Colorado’s Diminished-Capacity Senator

by Joshua Sharf | 9:08 am, May 18, 2012

Yesterday, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources took up the Clean Energy Standard Act of 2012, which would “require covered electricity retailers to supply a specified share of their electricity sales from qualifying clean energy resources.” The target would start at 24% in 2015, climbing to its final, and permanent level of 84% by 2035. Senator Mark Udall (D-CO) made the following comments:

“With that, let me just say that this bill would be a step in the right direction. I also want to emphasize that I still support, as I know do many of my colleagues, a renewable electricity standard nationally. We’ve had great success in the State of Colorado with the renewable electricity standard, and I would argue in fact, we felt less of the effect of this Great Recession because of our energy sector’s capacity to innovate, create jobs, and provide power that’s less and less expensive. We all know for example that wind, now, competes with coal and some would argue is actually cheaper than coal.”

There’s enough material to keep us occupied for a week – and it may – but we’ll start with the idea that Colorado’s Renewable Electricity Standard has been a “great success.”

It may have been a great success for Xcel and its shareholders, but for the ratepayers, it’s a slowly building vacuum, sucking more and more of their decidedly non-renewable dollars. In 2011, the RES was responsible for something like 4.5% of Coloradoans’ electricity bills, and number that is only going to grow over time, as the RES ramps up to its final 30% requirement in 2020:

According to the Public Service Company’s 2010 RES Compliance Plan, the ECA is projected to be $6.3 million this year, before it balloons to $141 million in 2012. It then increases exponentially to $738 million in 2020, or almost 23 percent of total retail electricity sales—none of which would count against the 2 percent retail rate impact.

Assuming 1.5 million ratepayers in Colorado (current figure is 1.3 million) in 2020, and the mandated 20 percent renewable standard, the ECA cost alone will average nearly $500 per year per ratepayer.

The ECA is the Electric Commodity Adjustment, and it’s the means by which Xcel gets around the 2% per year rate limit that is supposed to protect consumers from the fact that renewables are, contra, Sen. Udall, much more expensive than traditional sources of electricity. More about that in a succeeding post.

The Colorado plan, if extended to the country as a whole, will have the same deleterious effects on peoples businesses and homes. That link at the top of the page was to an Energy Information Agency study showing the effects of the proposed standard. Not only would the BCES cost dozens of gigawatts of capacity by 2035:

It would also raise the cost of electricity by about 18%:

If you look closely, you see that the EIA assumes that nuclear will take the place of coal’s baseline capacity, but in fact, the extremely large up-front capital expenditures may make that prohibitively expensive, in which case we’ll have no choice but to cover as much as we can with solar and wind. The result of that little dream scenario? We have more capacity, but the price is 20% higher, rather than 18%. The increase in supply still isn’t enough to make up for the extra cost of wind and solar as sources.

Coloradans have excellent reason to wonder why their senator thinks that paying more than neighboring states for their electricity constitutes a “great success,” and Americans should run like the wind from any effort to replicate the experiment nationally.

Original Post: View From a Height » PPC

Colorado K-12 Funding for the 21st Century: Toward Mass Customized Learning?

by Eddie | 3:24 pm, May 17, 2012

I’m a little bit tired today, having Tweeted up a storm at the Donnell-Kay Foundation’s Colorado Summit on Blended Learning. I have neither the time nor the energy to recap the great presentations from the likes of iNACOL’s David Teeter, Utah Senator Howard Stephenson, New Hampshire Deputy Commissioner Paul Leather, Colorado Department of Education Assistant Commissioner Amy Anderson and Colorado Senator Michael Johnston.

But I can take advantage of the incredible timing to share a brand-new issue paper from my Education Policy Center friends titled Online Course-Level Funding: Toward Colorado Secondary Self-Blended Learning Options. It’s about following the lead of states like Utah and Florida to give students more freedom of course selection through the power of digital technology and a system that allows the funding to follow:

To win support for significant statewide changes, a cross-section of 10 or more school districts could be selected to pilot the program locally. Yet regardless of how rapidly it is implemented, Colorado needs to empower students to direct funds among numerous effective course options to help fulfill the potential of blended learning and to unleash new opportunities to improve students’ academic development.

