Two days ago the Colorado Commission on Higher Education (CCHE) released its annual report detailing the in-state academic remediation rates for post-secondary students. The bottom line?

Overall, the percentage of first-time recent high school graduates placed into remediation in at least one subject increased by 11 percent from the previous year (31.8 percentage points in 2010-11 from 28.6 percentage points in 2009-10).

Those figures include all schools. If you isolate public schools, the statewide remediation numbers rose from 30.7 percent in 2009-10 to 33.9 percent in 2010-11. Ed News Colorado has performed the valuable service of breaking out the last six year’s numbers for users to search by school district, or even individual high schools.

For an even longer-term view, you can check out an analysis of remediation rates from eight years ago (2002-03) in my Education Policy Center friend Marya DeGrow’s issue paper Cutting Back on Catching Up. The CCHE report then revealed that 26.6 percent of public high school graduates needed some kind of remediation — which amounts to more than a 27 percent increase over the past eight years!

Going back to Ed News’ posted data, we see a mixed bag of largely negative trends among Colorado’s five largest districts from last year (2009-10) to the most recent results (2010-11):

• Jefferson County: 25.8% to 28.6%
• Denver Public Schools: 59.0% to 58.9%
• Douglas County: 20.5% to 21.5%
• Cherry Creek Schools: 26.8% to 28.5%
• Adams 12: 31.0% to 39.1%

Hopefully, someone out there can dive deeper into some of the numbers and give us a better picture of which schools are struggling… and perhaps even some concrete answers to the question “why?”. I’m sure almost no one is satisfied with the progress or the results in the area of remediation. Any suggestions that more money simply be poured into the status quo model need to be greeted with a hefty dose of skepticism, though. Bring on the education transformers…

In other words, the proposal that represents a small, positive step for parental empowerment stepped out from beneath the groundhog’s shadow. And not a moment too soon, for such a commonsense piece of legislation.

Yes, it’s sad to see only Republican representatives showing a modest support for the education consumer. Is it just Colorado where Democrats seem so universally wed to protecting K-12 institutions of power (the Colorado Association of School Boards and Colorado Education Association both testified against HB 1149) at the expense of a little extra parent voice in the school turnaround process?

Interestingly, California Democrat Gloria Romero today expounded on her support of a more comprehensive parent trigger bill coming out Florida:

This is not a Democratic or a Republican fight. It’s a fight for parents, by parents. This is also a civil rights issue that is personal to me. My mother had a sixth grade education; I have a Ph.D. I know what education means for ending poverty, and I know how hard we are making it for millions of children to get the quality education they need and deserve.

If you are poor, African-American, Latino or a member of any other underserved constituency, too often your success in school is tied to your zip code and to government officials who make life-altering decisions for you. Those with financial means move to a different school, but those who stay need a way to make the schools work for their children.

Or as Colorado’s Rep. Beezley was quoted in the Ed News story:

Help me offer a little bit of hope … to parents with children in some of our lowest performing schools…

The far-from-conservative Metro Organizations for People came out in support of HB 1149, noting that the existing five-year turnaround process is “far too long.” If they were in California or Florida, they may have found support from the Democratic caucus so far. There’s still time for the Colorado legislature to debate and vote on this bill in a bipartisan (or better yet, nonpartisan) fashion. I hold out hope that it can be the case.

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….

At the other end of the poverty – and fund-raising – spectrum is Johnson Elementary in southwest Denver, which reported fewer than $3,000 in private gifts in 2010-11.

If a donation of five or six figures came through the door of the school, where 96 percent of students are low-income, said Principal Robert Beam, “You’d be writing a story about a principal who is dancing in the streets all day long.”

The timing of the story is remarkable. Why? Yesterday substantial checks went out to 14 metro area public schools and 2 public charter management organizations (CMOs) serving high-poverty student populations, with awards totaling $500,000. And they didn’t just go out to schools based on need, but to schools with a proven record of serving their students well:

Award winners were selected based on a variety of factors, including academic performance and growth, percentage of students qualifying for the Federal free and reduced lunch benefit, school culture, leadership, and instructional effectiveness.

So states the media release from the benefactor Foundation For Great Schools, a coalition of five private Colorado foundations, including the Daniels Fund (which also helps support my Education Policy Center friends). When they cite “academic performance and growth,” they aren’t kidding. All 16 recipients earn an A or B from the new Colorado School Grades site:

• Montview Math and Science Elementary (Aurora)
• Tollgate Elementary (Aurora)
• South Elementary (Brighton)
• Ricardo Flores Magon Academy (Charter School Institute – Westminster)
• Community Leadership Academy middle school (Charter School Institute – Commerce City)
• Beach Court Elementary (Denver)
• Bryant Webster Dual Language K-8 middle school (Denver)
• Denver School of Science and Technology CMO (Denver)
• Girls Athletic Leadership School (Denver)
• Greenwood ECE-8 middle school (Denver)
• KIPP Sunshine Peak Academy (Denver)
• West Denver Prep CMO (Denver)
• Deane Elementary (Jeffco)
• Stein Elementary (Jeffco)
• East Elementary (Littleton)
• Valley View K-8 elementary school (Mapleton)

I haven’t seen any reports indicating increased street-dancing activity taking place near any of the above schools. Yet while various kinds of celebrations may take place at each of those centers of learning, I will study up on the definition of this great word philanthropy. Remember: You can find more information on Colorado schools and the open enrollment process at the fantastic, parent-friendly School Choice for Kids website.

