Transparency in DougCo School District: Toward a Happy Ending to the Story

by Eddie | 3:34 pm, March 18, 2013

Update, 3/25: Happy endings don’t usually come so quickly. But just one week later, Dougco has made and received confirmation on a number of online transparency improvements to now receive an A-minus grade. If you’ve followed little old Eddie for any length of time, you know I’m a fan of the following two things: open [...]

Hip KIPP, Hooray! Major Research Shows Big Learning Gains for Challenged Students

by Eddie | 6:00 pm, February 27, 2013

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 [...]

Non-Union Kansas Teacher Groups Try for Equal Snow Fort–Er, School–Access

by Eddie | 6:14 pm, February 26, 2013

The last couple days I’ve been pretty busy playing outside, given all the snow we’ve been covered with here in Colorado. You should see the snow fort my friends and I put together in my backyard. We’ve set it up so no one else can get in — especially icky girls! If you try, beware [...]

Use Real School Funding Facts and Tell the Story that Empowers Families

by Eddie | 12:36 pm, February 13, 2013

A few weeks ago an article by the I-News Network (“an independent, nonprofit journalism project that creates long-form investigative reports, in partnership with major daily newspapers and has recently accepted significant funding from wealthy Democrat activist Tim Gill”) portrayed Colorado minorities as victims of inadequate tax funding of education: Regardless of which way the causal [...]

A Couple More Weeks of Waiting for School Finance “Grand Bargain” Details

by Eddie | 10:07 am, January 31, 2013

Back in early December my Education Policy Center friends helped put on a State Capitol event, laying out ideas for dramatic “backpack funding” reforms that need to be at the heart of this year’s keystone school finance debates. We’ve been waiting awhile now to see what Senator Johnston’s “Grand Bargain” legislation might look like. I [...]

Too Many Elementary Teachers Makes Case for Market-Based Differential Pay

by Eddie | 2:38 pm, January 23, 2013

Thanks to Ed News Colorado, my attention today was brought to an interesting Education Week story by Stephen Sawchuk that says colleges of education are graduating too many elementary school teachers:

Finally, the tendency toward oversubscription in the elementary fields is also a function of candidates’ interest, said Amee Adkins, an associate dean of the college [...]

Eddie Picks Up Slack on Media Misses, Including Teacher Pension Costs

by Eddie | 4:20 pm, December 13, 2012

I love lists, I love education, and I love to tell people about things. So it should be no surprise that my attention was caught by yesterday’s news release from Stanford: “Hoover Institution Education Experts Identify News Media Hits and Misses in 2012 Education Coverage.” The Koret Task Force on Education named five stories that [...]

Colorado K-12 Funding Debates REALLY Could Use Some Accepted Facts

by Eddie | 3:02 pm, November 29, 2012

A new Cato Institute education blogger, Jason Bedrick, highlights the work of the Independence Institute’s Education Policy Center in a posting today with a message that certainly needs to be repeated: “Public schools cost more than Americans think.” Bedrick cites Ben DeGrow’s recent interview with 9News disputing Colorado school funding figures, and makes a couple [...]

TABOR Looks Less Spooky Next to Colorado School Finance Data

by Eddie | 10:56 am, October 30, 2012

With spooky Halloween almost upon us, it’s probably not terribly surprising to witness the one-sided horrible picture of TABOR painted in yesterday’s Colorado Springs Gazette (H/T Complete Colorado). Under the headline, “TABOR has decimated education, critics say,” we are given such insights as the following:

“It’s been devastating,” said Gustafson, Colorado Springs School District 11’s chief [...]

Denver Post Adds a Little Institute Balance to School Tax Hike Coverage

by Eddie | 1:18 pm, October 16, 2012

When you’re a Colorado reporter looking for a somewhat different point of view on major local school tax increases, where do you go? Karen Auge shows that she read my Education Policy Center friend Ben DeGrow’s concise new paper “Colorado K-12 Tax Hikes Challenged” in her story’s third paragraph as she covered the issue in [...]

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