In essence, the report focuses on one key area of systemic change that needs to take place in our state’s antique education system. Which made it altogether fitting that Donnell-Kay executive director Tony Lewis closed the meeting with a call to move beyond the focus on using tools like blended learning to improve education and instead take on the major task of systemic transformation. Count me on board, and let me nominate mass customized learning as a possible term to describe what Colorado should be after.

I need to investigate the thinking behind the term a little more myself. Meanwhile, let the conversation begin, er, continue….

Original Post: Ed is Watching

ProgressNow Colorado and ALEC

by T.L. James | 7:58 am, May 17, 2012

Oooh, looky what our friends at ProgressNow have been up to lately – ALEC And The Left’s War On Free Speech:

If you want an insight into today’s left, look at its multifront war against the American Legislative Exchange Council for committing the grave sin of pushing free-market bills in state legislatures.

At a recent meeting in Washington, Aniello Alioto of ProgressNow Colorado summed up the left-wing’s campaign against ALEC: “Never relent, never let up pressure, and always increase.”

According to the Washington Free Beacon, ProgressNow was one of several left-wing groups meeting at AFL-CIO headquarters earlier this month to plot their ongoing campaign against ALEC. Other groups included Common Cause and the Color of Change.

The latter being, of course, Marxist Van Jones’ speech-squelching group.

Remember: the left does not want to debate the issues, they do not want to see the best policy win in a marketplace of ideas, because they know if they are honest about what they want they will lose every time. They want to shut down dissenting voices through intimidation and harassment. That’s what groups like ProgressNow are really about – stifling dissent and suppressing opposition.

Adams 12 Teachers Fired for Alleged Theft Resurrects Tenure Reform Debate

by Eddie | 11:36 am, May 16, 2012

On Monday night, Denver CBS4 investigator Rick Sallinger broke a story about Adams 12 dismissing two teachers for allegedly bilking thousands of dollars in PTO funds that were supposed to go for student trips. I never like to see such a story as the one featured in the 3-minute video. Interviewed by Sallinger, school board president Mark Clark made a great point:

We hold our kids accountable. We have them expelled or suspended for their behavior. I think the same rules apply for everybody.

The husband-and-wife educator duo look to be in hot water. According to the CBS4 report, the decision to pursue firing Johnny and Pamela Trujillo followed an internal district audit. I’m not able to comment on the specifics of the case to presume anyone’s guilt, but if further investigation confirms the truth of the serious charges, it also reflects on an important policy: teacher tenure (aka “due process”).

In our state tenure reform is still a live issue, with some of the best reasons articulated by Dr. Marcus Winters in his April 12 Independence Institute talk on Teachers Matter. After three years, Colorado teachers automatically acquire a special property right to their job. Eventually, a 2010 state law will tie earning the right to three years of demonstrated effectiveness in the classroom. But even if SB 191 had taken effect by now, it wouldn’t affect a case like the one taking place in Adams 12.

I was left with a few questions after watching the CBS4 investigative report, such as: Is the union representing the accused teachers? How much has the district spent, and how much does it expect to spend, in legal fees to prosecute the dismissal? How many more appeals remain, and how long before the issue will be settled?

Notable past cases in Colorado show that it easily can cost more than $100,000 to remove a tenured teacher and take several years to reach an outcome. Adams 12 officials must believe they have a strong case, because that’s not money and time to be taken lightly.

On a related note, Ed News Colorado reports a different kind of investigation — this one requested of the state department of education by Denver Public Schools — to determine whether two schools cheated on state tests to get their good results. I certainly hope it turns out not to be true. Most educators have a lot of integrity, but a few bad apples can spoil a lot.

Anyway, as the case regarding Beach Court Elementary and Hallett Fundamental Academy unfolds, please take into advisement my comments from last year’s Atlanta scandal about a “predictable overreaction.”

