Last April I asked the question: Is momentum growing for open school union negotiations in Colorado? The results ended up mixed — with Colorado Springs District 11 opening more of their bargaining to public view while Jefferson County redoubled under a veil of secrecy.

Well, tagging on at the end of an Ed News Colorado story about Jeffco school district employees pleading with the Board to stop budget cuts was this little nugget about last night’s meeting:

Shortly before public comment began Thursday, board members voted 4-1 to close employee negotiations to the public. Board member Laura Boggs was the only “no” vote.

Defenders of the status quo learned their lesson from last year. Since the teachers union bargaining agreement in the state’s largest school district says negotiations are supposed to be open, they needed to act early and decisively to keep the prying eyes of taxpayers away from important discussions. Sad. But thankfully, it’s not the only Colorado front in the fight to open union negotiations and bring the public into public education. Continue Reading »

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Update, 1/5/12: Chris Tessone at the Flypaper blog also makes note of the Denver Post story, correctly observing: “It’s difficult to make an argument that taxpayers should be directly subsidizing union leaders. Organized labor already extracts indirect subsidies by skimming dues from teachers’ paychecks, sometimes against the desires of teachers.”

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: Continue Reading »

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One thing December brings is the obligatory year-end lists. If you are even a casual reader of this blog, then you should be interested in taking a moment to vote on the “Best and Worst in American Education, 2011″ — brought to you by the Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force on K-12 Education.

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? Continue Reading »

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With all the breathless attention on K-12 online education these days, you’d almost think it was a brand-new phenomenon — not something that got its start in Colorado more than a decade ago. This time it’s the Washington Post, chiming in to note that some are questioning the educational value of cyberschools.

Am I surprised? No. Let me repeat what I’ve said many times: Full-time online education is by no means the best option for all students, or even most students. But it works very well for many families who have chosen the learning option. Which some might have a hard time understanding if you believe the straw man presented by an opponent in the Post story: Continue Reading »

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Pretty much nobody is in school today, as we all gear up for the big turkey feast tomorrow. As my parents constantly remind me, the fourth Thursday in November is about more than food and football. Yes, Thanksgiving is about giving thanks. While I could gratefully mention the standard fare — family, friends (like those big people in the Education Policy Center), freedom, our big screen TV, and my growing (ahem!) Legos collection — more fitting for the blog are seven things to be thankful for in Colorado K-12 education: Continue Reading »

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So here we are, almost a week after the election here in Colorado that got a lot of big people’s attention. Prop 103’s “for the kids” tax hike went down in a ball of flames. A record number of local school tax and debt elections ran headlong into defeat. In at least one case, “negative perceptions” of a school district’s level of financial transparency has been credited with bringing down a mill levy override proposal.

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?: Continue Reading »

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Yesterday I mentioned the banner news from Douglas County, where the pro-voucher slate of school board candidates prevailed in a high-turnout election. To help keep your spirits up, you simply have to watch this excellent 8-minute Choice Media TV video feature on school choice in Douglas County, and not just because it features my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow:

Continue Reading »

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With all the important results related to education in last night’s election here in Colorado — hooray, the only dominoes that toppled were the ones supporting the Prop 103 tax increase on families like mine, AND the school choice champions in Douglas County all won — it would be easy for me to overlook some other significant education news. Rather than overlook it on one hand or delve deeply into it on the other, I’m merely going to point you to some early thoughts and observations.

I’m talking about yesterday’s release of the latest results for math and reading from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), better known as the Nation’s Report Card, the gold-standard test to measure what 4th grade and 8th grade students in different states are learning about important subjects. Without further ado, here are some good reads: Continue Reading »

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Today across Colorado, the last ballots are coming in to help determine who will serve on many of the state’s 178 local boards of education (some have no competitive races, and therefore no election). It may not be the most thorough or reliable way to bring about needed reforms, but opportunities exist for some positive changes to be made at the local level that promote parental choice, professional teaching and productive education spending. That a few dozen school board candidates came out last month to hear from my Education Policy Center friends gives me some small amount of hope.

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: Continue Reading »

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A couple days ago I gave a 5-year-old’s shout-out to well-informed parents and a simplified process for families choosing to enroll their students into a DPS school to which they are not assigned. Any reasonable step we can take to facilitate families to make educational choices that better serve students’ needs is a good thing.

Making effective and meaningful changes to the K-12 system are far more likely to happen when parents are engaged and empowered and (at least somewhat) organized. In an interesting and informative Education Next article, the Walton Foundation’s Bruno Manno highlights the successes of three influential parent groups that are “NOT your mother’s PTA”: Continue Reading »

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