According to reliable Rocky Mountain News education reporter Nancy Mitchell, the name of Denver Public Schools superintendent Michael Bennet is being bounced around as a serious candidate to serve as Secretary of Education:

The Newsweek columnist who broke the story of Barack Obama’s presidential bid is betting on Denver Public Schools Superintendent Michael Bennet as the next U.S. secretary of education.

“I have my money on Bennet,” Jonathan Alter writes in the soon-to-be-printed Dec. 15 issue.

The others on Alter’s short list are Chicago Public Schools Superintendent Arne Duncan and Paul Vallas, head of New Orleans’ public schools.

The usually accessible Bennet is being coy about the column. He declined to comment directly.

Being superintendent of an urban school district is a tough job. From the standpoint of teacher innovation, parental choice, local empowerment, and student opportunity, it’s easy to argue that Michael Bennet has done better than most. The CSAP results that have come in show some small positive gains in DPS, but there is still much work to be done.

As this 2007 New Yorker feature story (Word document) shows, Bennet has worked tirelessly to take on the challenges. He has hit his share of bumps and made a few mistakes along the way, but he has continued to move forward and keep his focus on key reforms - all while avoiding the trap of popular discontent:

Van Schoales, urban education officer for the Denver-based Piton Foundation, said Bennet is one of the few U.S. superintendents able to implement painful changes - such as school closures - and keep his job with an elected school board.

“It’s important to have someone who can be articulate about what needs to happen,” Schoales said, “but do it in a way that doesn’t so alienate teachers and community folks.”

Barack Obama certainly could make a lot of worse appointments than Michael Bennet. Then again, it’s just the prediction of one Newsweek columnist. As of now, Bennett hasn’t even appeared on Fordham’s list of potential education secretary picks.

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According to a report cited in the Los Angeles Times, 12 of the top-performing 15 schools in California that serve low-income students are charter schools (H/T Joanne Jacobs). Nearly all of them!

Number 1 on the list is the American Indian Public Charter run by the amazing Ben Chavis:

“These poor kids are doing well because we practice math and language arts,” [Chavis] said. “That’s it. It’s simple.”

He insisted that it is easier to teach poor students than more affluent ones because they are more motivated to succeed. “It’s the opposite of what everybody says,” he said. “It’s easier to do it with the poor kids and the minority kids because they have nothing, so they should be the highest.”

Asked why most educational researchers say the opposite, he said: “They’re liberal and lazy . . . and they see these kids as victims.”

Ben Chavis and his students are among the leading stars of the award-winning Flunked documentary. As you can imagine from his remarkable can-do attitude, Chavis has succeeded where the naysaying bureaucrats in the traditional education system have not.

Then you hear the ridiculous news that the school board in Memphis, Tennessee, has gone out of its way to reject a charter school proposal based on an existing, successful school (H/T Colorado Charters). It kind of makes me want to scream and pull my hair out.

Anyway, I’m proud to say Colorado has its own star charter schools that serve large amounts of poor students. I’m thinking of:

• Cesar Chavez Academy
• Denver School of Science and Technology
• West Denver Prep

Why can’t more schools imitate their success? I don’t know, but it sure is exciting to hear California is seeing some similar results.

What isn’t so exciting is being told that I can’t go to this big Founders’ Night party tonight where all my friends in the Education Policy Center are going. Bummer. They tell me I’d think it’s boring and that it goes on past my bedtime, but I’m not quite buying it.

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I get excited to see the ball move forward even a little bit on the issue of school district transparency. Whether it’s the district’s checkbook or its union bargaining sessions, this kind of information should be easily accessible to parents and other taxpayers through the Internet.

Our friends in Pennsylvania, the Commonwealth Foundation, have launched the latest noteworthy effort (H/T SPN Blog):

As part of a year-long campaign to provide greater transparency in school district labor negotiations, the Commonwealth Foundation has unveiled a new website and blog, SchoolBoardTransparency.org. SchoolBoardTransparency.org will offer insight and advice in the labor negotiations process for school boards and citizens. The site will provide regular posts on issues, news, and best practices in school district labor negotiations, and allows users to comment and create posts on a moderated blog.

The project will also include a “how-to” manual for school board members looking to provide greater transparency during union negotiations and a resource for media covering public school labor negotiations. The guides will provide the important questions to ask and explain the key issues typically involved in labor negotiation contracts.

Besides its regular blog-style updates, School Board Transparency also provides more effective school districts with praise and constructive criticism.

Right now, I’m hoping the folks here in the Education Policy Center will look at promoting a similar sort of project for Colorado. Right now, voters in Jefferson County, Denver and several others would benefit from having transparent, easy-to-access information on how their school districts are spending tax money so they could make more informed decisions on mill levy and bond proposals.

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Denise at Colorado Charters highlights two new, freshly-submitted charter school applications in Jefferson County. Both have interesting and somewhat unique focuses. First, the proposed Arvada K-8 school Global Outreach Academy, which would cater to Slavic immigrant students. Second, the Lotus School for Excellence, which would be a math, science, and technology school eventually serving students from K-12.

Both proposed Jeffco charter schools are based on established models. And the fact that both come from California shouldn’t be a deterrent. An operation similar to the Lotus School has been set up in Aurora, and of the two especially seems to have an excellent track record.

Here’s hoping the Jeffco school board will give chief consideration to the needs and demands of the parents they are supposed to represent, and not let their judgment be clouded by issues of control and political power. It’s good to see Colorado’s charter school sector continue to grow, and with it the commitment to excellence and meeting the diverse needs of students and families.

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Okay, I think it’s a long and boring paper, but Ben in the Education Policy Center says the new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality is very important.

What it boils down to is there are a lot of rules, mostly written by well-meaning people, that end up negatively affecting how well kids learn in the classroom. The NCTQ report Invisible Ink in Collective Bargaining proves the realization that more damage is often done by lawmakers at the state level than by the private union negotiations at the local level.

The report’s authors say there are three major reasons this “preeminence of state authority” is so poorly misunderstood:

• The old media doesn’t much either understand or pay attention to the issues that govern education–namely, “few have focused on the outsized influence of the teachers union in the statehouse.”
• Neither school district or union officials have a vested interest in bringing public attention to their private bargaining sessions. Short of threats to strike, the media doesn’t get how the issues that are negotiated locally have an impact on education’s bottom line.
• Few scholars have researched the impact of collective bargaining on — or “the origin and history of state involvement in” — public education. Into this vacuum, pro-union and anti-union ideologies devolve into shouting matches.

One good example of research that others could emulate can be found in Dr. Terry Moe’s Collective Bargaining and the Performance of Public Schools. Interestingly, my friends in the Education Policy Center also are among the few that have paid attention to these issues. The Independence Institute has focused on these broader concerns through local Colorado examples, with such reports as Take Public Funds off the Negotiating Table and Nullifying the Probationary Period.

Because more research is badly needed, the general proposal of the NCTQ report is a great idea:

Better data and more transparency can dismantle myths and assumptions about collective bargaining and the role of unions, calling to task ideologically based positions. It is the surest path to achieving more informed negotiations and responsible results out of statehouses and decisions that are geared toward the best interests of school children.

Hey, that includes me! Okay, I guess I like this report, too.

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