Original Post: Ed is Watching

Please Stand Up for Colorado!

by Jon Caldara | 1:02 pm, May 15, 2012

As an organization married to principles, not politics or politicians, we at the Independence Institute have it easy. We stand unequivocally for the ideals presented in the Declaration of Independence – the document that inspired our name. Part of my job as head of the Institute is to lead the fight for free markets, individual liberty, and limited government. Part of that last principle about limiting government is adhering to the 10th Amendment  – even when inconvenient! What I mean is that even when a state does something stupid like RomneyCare, we should respect that state’s right to conduct a failing experiment for all to see. After all, the federal government has specific, enumerated powers and for everything else, it’s up to the states. Likewise, when states like ours and California legalize pot for medical use, we need to respect the experiment. Now I’m not saying that we can’t criticize a state’s experiment or that states don’t have bad ideas. Lord knows I’ve criticized Romney and his socialized medicine experiment ad nauseam. What it does mean is that we must fight on behalf of the state against federal overreach. We must take a stand for limited and enumerated powers at the federal level. Otherwise, the feds just have a blank check.

We conservatives make the case day in and day out that the feds are constantly overstepping their bounds. One way in which they do that is precisely this case – trampling on states that exercise their 10th amendment rights. In most cases we fight back in unison. But in cases where we don’t like the state law or don’t agree with the policy, many on our side fail to speak up on behalf of the state. Take for instance medical marijuana. Like it or not, our state can and has made medical pot legal. Whether you agree with that or not only makes a difference in your criticism of our STATE law. It should have no bearing on whether you stand up for Colorado against the feds.

Take a look at this: Our Colorado delegation voted recently on whether to continue funding the federal government’s war against the legal medical pot industries in states like ours. A principled defender of the 10th Amendment would vote against funding federal encroachment on state affairs. Unfortunately, our Colorado Republican delegation all voted FOR funding the federal war (Colorado dems voted against). Medical pot advocates have rightly pointed out the Republican hypocrisy regarding their “love” for the 10th Amendment as simply “selective.” I could not agree more. It is selective.

It’s very simple folks: the 10th Amendment applies universally – even for state laws you don’t like. Go ahead and criticize state laws if they are bad. But please stand up for our state when the feds decide that their prerogative reigns supreme over our state law when we have jurisdiction. The states created the federal government, not the other way around.

Original Post: Jon Caldara » PPC

Tale of Two ‘A’s: Alabama Buries Charter Bill, Arizona Expands ESA Choice

by Eddie | 9:54 am, May 15, 2012

I’ve been telling you a lot lately about education goings-on in Colorado, and with good reason. There has been plenty to comment on. Yet once in awhile it’s good to step back and take a look at some other states. Today, specifically, I wanted to share with you a few thoughts about new developments from a couple A states. And when I say A states, it’s not that they necessarily deserve a passing grade.

First is last week’s awful news from Alabama. The local Decatur Daily reported:

Proponents of charter schools will likely have to wait at least another year as an Alabama House panel Thursday effectively killed a measure that would have allowed for the creation of the taxpayer-funded, privately-operated schools.

It’s sad to see that even public school parental options can’t gain any real traction in the Heart of Dixie. The teachers union, the Alabama Education Association (AEA), led the charge against choice. As the Education Intelligence Agency’s Mike Antonucci observed, the result should cause some reconsideration of what we describe as “strong union” versus “weak union” states. He also found that AEA’s anti-charter campaign was aided online by thousands of phony Twitter followers. Creative.

But seeing as how I like to save the better news for the end, we can celebrate yesterday’s awesome development from Arizona. Following last year’s successful adoption of Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESA) for special-needs students, Grand Canyon State Governor Jan Brewer yesterday signed into law a program expansion that makes ESAs available to students from military families and students in failing schools:

The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute estimates some 11,500 school-age children of active military members and more than 94,000 students in public schools or school districts graded D or F by the state will be ESA-eligible. Currently, 125,000 students with special needs qualify for ESAs.

“This expansion gives more parents the ability to customize their children’s education,” said Jonathan Butcher, Goldwater’s Education Director. “Empowerment Scholarship Accounts are a 21st century model for education other states would be wise to consider.”

Hear, hear. Now nearly twice as many Arizona kids are eligible to exercise greater choice through the groundbreaking ESA model. Perhaps it’s time for Colorado to take a look? When it comes to school choice, better to be like Arizona than be like ‘Bama.

Original Post: Ed is Watching

Seeing Stars: This Session has Special Needs

by Randall Smith | 6:00 am, May 15, 2012

Day two of the Colorado General Assembly's special session and the signature bill of the session has already died in committee. The rest of the bills were pretty much only there to tie up loose ends and few were controversial. If the session isn't over by the end of the week, I'll be very surprised and more likely, it'll be over even sooner.

