Mike Antonucci is doing yeoman’s work at the Education Intelligence Agency, going state by state to update K-12 student, employee, and spending data from the U.S. Census Bureau. I’ve called on his helpful charts that show the relationship of pupil enrollment to teacher hiring, and how states (and even districts) are doing financially compared to five years earlier.

Friday it was Colorado’s turn in the spotlight. Antonucci came at the information from an interesting angle, showing that Denver Public Schools’ ProComp “performance pay” system has not deterred new hiring. He makes a few other valuable observations. But leave it to little old Eddie here to uncover a few more interesting tidbits from the data for you all.

First of all, the Census Bureau says the state’s per-pupil funding grew by 8.3 percent from 2006 to 2011 — just short of keeping pace with inflation. Yet as Antonucci explains in a newer post, school districts typically are not set up to absorb the occasional recessionary cuts like they are the frequent increases that outstrip the “marginal costs”: Continue Reading »

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It’s that time of year again. I get to share some news and thoughts with you about the latest release of Colorado’s 3rd grade reading test results. We’re talking the “preliminary and unofficial” results from TCAP, the Transitional Colorado Assessment Program, formerly known as CSAP. As last year’s debate on HB 1238 (the Colorado READ Act) reminded us, making sure kids have proficient reading skills by this milestone year is a crucial indicator of their future learning success.

Ed News Colorado this week reports:

Colorado’s third grade TCAP reading scores remained flat in 2013 for the third year in a row, according to TCAP results released Tuesday.

Once again defying the trend and deserving a little extra kudos is Denver Public Schools, for boosting its 3rd grade reading proficiency up to 61 percent, closer to the state average. Also making progress is Westminster 50, which rebounded from a low 40 percent two years ago to 50 percent today. As the article points out, Aurora took a small hit but anticipates “a much different story next year,” while large suburban districts Jefferson County, Douglas County, and Cherry Creek followed the state’s flat trend line. Continue Reading »

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A sad education story is emerging from Oakland, California. Poor kids soon could be deprived of the option of attending the city’s top-performing high school and producing some of the best results nationwide. Why? Because a state audit found financial mismanagement by Ben Chavis, charismatic leader of the successful American Indian Charter, and lack of proper controls by the school’s board.

The Oakland Unified School Board narrowly voted 4-3 in favor of shutting down the school that has topped California’s charts with its test scores. You’d be right to say the situation must be pretty bad for a school that successful to be shuttered down.

Nationally-renowned libertarian investigative journalist John Stossel says American Indian Charter’s amazing academic track record for students so poorly served throughout most of the traditional K-12 system should overshadow the fact that Chavis and his wife made so much money off the school: Continue Reading »

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Update, 5/14: The U.S. Department of Education gave the Chingos & Peterson study its highest rating for the quality of research design, further validating a positive impact of school choice.

Gold-standard research on the positive impacts of school choice keeps rolling in. The latest work by Matthew Chingos and Paul Peterson measures the results for New York City students who received modest privately-funded vouchers to attend private schools. The study directly compared how many voucher students successfully completed high school and enrolled in college compared to non-voucher peers. For one group in particular, the results are remarkable:

Among African Americans, 26 percent of the control group attended college full-time at some point within three years of expected high-school graduation. The impact of a voucher offer was to increase this rate by 7 percentage points, a 25 percent increment. Among students using the voucher to attend a private school, the estimated impact was 8 percentage points, or roughly 31 percent.

No statistically significant results were found for other groups of students. The authors speculate that the observed benefit may have occurred because “the African American students in the study had fewer educational opportunities in the absence of a voucher.” Most notably, the effect measured is greater than some of the popular, widely-used, and costlier reform efforts of smaller class sizes or improved teacher quality. Continue Reading »

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For those who long have rolled up their sleeves to try to improve student learning, the cause of urban high school reform remains one of the most daunting tasks. Even in areas where the most concentrated and sustained efforts at reform have taken place, the promising results have been very limited. Enter a brand new report by A-Plus Denver, titled Denver and Aurora High Schools: Crisis and Opportunity.

