“This regulation would negatively impact nearly all charter school teachers in the country,” Board Chairman Bob Schaffer said. “In essence this regulation would strip charter schools of their status as government groups when it comes to retirement system participation.

“If that were to happen, teachers at those charter schools who now participate in the Colorado Public Employees Retirement Association would be forced to find jobs elsewhere or forfeit their accrued pension wealth.”

Writing at the Weekly Standard, Joy Pullmann notes the same consequence for charter school teachers nationwide and wonders what the motivation might be:

It’s odd for a government agency to try to strip, rather than enlarge, public-sector benefits. So is this just an oversight, or a sneaky backdoor attempt to please unions piqued at Obama’s pro-charter education policy so far?

Meanwhile, the Manhattan Institute’s Josh Barro takes a different tack in his February 8 Forbes column:

But the regulation also offers us an opportunity to discuss a broader issue: why do charter schools even want to participate in defined-benefit pension plans? As it turns out, they often have good reasons for wanting in—but those have to do more with the dysfunctional structure of the system than with inherent advantages of DB pensions. With a more rational retirement system, many more charter schools would give up DB pensions voluntarily.

Both raise excellent points, noting the inequitable and unjustified short-term devastation the rule would cause while exploring the possibility for a more sound policy through long-term changes. Colorado and other states definitely need to pursue dramatic pension system overhauls like those Barro highlights. But the drastic, selective, and backhanded approach currently under consideration is absolutely the wrong medicine for students and educators who have chosen public charter schools.

One of the first important items to pop up is next Monday’s scheduled committee hearing for House Bill 1149, aka Parent Trigger II. This lighter version of last year’s Parent Trigger bill by Rep. Don Beezley looks like it at least will have a chance to go further than the House Education Committee, unlike last year’s proposal.

In a nutshell, HB 1149 gives parents of students in low-performing schools greater voice to speed up the process of closing, turning around or converting the school. Currently, the State Board has to intervene in struggling schools designated “priority improvement” or “turnaround” after five years. The new proposal would empower parents during the third year of the process. If 50 percent of them sign a petition, the State Board would only be obligated to give them a hearing before taking one of three options:

1. Do nothing (i.e., continue the existing improvement plan);
2. Wait and schedule a reevaluation of the school’s plan for the following (fourth) year; or
3. Direct the Commissioner of Education to convene a review panel to make recommendations.

Okay, so it’s hardly a huge, radical change, and not nearly as strong as the original version. But it does give parents in low-performing schools a little more power and potentially a lot more voice.

According to the Colorado Department of Education’s School Performance Framework, 221 of the state’s 1,806 schools and alternative education centers are operating under a priority improvement or turnaround plan. Of that number, 105 (representing a variety of schools from Denver and Pueblo, as well as rural and suburban areas) will be going into the third year and should be immediately affected by the legislation.

While Colorado’s HB 1149 doesn’t appear to be as potent as the “parent trigger” proposals coming forward this year in places like Arizona, Florida, Indiana and Louisiana, it is a small step in the right direction.

In the meantime, inquiring minds want to know whether anyone will see little Eddie’s shadow peeking around the State Capitol in the coming days. Wait and see, there should be enough time. Fourteen more weeks of legislative session, you say? As tempting as it sounds, guess I can’t roll over and go back to sleep yet….

To commemorate the occasion, Colorado’s own State Board of Education chairman Bob Schaffer penned his thoughts on the National Journal Education Experts blog. At the time NCLB was debated and passed Congress, Schaffer was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives. So his perspective on what he describes as “an enormously bad idea” is especially insightful:

Ten years later, there are few who deny NCLB has been a failure. Anyone who expected otherwise back in 2001 was either fooling himself, or more likely, didn’t read the law.

The law actually accomplished just what it was written to do – spend enormous sums of money the federal government didn’t have and hadn’t yet printed, provide perverse incentives for lower standards, and turn school administrators and teachers into dutiful federal bureaucrats instead of the productive local educators they had previously been free to be.

Ouch. Schaffer explains elsewhere in his piece how the original idea under the name “No Child Left Behind” promoted by President Bush was a good concept that morphed into a bad program through the Congressional amendment process. He also argues that the marginally positive benefits that have followed NCLB were “well underway through state initiative” and likely would have come to fruition without the joint efforts of Bush and the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

Like I said before, I haven’t been alive long enough to know just how true that is, though his argument certainly has merit. Back in the day, my Education Policy Center friends tried to make the most of the federal legislation here on the ground in Colorado. In 2003 Pam Benigno wrote the influential, groundbreaking and frequently-cited issue paper No Child Left Behind Mandates School Choice: Colorado’s First Year. In the end, sadly, the nearly toothless and incomplete federal legislation failed to fulfill the promise, notwithstanding the best efforts of many.

