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.

You have to go no farther than Douglas County, Colorado’s third-largest school district, where union leaders have lashed out against the reform-minded school board. Rather than sit back and let contentious negotiations fester behind closed doors, or allow the unseemly tactics to continue outside them, a group of local citizens is urging the board to open negotiations and shine the light on the real disputed issues. You can read (and sign, if you support) their petition here. It reads in part:

Negotiated union policies greatly impact how our tax dollars are spent and how our schools and classrooms function. In tight budget times, when we rightly demand greater accountability of our elected school board to make tough decisions, these decisions should be made in full view!

Meanwhile, at the State Capitol, Representative Kathleen Conti has introduced House Bill 1118 with the goal of “ensuring transparency in collective bargaining negotiations.” As my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow explained in a 2010 issue backgrounder, a similar bill was introduced, and very nearly passed, eight years ago (back in the dark ages…).

HB 1118 is slated for a committee hearing later this month, so you can expect to hear more soon about this important issue of public transparency and accountability. As I’ve pointed out before, open negotiations not only would remind union officials who they’re bargaining against (you: the taxpayer), but it also would help clarify who really is in charge of public education.

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!!

In the video, Bowdon highlights the wonderful news about last July’s decision rejecting the NAACP lawsuit. Justice Paul Feinman wrote in that opinion:

The court is not permitted, nor would it be appropriate, to substitute its own view of this complex societal question of how best to educate our children for the conclusions already reached by the legislative and executive branches.

I am pained to say this, but the Manhattan judge’s demonstration of humility could serve as a lesson to Colorado judges who have presumed authority in the Lobato school funding lawsuit. That 2009 ruling has opened the door for the costly postlude to the original round of legal debates. Now that the judiciary has said it can determine school finance policy, they have started getting their chance to weigh in. And it’s not been pretty.

Professor Joshua Dunn, the CU-Colorado Springs scholar who broke down the conclusions in Part 2, Round 1 of the Lobato case on an iVoices podcast, has followed through with a Colorado Springs Gazette op-ed that drives the point home:

Shockingly, Judge Rappaport claimed that “the interpretation of the Education Clause does not need to be harmonized with either TABOR or the Gallagher Amendment.” In other words, the judge believes she is free to ignore those inconvenient amendments.

To illustrate what a preposterous, and dangerous, position that is, imagine the U.S. Supreme Court saying that the President’s commander-in-chief powers did not have to be harmonized with the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press. Outrage would be the appropriate response.

I guess there’s a lot of outrage going on then. Outrage that a group like the NAACP would play legal hardball to deprive poor children of color of educational opportunity. Outrage that the anti-charter forces there still haven’t given up. Outrage that a New York judge shows more humility than our Colorado bench. Outrage that parts of our state constitution get ignored. On and on it goes….

But it’s Friday, so I’m going to mellow out. And just smile…. And play Legos. Have a great weekend!

This made for useful sound bites, but was always problematic because the definition of classroom spending was amorphous. Principals and curriculum specialists weren’t classroom spending, but teachers’ dental benefits were. There was bound to be a lot of cheating to reach the magic number. Unions hated it. And even though unions hated it, I didn’t like it either. In 2006, I wrote that I remained “doubtful that meeting such a threshold has any effect on the quality of instruction or on student performance.”

Very similar points were made by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow when Colorado’s Amendment 39 and Referendum J were on the ballot in 2006 — before my time. He noted that unions and established interest groups were on the right side of the issue, if largely for the wrong reasons. While the proposals crashed and burned here in Colorado, apparently a few other states like Georgia latched on.

The “65% Solution” still had enough mojo to emerge as part of a Florida ballot initiative package in 2008. In one of my first-ever postings here, I speculated about the danger of mixing good & bad policy for short-term political benefit. Since then, though, the report from Georgia is the first I’ve heard on the issue.

Another lesson? Not all reform fads are good. The so-called 65% Solution neglected the root of a systemic problem in K-12 education. Reshuffling dollars spent with new bureaucratic titles or accounting categories sells the problem short. Let the money follow the student based on need and parental choice, and we won’t need to worry about changing state law or the constitution to require certain shares of K-12 dollars fall into a certain category.

That would be change we could all rally behind. No dustbins needed.

Ed News Colorado’s Todd Engdahl as usual does a great job previewing the session and legislative initiatives likely to emerge. If you want the in-depth take, you simply have to go check out the story. According to the story, action is likely to be seen on the following fronts, among others:

• School finance reform
• Standardized testing implementation
• Charter authorizing standards
• Educator effectiveness rules ratification
• Online education oversight and regulation
• School construction funding
• School discipline policies
• A new version of the “parent trigger”
• “Restrictions on automatic salary increases for teachers who earn master’s degrees” (yee haw!)
• Private tuition tax credits

Many, not all, of these present some welcome changes. And of course, the devil remains in the details. In the meantime, word on the street is that another bill is coming to require school district-union bargaining transparency.

