More clear, accurate, available and usable information about public education is a good thing - good for parents, teachers, policy makers, and taxpayers — and ultimately for students like me. One good example of a step forward in this area is the Colorado Department of Education (CDE)’s new student growth model, featured in today’s Denver Post:

The model shows how students have grown academically compared with peers in the same grades with similar scores on the Colorado Student Assessment Program over the past two years.

“The bottom line is, the model tells us how much growth the child has made and whether that growth is good enough to meet state standards,” said Richard Wenning, associate education commissioner.

Other states have adopted growth models, but Colorado is the nation’s first to use percentiles to describe the growth, Wenning said.

Fortunately, the growth model doesn’t just compare students with their peers. It also uses an objective standard: Continue Reading »

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Last week I told you about how charter schools in Aurora were getting shortchanged in a proposed bond measure. The local newspaper, the Aurora Sentinel, fired back at the charter schools with a strange and poorly informed editorial.

There’s no need to rehash all the places where the newspaper’s editors went wrong. Denise at Colorado Charters took care of it pretty well with a two-part series (here and here).

According to a 2007 Harvard University national survey, most Americans don’t really know much about charter schools. Though interestingly, support for charters and equalized funding for charters is much higher among those who actually understand how they work. Perhaps if the Aurora Sentinel editors were similarly well-informed, their opinion would change.

But the reason I wanted to bring this all to your attention was the full and fresh treatment given today at the online news shop Face The State. One of the Education Policy Center’s own is quoted in the story:

“The claim that charter schools lack accountability is laughable,” said Ben DeGrow, an education policy analyst with the Independence Institute, a Golden-based free market think tank and frequent supporter of charter schools. “In many ways they’re more accountable than traditional public schools. If charters are managed poorly or fail to meet academic performance standards, they actually can be shut down.” [link added]

That’s somebody I want to grow up to be like. Anyway, you really ought to read the whole story, and then work to help my friends here in the Education Policy Center educate the public about school choice in Colorado — and particularly in this case, charter schools.

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In an interview yesterday with reporter Nelson Garcia of 9News, our own Ben DeGrow offered a different point of view on the bevy of school district bond and mill levy elections slated for the Denver metro area this November (H/T Mount Virtus):

Ben DeGrow is the education policy analyst for the Education Policy Center within the Independence Institute, which is a conservative political think tank. DeGrow says too many middle class families are coping with high gas prices and a poor real estate market to think about raising their own property taxes for schools.

“This may be a tough year for JeffCo and other metro school districts to be asking for money,” said DeGrow.

JeffCo is just one of the major districts around Denver poised to ask voters for money this fall. Denver, Aurora, and Cherry Creek have also expressed the intent to place bond issues or mill levies on the November ballot along with a number of other districts across Colorado.

DeGrow says school districts place bond issues and mill levies on the ballot during presidential elections because that means more un-informed voters will come to the polls.

“You’re reaching into a base of voters who don’t necessarily have as much information who may be inclined to just give more money to schools because it sounds like the right thing to do,” said Degrow.

DeGrow says, instead, people should be asking districts how it can spend the money it already has more efficiently instead of trying to fix all problems by throwing more money into the system.

“Most studies show, there’s no connection between how much is spent and what the results are as far as student tests,” said DeGrow.

You can also find the video by following the link to the story. Ben’s interview follows up on similar points that Pam Benigno made to 9News a couple months ago.

As highlighted in this backgrounder Ben wrote, Colorado still ranks 26th in per-pupil spending at roughly $10,000 per pupil. It’s time for more school district budget transparency.

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Last week I took a look at the work of Aurora Public Schools’ “outside-the-box” superintendent John Barry, and concluded:

Of course, changing the leadership model isn’t the only way to fix public schools. There are limits to the sort of “top-down” approach. More “bottom-up” reform that decentralizes authority and empowers parents with school choice and accountability is essential. But there’s also something to be said for school boards working to find more leaders like John Barry.

There was more to the point about the “bottom-up” approach than I realized. John Barry is doing a lot of good things from a reform perspective, but as Alan Gottlieb writes today over at EdNews Colorado, it appears that he’s missing the most important thing:

But one area where Barry’s forward-thinking regime has been slow to see the light is on charter schools. Last night, the Aurora school board decided to asked voters to approve a $215 million bond issue this fall. From that amount, the district is ofering [sic] a total of $750,000 to the district’s six charter schools. That’s a grand total of one third of one percent of the proceeds. Not exactly generous. Still, better than Denver, Adams 12 and Douglas, which are planning to leave charters out altogether.

It’s not as though Aurora Public Schools has taken a hard-line stance against public school choice. Of course not. I’ve also highlighted the new AXL Academy charter school that’s opening up in Aurora this fall. But one-third of one percent is a paltry sum.

Aurora Public Schools is improving, but it can do even better by showing even a little equity to its charter schools. The fact that Aurora isn’t even among the worst offenders in the Denver metro area demonstrates that there is still quite a ways to go locally in education reform.

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The Friedman Foundation is one of the biggest supporters of school choice for parents in the U.S. Lately they have been going from state to state asking people their views about education. Their most recent stop is Oklahoma. Some of the findings were quite telling:

Nearly two out of three Oklahomans are content with current levels of public school funding. A large majority of voters (64 percent) say Oklahoma’s level of public school funding is either “too high” or “about right.” At least 67 percent of the poll’s respondents underestimate the state’s actual per-pupil funding, which suggests that the funding satisfaction level is probably a conservative figure.

