The Denver Post’s website yesterday published an opinion column by Alliance for Choice in Education executive director Norton Rainey, decrying the “unsurprising” but disappointing defeat of House Bill 1296:

HB 1296 would have provided low-income families with an annual $1,000 tax credit for enrolling their child in a private school. The bill would also have provided a grant of $1,000 to any public school that loses a student to a private school as a consequence of the tax credit.

The legislation would have given low-income families a financial incentive to send their child to a private school, reduced public school class sizes as more children took advantage of the tax credit, and provided public schools with a $1,000 grant to help them give the children that remain a better quality education.

What’s more, HB 1296 would have saved the state millions of dollar, according to the official fiscal note prepared by Legislative Council: $4.9 million in savings for the first year, $6.9 million in the second year, and as much as $26 million by 2022. [link added]

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I pause from my regularly scheduled juvenile opining to acknowledge the passing of someone who gave many years of service to the state of Colorado — including many on behalf of public education. He and I wouldn’t have agreed on every issue, but there’s no doubt he was independent in thought, well-informed in his views, and passionate in his work.

I’m talking about former Arvada state senator Al Meiklejohn, who died Monday at age 86 and will be put to final rest today. As reported in this week’s Denver Post obituary, Meiklejohn served six years on the Jefferson County Board of Education and “constantly pushed for public-school reform and better salaries for teachers.” For his service he has a Jeffco elementary school named after him.

You know Senator Meiklejohn was a man of influence and stature when in the week of his death he has received such high praise from two very different sides of the education spectrum. Continue Reading »

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It’s March — which means, if you like basketball as much as I do, there’s a really big tournament coming up. And after a team wins two games in that tourney, then they become part of the cleverly named “Sweet Sixteen.” But what about states that filled out applications for competitive federal K-12 grant money? How does it work out for them?

Well U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a big basketball fan, too, and was once a good college basketball player. No doubt about that. So in one sense I understand why this morning Duncan announced 16 states are finalists for the first round of Race to the Top money. Colorado, which asked for $377 million to implement reforms, is among them.

Since no one knows exactly how many grant awards will be distributed, it’s hard to say how this all will play out and whether states will even get the amount they asked for. But Colorado hasn’t helped itself with a consensus approach, which among other things has created a council to study how to tie teacher tenure and evaluations to student academic growth, rather than actually try to fix the law itself.

And today Ed News Colorado tells us: Continue Reading »

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The Denver Post followed up its Sunday story on local school district expenditures with an editorial today that says “Shine the light on school spending”:

A bill now advancing in the General Assembly would require school districts to make budget information available online, including discretionary spending. House Bill 1036 argues that districts ought to take advantage of technology to allow for greater transparency.

We question whether a mandate is needed, but agree with the intent and urge districts to use the technology on their own.

As my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow noted in his recent report “What Should School District Financial Transparency Look Like?” (PDF), HB 1036 is a small step forward but a relatively weak mandate. Continue Reading »

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I know this sounds a little weird, but I think I’m experiencing a bad case of deja vu. The topics of three posts I wrote last week all re-emerged this Friday morning:

1. On Monday the 15th I noted that the school spending transparency debate had returned to the State Capitol. While Senate Bill 91 here was killed, I see that our neighbors to the Southwest – Arizona – are giving serious consideration to a bill that would bring detailed spending transparency to public school agencies and all other governments.
2. On Wednesday the 17th I highlighted our new podcast with Harrison superintendent Mike Miles about his district’s groundbreaking performance-based teacher pay program. Today the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) posted their interview with Miles about the very same topic in its weekly Teacher Quality Bulletin.
3. Last but not least, on Thursday the 18th I brought your attention to Rick Hess’s new blog and promised to cut back on using the “It’s For the Kid” line. This morning the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci observes that it didn’t take very long for NEA to help make Hess’s argument for him.

Here’s hoping the month of March brings something new. Have a great weekend!

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Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal featured a great (and timely) editorial piece titled “No (Tenured) Teacher Left Behind” — focusing readers’ attention on an issue that demands policy makers’ attention:

School reformers generally agree that the most important education resource is the teacher. But one of the biggest obstacles to putting a good instructor in every classroom is a tenure system that forces principals to hire and retain teachers based on seniority instead of performance.

California grants tenure to teachers after merely two years in the classroom. New York, like most other states, makes teachers wait a grand total of three years before giving them a job for life. In most cases tenure is granted automatically unless administrators object, which is rare.

