springs 11, but smaller districts can find true inspiration in the transparency efforts of tiny Silverton School District in southwestern Colorado’s gorgeous mountain country.

While one could respond in disgust or despondency at the less-than-stellar results statewide, I prefer to look at the bright side. For one thing, 69 other school districts and BOCES are “almost compliant,” meaning they could easily fall in line with the full requirements of HB 1036 with just a little more effort.

And what about the other half of agencies? Well, fiscally-conscious citizens should take heart and take notice. While local K-12 agencies basically depend on the honor system to report whether they are in compliance with the transparency law, it’s Joe Q. Public who now has the leverage of the law to make sure districts are sharing the required information, and go beyond and make the information user-friendly. The consequences for failing to comply are a downgrade in the accreditation rating.

As for the law itself, it could stand some small improvements to tighten up a few loopholes. State lawmakers would be advised especially to take a look at this case from the new issue paper:

In July 2011 a Colorado citizen activist emailed Aurora’s director of finance asking why she was unable to find the transactions of withholdings for dues to the teachers union, the Aurora Education Association (AEA). The director responded that those withholdings are not listed within the check registers because they are done by wire transfer and in her “understanding of HB 1036 that wire transfers were not included.” This potential loophole is very troubling, because it opens the door for districts to use wire transfers in order to guard against transparency.

In the end, government spending transparency should continue to improve as technology becomes more enhanced, citizens kindly but firmly exert their rights, and public school agencies realize it’s in their best interest to post financial information online in the clearest, most comprehensive manner possible. One of my Education Policy Center friends stated it well in a media release that accompanied the new publication:

“Transparency helps to encourage productive spending of tax funds, and builds good faith between citizens and their local school systems,” said DeGrow.

Productive spending indeed — strong transparency is one ingredient to help effective innovation forge ahead as budgets have stagnated. It’s Time to Show the Money!