More than four out of five Oklahomans would prefer to send their child to a school other than a regular public school—only 17 percent say a regular public school is their top choice….<

Oklahoma voters value private schools—they are more than twice as likely to prefer sending their child to a private school over any other school type. When asked “what type of school would you select in order to obtain the best education for your child?” 41 percent of respondents selected private schools….

Interestingly, these results are largely consistent with the findings of the Friedman Foundation’s surveys in seven other states. Some details vary from state to state, whether citizens more strongly favor a voucher system, tax-credit scholarships, or charter schools.

But the point is that demand for school choice is growing among parents across state boundaries. Maybe someday one of these surveys will come to Colorado, and we can get a clear idea just how strong residents here support more educational options. I would guess support here is at least as strong as in Oklahoma and other places.

In the meantime, we’ll keep helping Coloradans understand just how important choice is to ensuring the best possible education for thousands of kids like me.

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When it comes to school choice and education reform, quite often good politics and good policy are at odds with each other. That’s one thing to draw from reading this post from Tampa Bay education writer Jeffrey Solochek about an initiative on Florida’s ballot this year:

Teachers unions and their traditional allies filed suit against Amendment 9 two weeks ago, but they aren’t the only ones taking issue. A couple of prominent education researchers also see something wrong here.

Jay Greene and Frederick Hess can hardly be accused of being fellow travelers. Greene is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Hess directs education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. But neither are fans of the “65 percent solution.” And neither likes the way Amendment 9 – pushed by Jeb Bush stalwarts on the Taxation and Budget Reform Commission - melds the 65 percent idea with a different policy issue involving vouchers.

What exactly is the problem? Well, thanks to the results of numerous top-notch studies, we know school vouchers “are better supported by top-quality empirical evidence than any other education policy.” But the history of vouchers succeeding at the ballot box has been less than stellar. Fresh on reformers’ minds is last year’s 62-to-38 percent defeat in Utah. Going back even further, an attempted 1992 initiative in Colorado lost by an even wider 2-to-1 margin.

On the other hand, the “65 percent plan” has an initial popular appeal to voters (though Colorado struck it down pretty handily in 2006). So proponents have calculated that tying the two together on the same ballot initiative will help expand school vouchers in Florida. Is it a good political strategy? My friends at the Education Policy Center aren’t sure, but they do know that the “65 percent plan” makes for not-so-good policy (explained by Jay Greene here and by Frederick Hess here).

This year might just give us more proof that successful reform and popular politics don’t always mix.

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Two of the Education Policy Center staff - Pam Benigno and Ben DeGrow - just got done speaking to all those in attendance at the Independence Institute Candidates Briefing. It was hard to fit inside of 30 minutes a real flavor of all these busy people (including Marya DeGrow and Raaki Garcia-Ulam) do.

There were plenty of good questions from the audience. The candidates seemed especially interested in information about school finance, because it’s so hard to find reliable information. And they’re interacting with members of the public, many of whom drastically underestimate how much our schools spend. This stuff is kind of boring and hard to figure out, but ask Mr. DeGrow for help. He’s done a lot of the hard work digging through the data.

But for the candidates here, it gets even better this afternoon, as Pam is going to talk about our School Choice website. Me? I’m going to play outside before it starts raining.

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Update: Pam let me know that a couple things quoted from her interview with 9News weren’t quite right. So I’ve marked them below.

Yesterday, Education Policy Center Director Pam Benigno spoke out about a proposal to raise school property taxes in Jefferson County:

“Well, I think this is definitely not a good time,” said Pam Benigno, director of the Education Policy Center within the Independence Institute. The Independence Institute is a Golden-based, non-partisan government watchdog group.

Benigno says the homeowner should not have to shoulder the burden of JeffCo’s increasing costs.

“I think that this is, this is too much,” said Benigno. “However, the system is the problem. They will always need more money.”

Benigno claims that while attending a meeting on the 2004 bond election [it was actually many years before that], a district staffer told her JeffCo plans on a bond issue or mill levy increase once every four or five years.

“As a citizen of Jefferson County, that really makes me uncomfortable to know that they’re planning on raising my taxes every five years,” said Benigno. “And, this time, this has been only four years.”

Benigno says the district should take a hard look at the way teachers are paid and restructure the system so it is more efficient. She says JeffCo should concentrate on offering students more school choice and be a stronger advocate for charter schools instead of just asking for more money from a population that is aging and contains fewer school-aged kids.

“Well, the problem is nobody really knows how much they need,” said Benigno. “Part of the government bureaucracy is to always need more money.”

I know you often hear some people say that they want to do things “for the children,” but in this case it’s not clear actually how much this money will help the children. We’ve seen there is no connection between spending increases and improving student outcomes. Pam is right: Jeffco needs to start responding better to parents’ demands for different kinds of school choices for their kids first.

Still, seeing Colorado’s largest school district begging for money once again leaves me with a lot of questions, like: How much of the hundreds of millions Jeffco spends gets to the classroom now? How effective is that money being used in the classroom? Shouldn’t it be easier for my parents and other people who pay taxes to see just exactly how that money is being spent? And besides, didn’t the Governor already raise school property taxes?

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