Author Sari Levy gathered and analyzed student performance data from Colorado’s two large urban school districts, and the picture painted is not a very rosy one:

• Based on ACT test scores, “about a third of students in [Denver Public Schools] and [Aurora Public Schools] would not qualify for basic military service”
• On a day when Colorado college graduates are encouraged to show off their alma mater, it’s disheartening to see the rates of DPS and APS students needing college remediation are steady or rising
• Denver’s level of success on Advanced Placement (AP) courses lags well below the national average
• In a number of DPS schools, students in poverty have just above a zero chance of earning a 24 or higher on the ACT, which would place them at the average of their peers who will earn a 4-year college degree
• Average ACT scores across Denver and Aurora remained flat from 2008 to 2012

Continue Reading »

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Update, 3/27: For more perspective on the magnitude of yesterday’s court victory, read this redefinED commentary by Institute for Justice attorney Bert Gall, who argued the Indiana case.

I’m feeling just a little jealous of Indiana today. Just a little now–this is Colorado after all. I’m not talking about the fact that the Hoosiers made it to the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16, while neither the CU Buffaloes or CSU Rams made it past their second March Madness contest. Although the results on the basketball court haven’t helped, it’s actually news from a different kind of court that gives me extra smiles today:

The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice hailed today’s ruling from the Indiana Supreme Court, which declared the state’s school voucher program constitutional. The announcement ends a nearly two-year-long review of the nation’s largest voucher initiative, for which more than half of the state’s student population qualifies.

The Indiana Supreme Court upheld the program by a vote of 5-0, ruling “the voucher program expenditures do not directly benefit religious schools but rather directly benefit lower-income families with school-children by providing an opportunity for such children to attend non-public schools if desired.”

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When it comes to the world of K-12 education in Colorado — you know, what keeps my little eyes busy watching — today (this week!) is all consumed in the political debates over Senate Bill 213, the big school finance overhaul tied to a billion dollar tax increase. So I invite you to follow the clever, quippy (is “quippy” a word) Eddie on Twitter today starting at 2 PM Colorado time. Or just tune into the hash tag #CoSchoolFund.

At this point, I hardly know what to expect. After nearly two years of a School Finance Partnership predicated on the idea of a “Grand Bargain”, it comes down to the introduced legislation‘s first big committee hearing this afternoon. With 174 pages of legislation and billions of dollars to be allocated, you can be sure of lots of witnesses, questions, and discussion.

Here are a not-so-dirty dozen questions I hope to see answered (in no particular order): Continue Reading »

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You can’t judge a book by its cover. There are many expressions like this one out there that convey a basic piece of wisdom. A beautiful building you may have driven by many times could be a filthy mess inside. How do you know? If it’s somebody’s house or private property, they would have to invite you inside for you to properly find out for yourself.

But if that building is a place where tax dollars are paying officials to negotiate how tax dollars are spent and policies are made for our public schools, then there’s no reason for the doors to be locked. Citizens should be able to peer inside and know what’s going on.

The Professional Association of Colorado Educators (PACE) — one of Colorado teachers’ professional membership options — today highlighted some interesting results from their latest member survey, showing that most of their members like the idea:

The Professional Association of Colorado Educators recently asked member educators their views on a variety of relevant policies related to education in Colorado. One of these issues related to whether or not negotiations between school boards and union officials should be open to the public. An overwhelming 81% of respondents agreed that these negotiations should be open to the public.

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A powerful research report released today from a big study confirms what anyone paying attention to the urban charter school movement already should have noticed. KIPP produces big gains for students:

KIPP middle schoolers learn significantly more than comparison students, concludes a report by Mathematica Policy Research on 43 schools in 13 states plus the District of Columbia. Three years after enrollment, the average KIPP student gained an extra 11 months in math, moving from the 44th to the 58th percentile, and eight months in reading, moving from the 46th to the 55th percentile. Science gains equalled an extra 14 months and social studies an extra 11 months.

Following up on research released in the summer of 2010, Mathematica confirmed earlier findings that KIPP doesn’t benefit from attracting more gifted students than those left behind in surrounding schools. Mike Feinberg, the cage-busting co-founder of the national, no-excuses charter school network, notes among other findings: Continue Reading »

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You can forgive a blogger if once in awhile he decides to rehash a little old news, can’t you? Especially if he’s a cute little kid like yours truly? Anyway, long-time readers may be aware of my longtime edu-crush on former DC Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee. You also may recall how excited I was to report in 2011 her Denver speech when she declared she had changed her mind in favor of private school choice.

Well, I’m all smiles to relive that moment again in this newly-published piece Rhee did for The Daily Beast, titled “My Break with the Democrats,” in which she explains the transformation. She talks about numerous meetings she had with parents who were seeking Opportunity Scholarships to get their kids out of failing DC schools: Continue Reading »

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