For a slightly different point of view, you also should check out Kathleen Porter-Magee’s somewhat softer assessment that the law primarily fell short because of weak implementation that failed to upgrade from the NCLB 1.0 scheme. I sort of get her comparison of NCLB to the iPod, since my dad sometimes lets me play with his.

Congress may some day get around to reauthorizing the major education legislation — whether tweaking it or starting over from scratch, I don’t know. But here’s hoping that lawmakers take heed to the lessons of why NCLB failed to fulfill the lofty expectations.

One such major issue is how Colorado K-12 public schools recruit, hire, pay, evaluate and retain their teachers. The implementation of the state’s educator effectiveness law occupied a lot of time and attention last year, and an important — but unusual — deadline comes up next month. The rules adopted by the State Board of Education either must be ratified or repealed by the state legislature by February 15.

The hope also remains that this debate propels more local momentum toward important educator compensation reforms like those highlighted in my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s 2011 issue paper on the subject. Time to stay tuned in….

Meanwhile, the national debate on teacher quality presses forward. And that brings an important contribution compiling all the key research on the question in the new book Teachers Matter by Manhattan Institute senior fellow (and now one of Colorado’s own) Marcus Winters. This professionally-made 5-minute video, including a few key interview excerpts with the author, frames the issue well (H/T Jay Greene):

Nice. So this is 2012, huh? Well, I’m sure you’ll be hearing more from me and my Education Policy Center friends about educator effectiveness in Colorado as the pages on the calendar keep turning. And that’s just one of the important issues on which we’ll keep focusing. It’s good to be back.

“…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.

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.

a year-long campaign to celebrate bold, creative innovative teachers in classrooms across this nation. These front-line innovators are already embedding digital learning into new instructional practices to ensure that every student leaves the classroom ready for college, career and life success. We ask you to join with us, as with them, as we launch an unprecedented, collaborative effort to expand innovation into every city, town, school and classroom in America!

Former West Virginia Gov. Bob Wise explains a little bit more in this 3-plus minute video:

Digital learning has real power to help transform our state’s and nation’s education system into a more nimble, productive, effective, and student-centered enterprise. But it’s far from just a matter of importing iPads into the classroom. The market for computerized and web-based technology to enhance learning is booming, but progress is hindered by policies designed for the 20th century factory age.

If you want a clear and sobering big-picture assessment of where our education system is today, and why it needs to change dramatically, check out former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s CNN interview with Piers Morgan.

Last month’s release of the Nation’s Digital Learning Report Card provided a road map. Most of its proposals that Colorado hasn’t already adopted can help fulfill the promise of online and blended learning strategies for students and for our state. But remember: as my Education Policy Center friend Pam Benigno and the nationally-renowned Michael Horn both have said, more regulation is exactly the opposite of what we need.

In fact, an effective array of digital learning options can best be created by quite the opposite approach. Via American Thinker’s Gary Jason:

…the unionized teachers and administrators may use web-based instruction to co-opt school choice….

Keep pushing vouchers. Within a voucher system, one can easily allow cyber-schooling for those who want it.

Exactly. The two reform ideas are complementary, not contradictory. In the meantime, my Education Policy Center friends will continue helping to arm students and parents with information about their education options — including full-time online and blended learning — as policy makers hopefully see the need to overhaul policies that are choking effective innovations like digital learning. So get yourself ready for February 1, sign up today (it’s not too early), and help spread the word!

Yesterday Harvard professor Paul Peterson wrote yesterday on Education Next about a new U.S. Department of Education report rating state math and reading standards for 4th and 8th grade. Though USDOE’s report didn’t acknowledge it, Dr. Peterson and his team had published very similar research — comparing state standards to the “gold standard” National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — just a year ago:

Every state, for both reading and math (with the exception of Massachusetts for math), deems more students “proficient” on its own assessments than NAEP does. The average difference is a startling 37 percentage points.

Interestingly, the new USDOE report concludes:

All NAEP scale equivalents of states’ reading standards were below NAEP’s Proficient range; in mathematics, only one state’s NAEP scale equivalent was in the NAEP Proficient range (Massachusetts in grades 4 and 8).

A case of deja vu? Though the Education Next and USDOE studies used somewhat different methods to compare the data, they came up with almost the exact same answers. Peterson noted yesterday that the correlations between the findings for all states — not just Massachusetts — were statistically very high, with one notable exception:

Colorado is the one state where we provide substantially different rankings. Ednext ranked it 4th; the Department says it is 45th. I suspect the difference is due to a change in standards in Colorado, but I invite readers to throw light on the discrepancy.