On to the links.

Colorado

• The proposed civil union bill died in committee Monday evening. No one honestly expected otherwise.
• Rep. Scott Tipton breaks with Colorado Republicans over postal "reforms". I don't think the proposed plan with solve anything.
• Colorado's 3rd grade reading scores are out and there are some good signs.
• Denver has banned homeless camping in the city. I think Occupy Denver was the reason behind this bill.

Everywhere else

• It's about time that conservative groups starting going after young voters.
• Rep. Ron Paul has officially stopped actively campaigning. Paul is still aiming to cause havoc at the GOP Convention.
• DHS wants to collect DNA from kids.
• Isn't it great that welfare money is being spent on trips to Six Flags and liquor stores? It gives me a warm glow that we're helping so many people rise out of poverty. </sarcasm>
• The black community was the one that was totally committed to Obama and he's succeeded is driving them away.

Original Post: PerlStalker's Ramblings

NREL: Get rid of fossil fuels

by amy | 2:45 pm, May 14, 2012

We’ve translated President Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy before. Basically, it’s to rid the US of energy from fossil fuels. Now, no translation is needed.

Dan Arvizu, director of Colorado’s own National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a taxpayer-funded arm of the Department of Energy, says “fossil fuels should be phased out by 2040 to blunt man-made climate change” reports the Denver Post.

Arvizu refers to natural gas as simply “a nice bridge technology, but not the answer we are looking for in terms of a transition and transformation,” away from fossil fuels and toward alternatives such as wind, solar, and biofuels, of which NREL is a champion.

NREL has seen its budget and influence grow under the Obama administration. We reported in September of last year that NREL’s budget exploded 63.4 percent from 2007 to 2010. While taxpayers suffered the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, NREL received nearly $300 million in “stimulus” funds to create 219 jobs. To put that in perspective, Colorado’s oil and gas industry “directly employs over 40,000 people and supports over 107,000 jobs in the state and provides $6.5 billion in total labor income and $31 billion in economic output annually,” according to the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA).

Even if COGA is off by a factor of half, the oil and gas industry is economically more beneficial to Colorado than NREL, which claims substantial increases in economic benefit but still doesn’t equal the percentage increase in its taxpayer-funded budget according to an NREL press release.

NREL’s economic impact grew 41 percent from FY 2009’s $588.3 million, and 12 percent from FY 2010’s $742 million, as construction continued on energy-efficient research and office buildings that will house employees leading the nation to a clean energy future.

So taxpayer-funded NREL wants to get rid of privately-funded fossil fuel industry. We now know what President Obama’s “all of the above” energy policy looks like and doesn’t really include all sources of energy.

Original Post: Energy Policy Center

The Bright & Not-So-Bright Spots of Colorado’s Latest 3rd Grade Reading Scores

by Eddie | 1:42 pm, May 14, 2012

Can you believe it? Last week I didn’t write anything about the release of the CSAP TCAP results for 3rd grade reading. The state’s overall share of proficient 3rd grade readers (74 percent) is slightly better than the previous year. Colorado can still do better. To me, this is one of the most fundamental measures of how our schools are doing. If you can’t read well by the end of 3rd grade, future prospects look a lot different.

So I’m not the only one who likes to see what kind of progress we’re making on the CSAP TCAP. In the past five years, 3rd grade reading scores in most of the state’s 10 largest districts have been flat with very slight upticks. The notable exceptions are from the lower performers with greater student poverty. Aurora Public Schools improved from 46 percent proficient in 2007 to 51.5 percent in the latest round.

Even more remarkable, Denver Public Schools has made the leap from 50 percent proficient to 59 percent over the same five-year span. As DPS superintendent appropriately noted in his email announcement:

As pleased as we are with the growth, it is clear that we have much more work in front of us to continue to improve our elementary literacy.

Likely sharing the same attitude is one of DPS’ exceptional improvements, my friends at the Cole Arts and Science Academy innovation school. In this school with a 96 percent student poverty rate, 3rd grade reading proficiency more than doubled from 22 to 48 percent on the CSAP TCAP. Hooray! A DPS turnaround school that made an even bigger improvement, Greenlee Elementary, earned a feature on 9 News for boosting the success rate from 21 to 55 percent.