Colorado is like New York, in that teachers have a three-year probationary period before career tenure is rewarded. Some object and say that Colorado doesn’t have teacher tenure. If you mean the word tenure as such doesn’t appear in the law books, you’re right. But there are still plenty of bureaucratic hoops to climb that make removing a tenured teacher extremely costly and difficult. Remember this chart? Continue Reading »

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If I’m in a class some day and the teacher has to take time off because she is sick or has some job to do to learn how to be a better teacher, that would be one thing. But getting paid to take time off on behalf of the union, well, that’s a different story.

In his new issue paper Colorado Schools and Association Release Time (PDF), my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow says that our school districts need to do much better knowing how these leave days are used — especially the paid ones, to make sure money from my parents and other hard-working citizens isn’t misused.

Like taking union release time to campaign for political candidates. That’s what happened in Fort Collins in 2004 (see here and here), and who knows how many other times and places? Do people really think this is okay? Because nobody in charge seems to be asking the questions.

Click the play button below, or follow this link, to listen to Ben discuss with Pam Benigno on an iVoices podcast why greater accountability for the tax-subsidized privilege of union release time is the least that is needed during these trying budget times:

Maybe someday Colorado might decide to follow Utah’s lead and move forward a bill prohibiting paid union release time altogether. But can’t we all agree that for now, a legislative audit and some stronger local policies would be a good idea? If enough people knew this practice was taking place in many of our school districts, I’m sure there would be an outcry for such a commonsense approach.

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It’s the Monday after a holiday weekend. Most federal government workers have the day off, including no mail delivery. State workers are excused from duty for Presidents’ Day. Most schools are closed, too.

What a great time for a state senate committee to hear Senate Bill 91 (PDF), the 2010 version of Colorado’s Public School Financial Transparency Act. The legislation is a new and improved version of last year’s SB 57, which some politicians found a way to double-super-kill. Even Miracle Max couldn’t help us then.

One key difference between last year and this year is the fact that a few Colorado school districts — like Jeffco and Colorado Springs 11 – are showing that real financial transparency can be done at a reasonable time and cost. That doesn’t even include the newest financial transparency site created by Douglas County Schools, which may be the best of them all. Continue Reading »

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It may be a little off the topic of K-12 education, but it’s very relevant to many who work in Colorado’s public school system. The Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) has published a new book titled Sweeping the Shop Floor: A New Labor Model for America.

The old industrial labor monopolies that seemed to work for a different era have wreaked damage on Detroit, California and many other places. In its press release, EFF proposes something different:

In response, the study proposes that the United States modernize its labor laws based on reforms successfully implemented several decades ago in New Zealand. The highly regulated nation found itself on the brink of bankruptcy by the late 1980s. New Zealand’s political leaders passed a series of sweeping economic and labor policy reforms modernizing the nation’s labor laws. In 1991 the Employment Contracts Act gave workers the choice of whether or not to be represented, and also made unions compete for members.

Over five years, unemployment dropped from 11 percent to 6 percent and productivity increased significantly.

“This new piece of legislation was not only a boon to New Zealand’s economy, but also had a strong social impact on its citizens,” says Mike Reitz, General Counsel for the Freedom Foundation and a co-author of the study. “People were allowed to create flexible working arrangements with their employers and receive compensation based on their unique skills and talents rather than on rigid union contracts.”

So how does this tie into Colorado education? Continue Reading »

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Yesterday I heard education lobbyists testify before Colorado’s House Finance Committee that tax credits must be repealed to help offset budget cuts to K-12 schools. I can’t say whether or how much they have a point, because for years (or so big people tell me) of funding increases they have constantly said there’s not enough money. It kind of reminds me of that little boy who kept yelling something until nobody believed him anymore.

Well, has it occurred to anyone that the structure of the system, the framework for how we spend money on K-12 education, might need to change? Is that even part of the conversation? Enter the Cato Institute’s Adam Schaefer, who puts the spending on a national scale into context in his brand-new piece for National Review:

K–12 schooling is the biggest item on state and local budgets. Judging by the 2005–06 totals from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), state and local governments now spend well over $500 billion each year on public K–12 education. The Bush and Obama administrations have overseen a startling increase in the federal involvement in and funding of K–12 education, but the federal government provides just 9 percent of education funds, compared with 44 percent from local sources and 47 percent from states.

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