It looks like 2012 could bring some more Colorado legislative activity on K-12 education than a slow 2011 did. How much legislation passes, not to mention how much will be worth passing, remains to be seen. But now that my Education Policy Center friends are so much closer to the State Capitol, you can bet that little Eddie will have more of a front seat to observe what’s going on….

Some are better known than others, which the list helps to sort out. To build out his index, Hess used Google Scholar ratings, book and article contributions, mentions in the education press and newspaper, and even mention in blogs (!) to lay out the rankings. Many — for good or ill — have graced the postings of Ed Is Watching (listed in rank order):

• 2. Diane Ravitch (NYU)
• 3. Eric Hanushek (Stanford)
• 6. Terry Moe (Stanford)
• 7. Paul Peterson (Harvard)
• 12. Caroline Hoxby (Stanford)
• 21. Jay Greene (Arkansas)
• 33. Daniel Willingham (Virginia)
• 36. David Figlio (Northwestern)
• 38. Thomas Kane (Harvard)
• 44. Paul Hill (Washington)
• 48. Patrick Wolf (Arkansas)
• 52. Kevin Welner (Colorado)
• 62. James Guthrie (SMU)
• 64. Michael Podgursky (Missouri)
• 71. John Witte (Wisconsin)
• 73. Robert Maranto (Arkansas) — He even co-authored an issue paper for my Education Policy Center friends!
• 77. Robin Lake (Washington)
• 80. Paul Teske (CU-Denver)
• 88. Martin West (Harvard)
• 94. Marguerite Roza (Washington)
• 114. Joshua Dunn (CU-Colorado Springs)

Look at that. Click on any of those links above to become educated about important research and commentary in the areas of school choice, digital learning, teacher evaluation and pay, school finance, teacher unionism, collective bargaining or more. It’s my pleasure to share some of this with my readers here.

Interestingly, 12 of the 21 names listed above were cited in Ed is Watching posts during 2011. So I am left to wonder just how much this little 5-year-old helped propel some academics higher in the Edu-Scholar Public Presence rankings? Ok, to be honest, probably not a lot. But maybe a few of them would be willing to share just a tiny bit of the credit.

Guess you could say I’m the most indirectly influential kid on the block! Enough about me, now go follow one or more of the links and get into the debate, and/or leave a comment about which edu-scholars have been overrated, underrated, etc….

“…a final resolution of the constitutional and legal issues involved in the case require an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court.

“The judge’s decision provided little practical guidance on how the state should fund a ‘thorough and uniform’ system of public education. Moreover, while the judge focused on the inadequacy of state funding, she did not reconcile this issue with other very relevant provisions of the Constitution, including the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, the Gallagher Amendment and Amendment 23….”

Along these same lines, UCCS political scientist Joshua Dunn even more strongly pointed out on a recent iVoices podcast that Judge Rappaport’s ruling uniquely demonstrated “an absolute contempt for the constitution” by openly stating she could ignore those important constitutional provisions. In comments for a School Reform News story written by my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow and released on Tuesday, Dunn made a couple other key observations, including:

Dunn believes the judiciary should not write policy, since it is free to ignore the competing demands of state-budgeted services.

“Courts don’t have to consider opportunity costs. That’s why God gave us legislatures,” he said.

So long story short, it is good to see Lobato being appealed, though it’s sad that the case even has reached this point and will drag on for many more months and cost taxpayers many more thousands of dollars. It’s also important to note that only one of the two key parties has made the important decision before Christmas. Hopefully, the other comes before the New Year. Thus Ed News Colorado reports:

…the State Board of Education, after an hour-long closed session over the phone, adjourned without taking a vote on an appeal and will meet again Dec. 27.

I don’t know what the delay is about with the state board, but there’s probably a good reason. In the meantime, here’s wishing some good holiday cheer will help lead them to a sound and sensible course of action, too.

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.

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?

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:

1. While nobody asked Colorado teacher union members before taking political contributions from their paychecks, at least they can ask for the money back by December 15;
2. While the state senate president hasn’t given up his attacks on the online education option for parents, at least his attempt to push a selective audit was defeated;
3. While a number of pro-reform school board candidates lost and many inside the “education bubble” were distraught at the crushing defeat of the Prop 103 tax hike, at least the opportunity for truly creative innovation lies ahead with a number of new pro-reform board members ready to step up;
4. While a Denver judge went out of his way to shut down the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program, at least the rays of hope for a successful appeal on behalf of students and parents are growing brighter;
5. While a lot of hard work remains to be done, at least the State Board of Education has continued to push for a top-notch educator evaluation system through the rule-making process;
6. While the open enrollment process is less than perfect and opportunities could be expanded, at least Colorado still has one of the strongest laws and Denver Public Schools is making it easier for parents to exercise their options; and
7. While we still have a long way to go in ensuring the best in public school financial transparency, at least some more districts and other K-12 agencies are making progress to comply with the 2010 law.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I will be back on Monday, with my turkey sandwich and leftovers.