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 report shows that Charter Management Organizations (charter organizations that manage more than one school, currently DSST, West Denver Prep and KIPP) are not only outperforming district and other individual charter schools, but are having a significant impact on the district’s overall growth and achievement scores at grades six and above.

For those who have been following the success of the three charter school franchises (two of them completely home-grown) serving high-need students, this report is not terribly surprising. But it is good, encouraging news nonetheless. It especially gives a great deal of hope for the middle school years, in far too many cases a brutal academic wasteland that leaves many students almost irreversibly behind. For 6th through 8th graders DSST, West Denver Prep and KIPP are blowing the roof off traditional DPS schools and other charters.

The A+ Denver report raises some significant questions for future direction in DPS. Taken together with a couple of recent national studies, this report should help the knee jerk anti-charter crowd to withdraw and reassess for awhile. Bad charters are closing at a significant rate, while high-quality charters in Denver maintain their excellence as they grow. Meanwhile, across the board, charters at the elementary and middle school level continue to outperform their peers.

A well-deserved hurrah once again to the KIPPs, West Denver Preps, and DSSTs. What can be learned and implemented from these schools? Are we holding back too much? What are we waiting for?

Denver Public Schools students and parents have from now until January 31 to exercise their school choice, using a new process that allows families to list up to five schools in order of preference. The Denver Post opined recently that the new, streamlined system is fairer and ultimately will prove more user-friendly. Parents can learn more from DPS at meetings either tomorrow morning at East High School or Wednesday evening at George Washington High School.

The range of educational options is expanding within DPS, and sometimes coming directly to families as schools compete for students. Viva Colorado’s Roxana Soto reports (H/T Ed News Colorado) that leaders from the newest West Denver Prep school are going door-to-door in the city’s Montbello neighborhood to recruit fifth-graders into their highly successful program:

On this particular morning, the recruiting team, which includes the principals of the two new schools, hopes all this favorable information will help them persuade parents on the fence. All recruiters are equipped with marketing materials and Google maps showing where current fifth-graders live.

“It’s just a time for us to make sure that every fifth-grader knows there’s an awesome option in their neighborhood,” says [WDP enrollment manager Alicia] Lucero.

Yes, there’s no doubt the first four West Denver Prep middle schools have been “awesome,” and there’s every reason in the world to believe the new Montbello and Green Valley campuses will follow suit. But the success also may create a dilemma as the charter franchise reaches out to families in these neighborhoods. Does “West Denver Prep” create too much confusion among denizens of the city’s northeastern corridor and necessitate adjustment, or do all the successful schools retain the well-earned brand of distinction?

A minor issue, I guess. Whatever the name is, the beautiful, real-life chaos of school choice expands and thrives, bringing more opportunity along with it. And families in our state can find the information they need by visiting the incredible duo of fantastic informational sites, School Choice for Kids and Colorado School Grades.

Onward and upward for Colorado educational choice in 2012. In the meantime, don’t forget that now is an ideal time to exercise the right to search for a better learning option while the first round of open enrollment lasts. It will be over before you know it.

Yesterday brought the release of a three-year study on the eight earliest Denver innovation schools — including Bruce Randolph, Cole, Manual and Montclair. One key, hopeful finding? Successful innovation schools exhibit “positive cultures,” which contributes to steady, effective principal leadership.

Still, the two news stories on the study make similar points. The Denver Post highlights that innovation status is simply a tool, not a magic bullet. Meanwhile, Ed News Colorado’s headline trumpets the major (and not terribly surprising) finding that the “innovation law doesn’t spark major change.” One point in the study touched on in the latter story did cause me to roll my eyes a bit:

In particular, according to the report, principals, teachers and parents cited as positives greater control over how and when they hire, the ability to opt out of direct teacher placements by the district and the use of one-year contracts to ensure new hires are a good fit with the school’s mission.

Still, the findings on innovation schools’ staff were acknowledged as a concern by some, including Carolyn Crowder, executive director of the Denver teachers’ union. The report noted teachers at the eight schools were less experienced – by about three years – and less likely to have master’s degrees than teachers in five comparison schools.

For anyone primarily concerned about what innovation status means for improved student learning, the only response is: So what??? Every shred of research shows no connection between teacher master degrees and student learning. Nearly all research shows that teacher effectiveness plateaus after three to five years of acquired experience.

