Education Wonk Fest Tonight on Devil’s Advocate

by Mike Krause | 10:56 am, April 12, 2013

Friday night means public affairs tv with the Independence Institute, so set your TiVO to wonk. First at 8:00, catch research director David Kopel on Colorado Inside Out. Then stay tuned for Devil’s Advocate at 8:30 as guest host Ben DeGrow is joined by Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at American Enterprise Institute [...]

Heath: “Grand Bargain” K-12 Tax Hike “Beginning to Take a Bite” from Elephant

by Ben | 10:28 pm, March 4, 2013

Imagine sitting down to write a term paper or thesis, then releasing the first draft of the paper not only to your professor but to a worldwide audience. Now imagine your paper contains instructions for allocating billions of tax dollars to a bunch of different groups. You can start to understand what Colorado state senator [...]

Court Rules in Favor of DougCo Families

by Jon Caldara | 3:18 pm, February 28, 2013

Children win in Douglas County! What makes the Independence Institute so very different is that we play the long game. The left has been playing this game for decades and they are collecting their winnings now, while the right seems to be in a perpetual, panicked two-minute, hurry-up offensive. I often say that Einstein was [...]

Johnston’s Proposed School Finance Bill is One Big Tax Hike

by Randall Smith | 11:24 pm, February 18, 2013

Democrat Senator Mike Johnston has rolled out a new school finance plan. You can read the full plan on Johnston’s website. As you might guess from a Democrat funding bill, it’s big on tax hikes.

The 144 page plan lays out a plan to change the funding…

The Higher-Ed Bubble, In One Chart (and one article)

by Joshua Sharf | 11:13 pm, February 16, 2013

Rep. Mike Coffman took a lot of heat for suggesting that perhaps it was time to re-evaluate these priorities, with his words being distorted into an attack on the liberal arts in particular, and higher education in general.  Turns out he was onto something. Salary.com recently came up with a list of the 8 College Degrees [...]

Privacy Bills in the Colorado Legislature So Far, or, In Which The Washington Bureau Chief Thinks She Should Control the Committee Schedules

by Eileen | 1:43 pm, February 11, 2013

I thought I’d take a look at the privacy related bills in play in the current legislative session and see where they are. HB 13-1015, Tracy Kraft-Tharp’s bid to turn over data about mental health treatments to a government run database, passed Health, Insurance, and Environment 9-2 and now awaits action by the entire House.  [...]

In Which the Washington Bureau Chief Explains Her Ire at Data-Sharing Bills

by Eileen | 6:12 am, February 1, 2013

I’d like to put a bill I briefly addressed earlier this week into context.  Andy Kerr’s SB 13-053 is superficially concerned with the mechanisms by which secondary schools share student data with state colleges.  This data sharing is done for the benefit and the ease of the colleges, allowing such decidedly un-student-centered tactics as sending [...]

So much for not harming a hair on their heads…

by Eileen | 7:35 pm, January 30, 2013

Nearly every day. I am thankful that I am no longer in school.  My joy used to be that I had got past the point in life where other people told me what to read (which led to me retching through Willa Cather and informing an irritated literature teacher that the major theme of My [...]

Long-Term Union Membership Trends: Give Colo. Teachers Greater Choice

by Ben | 11:27 pm, January 29, 2013

Last week the U.S. Department of Labor released new numbers showing that nationally union membership is on the decline. And not only in the private sector, which has been on a decades-long downward trajectory. Three years ago the nation crossed a historic threshold, as union members in private industry were outnumbered by their public sector [...]

Overland Math Teacher Confuses her Job with a Van Halen Video

by Eileen | 9:13 pm, January 29, 2013

Carly McKinney is vulgar, stupid, and utterly lacking in judgment.  Let’s just stipulate that here and now. Anyone who doesn’t even try to stay masked when misbehaving deserves what she gets.  Anonymity was good enough for the Federalists, for chrissake. Better known the world as CarlyCrunkBear, a twitter handle that tells you everything you would [...]

keep looking »

Featured Posts

• PPC Training for Activists

  UPDATE: Something apparently got messed up with the PayPal buttons during this past weekend’s database glitch – fixed now. Yes, it’s that time again — PPC will be conducting training classes for center-right activists on Saturday, April 20 and Saturday, April 27, at Independence Institute in Denver. The tentative class schedule is as follows: Saturday, [...]

• Holder’s First Letter to Paul Precipitates the Best Filibuster Ever
• The Lamest Twitter Argument Ever Offered?
• Return of the PPC Re-Education Camps – You Know You Want to Be There
• Supreme Courts Blesses Warrantless Surveillance of Citizens in a Kafkaesque Farce
• GOP Elite and the Ruling Class
• Do We Now Get to Call Joe Salazar a “Rapist”?