Schools for Tomorrow Blog

Today’s press conference unveiling 2008 CSAP scores was, when you get right down to it, much ado about, well, nothing much.

Windy speeches abounded, the crowd in the packed lobby of the Colorado Department of Education’s ornate HQ applauded dutifully at all the right moments. The word of the day was ‘mixed,” as in CSAP results were “mixed,” which is a polite synonym for not so great, or maybe even lousy.

As usual, some schools and districts did better than expected while others did worse. This year, Denver Public Schools and Aurora Public Schools exceeded expectations, giving those beleaguered urban districts, and their break-the-mold superintendents a boost, and raising expectations for next year.

But the whole event had an anticlimactic air about it, because the big shoe has yet to drop. That would be detailed data from the gaudy new Colorado Growth Model, also known as Information That Actually Means Something. We got a taste of the growth model today, with the release of statewide data.

Even that general data gives a fascinating peek behind the scenes of, say, the achievement gap. One tidbit: only 13 percent students rated unsatisfactory or partially proficient on the math CSAP are growing fast enough to get them to proficiency in three years. (Look for stories on this and other CSAP subjects on the Education News Colorado web site).

Late next month, when CDE releases growth model data for districts and schools, we’ll really be able to tell what’s going on, education-wise in Colorado – at least compared to the woefully incomplete and shallow stuff we’ve been fed until now. I’m sure the growth model data won’t be perfect, but having it at our disposal will be akin to moving from black and white to color, from two dimensional to three dimensional, from mono to stereo.  

Since Colorado contributes so little financial support to the Colorado Department of Education (CDE - which is largely funded with federal programs), it has jokingly been called “the Federal Department of Education in Colorado (or Denver).”  A new report, which is worth reading if you are interested in the role of CDE, demonstrates why this is nearly true. 

The report, recently prepared for CDE by WestEd, compares CDE to a few other state education departments.  It also digs deeper into the question of how the budget can be better aligned with Commissioner Dwight Jones’ new vision, as articulated in CDE’s new Forward Thinking strategic planning document.

Only 1.5% of Colorado’s support for K12 education goes to CDE operations, a much lower percentage than in some comparable states like Louisiana (2.7%), Maryland (4.1%) and South Carolina (5.3%).  The report does not rank all 50 states, but spotlights a few comparisons. 

In addition, CDE staff is mostly supported from federal grant money.  The report notes that about 25% of CDE staff are supported by state money, and fully 75% are supported by federal grants.

These figures are not very different from a study in the late 1990s, which showed CDE about 43^rd in the nation in personnel support for school operations.

It may be reasonable that in a local control education state like Colorado, the state education agency does fewer things and is relatively smaller than in the 42 states with (relatively) more state power and control.  But most education reforms, including No Child Left Behind, are requiring a bigger role for states, and limited capacity at the state level does not allow states to perform that role effectively. 

A level of 1.5% state expenditure for CDE seems “penny wise and pound foolish” when the state now contributes more than 60% of the non-federal funds for Colorado’s K12 education. 

As the report also notes, the heavy dependence upon federal funds within CDE inevitably has steered the agency towards a federal regulatory and accounting role with Colorado districts, rather than the kind of leadership and district assistance role that Commission Jones envisions.

Pol Econ Ed has a provocative post on a new report that, at first glance, only wonks and insiders could love. Quite wonkish myself, I also think the report and blog post open up a bigger philosophical discussion. I write not to condemn but to see how to move the ball in this emerging debate about funding sources for the Colorado Department of Education and K-12 schools.

I’m going to be up front and admit I have only read the report’s executive summary, so I’m not going to offer any sweeping conclusions about any of its proposals. Instead, I want to take a narrower tack based on Pol Econ Ed’s provocative post.

Pointing out that Colorado spends a disproportionately small share of state education funds on state administration (1.5%), Pol Econ Ed raises three separate but related interesting issues. First:

It may be reasonable that in a local control education state like Colorado, the state education agency does fewer things and is relatively smaller than in the 42 states with (relatively) more state power and control.  But most education reforms, including No Child Left Behind, are requiring a bigger role for states, and limited capacity at the state level does not allow states to perform that role effectively.

With limited resources to dedicate to K-12 education, spending more on the state department is not going to be a politically appealing approach. Concerned taxpayers may complain about burgeoning bureaucracy, while CEA and CASB may be hesitant to support such a move unless they can dismantle TABOR. Second:

A level of 1.5% state expenditure for CDE seems “penny wise and pound foolish” when the state now contributes more than 60% of the non-federal funds for Colorado’s K12 education.