On the opposite end, the highly-touted recent success of high-poverty Beach Court Elementary has taken the plunge from 85 percent proficient 2 years ago and 78 percent in 2011 to only 40 percent this time around. Ongoing success is not guaranteed. What exactly has changed deserves a closer look.

To a lesser extent, Harrison School District’s Wildflower Elementary — which last year proudly claimed 100 percent proficiency with three-fourths of its student population in poverty — came in above average at only 84 percent on this year’s CSAP TCAP.

Wildflower was one of eight elementary schools statewide last year to register a perfect mark in 3rd grade reading proficiency. (Please note that some schools might be omitted because the sample size, or number of students in the grade, was too small.) This year there were 11, including rural Valley Re-1’s Caliche Elementary with a 47 percent poverty rate. One school repeated the feat in consecutive years, Cherry Creek’s Challenge School. The other nine 100-percenters on the 3rd grade reading CSAP TCAP are as follows:

• Aurora Quest K-8
• Carbondale Community Charter School
• Liberty Common Charter School (Fort Collins)
• New Emerson School at Columbus (Grand Junction)
• Polaris at Ebert Elementary (Denver)
• Steck Elementary (Denver)
• Swink Elementary
• University Hill Elementary (Boulder)
• Wilder Elementary (Littleton)

Onward and upward for next year’s batch of Colorado 3rd grade reading scores!

Original Post: Ed is Watching

EPA “Doesn’t Live In The Energy World”

by Joshua Sharf | 1:20 pm, May 14, 2012

In a recent hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said under questioning by U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Committee Chairman Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., that her agency – despite issuing regulations that will have a profound affect on electricity production in the United States – “doesn’t live in the energy world.”

“Tri-State is a wholesale electric power supplier in Colorado that is owned by the 44 cooperative, generating – transmitting electricity and has come to my office multiple times trying to talk about their compliance with EPA’s Utility Max standards and…their estimate is that it would likely cost them $1 million …I’m asking you to comment on the rural co-ops which are non-profits.

Ms. McCarthy confirmed that some ratepayers would see their rates increase by about 3%, which the EPA calculated to be about $3 a month for the average family, there was this exchange between the panel and her:

Rep. Gardner: ”And so that – the only way they can do that is to pass those increased costs on to their ratepayers?”

McCarthy: “I have trouble answering that question because I don’t live in the energy world, but my understanding is that compliance can be achieved by lower demand, as well as increased generation, fuel switching, and a number of techniques.”

Whitfield: “I think that’s the point that we’re trying to drive home. You’re right, Ms. McCarthy, you do not live in the energy world. But then you make extrapolations on gigawatt issues that are a reliability concern based on the chart I saw. DOE rolls over in acceptance of your electricity generation, or lack thereof, analysis, and when you have the people in the field who are disputing that analysis on the gigawatt issue, we’re debating with an environmental agency, not our Department of Energy. And if the analysis was close to what industry, financial people, FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission), EEI (Edison Electric Institute) say then, we would cut some leeway.

“But the administrations proposal – actually, the environmental rules – and the effect on the electric grid, of 10 gigawatts, is laughable. And so, you can do all the analysis on emittants you want, but we reject the premise that you are experts in electricity generation, the cost of building plants, and developing those.”

Rep. Whitfield’s point is that the opinions of actual experts – which seem to be in broad agreement that the EPA rules run the risk of reducing the US’s overall electricity output – are being subordinated to the judgments of the EPA, which, by its own administrator’s admission, doesn’t live “in the energy world.”

Is it true? Well, the EPA estimates a loss of 10 gigawatts (GW) of electrical generation nationwide as a result of its new rules. This estimate is indeed not only out of line, but well out of line, with a variety of other estimates from Credit Suisse (50 GW realistic, 60+ GW possible), Friedman Billings Ramsay (45 GW), the North American Electric Reliabiliy Corporation, or NERC (33-70 GW), the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator, or MISO (13 GW immediate, up to 61 GW retrofitted), and the Institute for Energy Research (34 GW).

It’s one thing to be independent of the industries you’re supposed to be regulating. But even independent regulatory bodies shouldn’t be making rules based on assumptions and models whose results virtually nobody in the field takes seriously. Maybe the EPA should live a little more “in the energy world,” a world it so closely regulates.

Original Post: View From a Height » PPC

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