And guess what? The study’s detailed findings reveal that average teacher experience in innovation schools is about 6 years, as opposed to 9 years in non-innovation schools. Of all the findings to be concerned about in the report, this one should hardly cause more than a yawn.

I still have some hope for innovation schools — some will succeed. Though in the end charters are a more promising option. But the new report certainly leaves some food for thought about the ambiguities that remain unresolved, as well as some questions about which schools will fulfill their potential effectiveness.

Sometimes it’s easy for policy wonks like my friends in the Education Policy Center to focus on the abstract — the numbers and the philosophical debates. A story like Brundin’s, with interviews of students and parents, quickly reminds you that policy changes like expanded choice within DPS have ramifications sometimes not considered. Sure, it means various families have more educational options, but what does that look like in real life?

Choice can be empowering and liberating, but it’s also messy sometimes. The Public Radio story shines a light on the special distress that often accompanies the transition from elementary to middle school. (I’m not even close to being there yet, so don’t ask me what it’s all about.) Some families avoided the dilemma by enrolling students years before into one of the growing number of Colorado’s K-8 schools. But for those who need to make the transition, Denver now offers an unprecedented array of options — including, as the story points out, a (yucky) all-girls school.

Most interesting, though, is what Brundin captures about the process itself. She quotes one mom as saying:

When you have so many choices you start to feel almost like it’s your responsibility to have information and I think that’s the freak out is having the time to go and look through all the information on every school to make sure they’re getting the best they can get is hard. It’s a lot of responsibility.

I’m sure many parents can relate to this Denver mom. It’s valuable to note a few things, though. First is the fact that expanded choice helps to foster a greater sense of responsibility — and by extension, more direct family involvement in the educational experience, a healthy thing. Second, schools explicitly are finding ways to make themselves appealing to students and parents, including the thousands who showed up to the expo. Third, one source of information that helps to make things a little easier for parents is the fantastic School Choice for Kids website.

But then the reporter talked to a father and son newly moved from Baltimore. In this situation Denver comes across as a beacon of educational opportunity. While some parents seem stressed by the abundance of choices before them, Brundin concludes her story by noting what the plethora of options means to the newcomers:

So while the parents around them are freaking out, Craig and Marquise Williams seem calm, content with too many choices, rather than none at all.

The power of educational choice in real life. Chaotic, yes? But simply beautiful, too.

Being of a decidedly reform-minded bent, the group has offered up some expected developments in their five choices for each of the “Best” and “Worst” categories. Most of the items I’ve covered at one time or another during 2011. Naturally I can’t make you vote for any particular events (or even vote at all), but I am making some strong suggestions that fans could select on my behalf as one of the most inexpensive Christmas gifts you’ve ever purchased. This is my blog, and I like to save the best for last. So which of the five choices should you recognize as the worst education event of 2011?

Worst: As time goes on, I have less and less patience for the big people in Washington, D.C., so the bungled re-authorization of No Child Left Behind (#2) mostly makes me shrug. The magical money tree hasn’t done much for real education reform in many of the Race to the Top-winning states (#3), either. Maybe California’s new governor further messing things up (#4) just seems too far away for me to get too worked up. And as tempting a choice as it is, the chief reasons for the repeal of Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 (#5) are little connected to education reform and teachers unions.

So by default, I am casting my vote for #1: the Atlanta cheating scandal. As I wrote months ago when the story first emerged, the problem here is the predictable overreaction from reform opponents. If the scandal led to better testing security and/or greater use of online adaptive assessments, I would have to vote for something else as the worst development of the year. But the Koret Task Force page explains what really has transpired:

…[W]hat the public has “learned” is that testing is bad because it creates so much stress that well-meaning educators are pushed to the limit and eventually succumb (for the children’s sake, of course!) to the temptation to cheat, lie, and break the law.

Best: My Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow wrote an op-ed explaining the sensible rationale for rolling back government employee collective bargaining privileges in states like Wisconsin (#2). expressed my admiration for the sweeping range or reforms legislated in Indiana (#5). While California made some progress in establishing working rules for its “Parent Trigger” (#3), here in Colorado the idea faltered. And my edu-crush on Michelle Rhee is no secret, so I had to give some consideration to her teacher evaluation system surviving her tenure in DC Public Schools (#4).

But in the end, we can’t do any better than recognizing 2011 as the Year of School Choice (#1). Especially when the “reinvigoration of school choice via opportunity scholarships and vouchers” hit so close to home with the passage of the groundbreaking Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. Forget the injunction for now. Cast your vote for the accelerating national trend toward educational freedom.

Vote for the #1s, and I’ll say: Thank you very much! Of course, I could point out that there are still nearly four weeks left in 2011, and maybe we haven’t yet experienced the “best” or “worst” education event of the year. But that’s just the pesky little provocateur in me speaking….