Why did last year’s survey find our state among those with the highest math and reading standards, while the new government study places us among the lowest? I’m not sure how to explain that away. Colorado’s State Board of Education adopted new academic standards in 2009, but assessments have yet to make the transition. Is there something significantly flawed in either the state-reported data (Ed Next) or school sample data (USDOE), but only for Colorado? Could the feds be relying on old data? Frankly, I’m baffled.

And I don’t like to be in the oddball state. But I would be glad if someone got to the bottom of it so we could know the truth. As for whether it was worthwhile for the USDOE to reproduce very similar work already done by private researchers just to find a major discrepancy for Colorado… well, that’s the million-dollar question.

Nearly a quarter of Colorado school districts have applied to participate in field-testing of new principal and teacher evaluation methods.

It was “a surprise and an encouraging message” that the Department of Education received 41 applications, said Diana Sirko, deputy commissioner. “We look at is as very encouraging.” She said CDE had expected a couple of dozen applications at the most.

According to the Denver Post, another CDE official indicated realistic hopes were for only about 10 positive responses from Colorado’s 178 school districts. Talk about the second local major education reform program of the year in which participation has exceeded all expectations. The more than 30 private schools that applied to be partners in Douglas County’s groundbreaking local voucher program (19 have been approved, as of this date) inundated staff who planned for about half the response.

All in all, it appears to be a positive sign that a large number, and wide variety of (rural, suburban, urban), Colorado school districts want to be a part of piloting the educator effectiveness law, which garnered national attention last year as SB 191. You know, the bill that ties teacher and principal evaluations — and ultimately job status — more closely to measured student growth. A lot of thought has gone into the process of making the law a reality across the Centennial State, and those who have worked on the implementation deserve some commendation.

Not that there isn’t room for some healthy skepticism about the implementation. After all, the last line of the Post story raises some eyebrows:

Statewide implementation of the system will be required by the fall of 2013, though tying the evaluations to probationary status and tenure will not go into effect statewide until 2016.

Amy Spicer from Stand for Children Colorado assures readers that the rulemaking development is positive, though she has a somewhat different (and more reliable) take on what the rule actually is:

During the 2013-2014 school year, the evaluation system will go statewide. Those ratings will only count for probationary teachers and will go toward earning non-probationary status. During the 2014-2015 school year, ratings will start to count for all teachers—both for earning and losing status.

Sounds better. But the law — Colorado Revised Statutes 22-9-105.5(10)(IV)(B) states:

During the 2013-14 school year, teachers shall be evaluated based on quality standards. Demonstrated effectiveness or ineffectiveness shall begin to be considered in the acquisition of probationary or nonprobationary status.

My Education Policy Center friends read that to mean that the evaluation ratings earned will have an impact on all teachers’ probationary or non-probationary status in 2013-14. If I am missing something, please let me know. Maybe this is a question for the Educator Effectiveness crew at CDE. Just want to make sure everything is done right, and done to help students. Wish the whole process were simpler, but sometimes that’s the way it is.

The statewide teachers union has sued the Colorado Board of Education over new rules requiring the public disclosure of teacher arrests.

The board passed the new rules this spring at the prompting of Fort Collins resident and board chairman Bob Schaffer.

The first attempt to establish the rule was shot down by a 4-3 vote in May 2010. The State Board went back to the drawing table to address concerns and complications, but the teachers union remained fundamentally opposed:

Marti Houser, general counsel of the Colorado Education Association, said, “Our concerns relate to the constitutional and statutory rights of our members, not that we don’t care about the children. … If we are moving to a process … of reporting every arrest, that would be very unfortunate [and] a huge burden for the Department of Education.

“There aren’t very many educators being arrested … very, very few are convicted or plead guilty” to crimes, she added.

A “huge burden” for a small number of teachers? Schaffer’s crusade to enact the change was provoked by 2009 coverage of two Poudre School District teachers who had been arrested. Parents were never notified. Both teachers ended up with convictions for different kinds of crimes that involved harming children. Part of the “very, very few” perhaps. But the public’s (and especially the parents’) right to know is a very important factor in this equation.

So this past April the State Board unanimously approved the new rule — which went into effect at the end of May. As Ed News Colorado noted:

The new rule, named 1 CCR 301-87 in administrative jargon, contains no enforcement or reporting requirements so districts essentially will be on the honor system in using it.

Apparently, CEA is concerned that enough districts would do the honorable thing. So now the Colorado State Board of Education has another lawsuit on its hands. That almost certainly means they’ve been doing the right thing.