Here we see the familiar tension between the state constitution’s “local control” requirement and the tangled combination of laws that continue to grow the state share of education spending. But then there’s the mill-levy rate freeze in the 2007 School Finance Act, which was promoted as a means to shift the funding burden more back to local sources.

The State Board appears (because no public recorded vote has been taken) to support the provision against a lawsuit that would require voters to be asked first. Maybe Coloradans want to raise property taxes and shift the education funding burden to local sources. Let’s not be afraid to find out. So, if the State Board seems to support shifting the education funding burden back to local sources through the mill-levy rate freeze, should that diminish concerns about the 1.5% level of state expenditures on CDE? Third:

…CDE staff is mostly supported from federal grant money.  The report notes that about 25% of CDE staff are supported by state money, and fully 75% are supported by federal grants.

Is the problem with this figure primarily the federal money or the federal mandates? If the latter, maybe then it’s an argument to move away from No Child Left Behind to the A-Plus Act proposal that gives states flexible block grants with many fewer strings attached.

But no matter how you look at it, ensuring CDE is funded sufficiently and spends efficiently will be more complicated than merely adjusting state appropriations. A popular statewide vote and Congressional action may also be part of moving the department’s thinking forward.

Last week�s EdWeek features a guest commentary by CU School of Ed professor (and sometimes HeadFirst blog contributor) Kevin Welner.  Co-written with Alex Molnar, an Arizona State ed policy prof who, like Welner, maintains a dependably anti-market position, the piece reviews the policy work of education think tanks such as the Friedman Foundation and the Cato Institute.  Their review of 18 think tanks concludes that these organizations are heavily biased on the side of market solutions:

� [A] phalanx of �one-armed� policy analysts are plying their trade in free-market-oriented think tanks. For these analysts and their think-tank sponsors, privatization is the preordained solution for each new educational problem. Indeed, time spent reading their reports leaves the unmistakable impression that the public nature of public education is the root problem for all that ails schools. Everything else is just a symptom.

Welner and Molnar�s analysis sheds light on one of the eternal elephants in the education policy research room:  the conclusions of such research are highly correlated with the researchers� ideologies and previous research findings.  (Put less delicately, this means that much education policy research is  biased).  The trend is most obvious in politically charged areas like vouchers and charter schools.

Though Welner and Molnar identify a market-oriented bias to the think-tank research they survey, they would do well to extend their investigations to research organizations of all political persuasions.  I�m willing to bet the work of, say, the American Federation of Teachers might be just a wee bit �one-armed�, too.   

Regulars at legislative hearings yearn for witty remarks or slips of the tongue to break the tedium, and Thursday�s joint meeting of the House and Senate education committees had at least fleeting moments of relief.

Education Commissioner Dwight Jones dropped an unexpected corporate cliche into the usual government jargon when he said the department is working to �manage our brand.�

Senate Education Committee Chair Sue Windels, trying to decide if lawmakers should interrupt witnesses with questions, noted, �Once they start questioning, it�s hard to rein them in again.�

And fast-talking rancher Pamela Jo Suckla, chair of the State Board Education, dropped a syllable when she said, �In the service department we are really vamping up what we do.�

Memo to Colorado legislators: Be very, very careful about assigning any new data collection duties to the Colorado Department of Education in 2008 - it looks like CDE has more than enough work to do cleaning up its current data systems.

Review of CDE data systems was mandated by HB 07-1270. Consultant North Highland of Atlanta finished its report Nov. 30, and the department announced it with a brief news release on Monday.

Much of the 186-page report is intelligible only to a systems administrator, including the charts showing tiny computers and servers connected by lines, with an occasional fat blue stick figure holding his arms wide (perhaps in frustration?) in the middle of the diagram.

Once you get past the technical details, it isn’t pretty reading.

“Currently, the data collection process is fragmented, contains redundancies across data collections and does not involve the stakeholders. This lead to confusion, problems with submissions and data collection windows, and complaints by school districts. Each program unit in CDE conducts all aspects of the data collection process differently. There is no consistency in requirements management, stakeholder involvement, communications, training or support, which leads to duplication of efforts.” (A data collection window apparently is the period of time in which a school district has to submit a particular set of stats.)

In other words, nobody’s in charge.

Here are some other interesting points:

“There is no consolidated view of all the collections at CDE and the impact on resources and prioritization.”

“There is not a consistent approach or methodology used to gather and document data collection requirements for state and federal education mandates.”

“Each program unit approaches the legislative interpretation, requirements analysis, communication, training, implementation and support in a different manner. This lead to confusion at the school district level and inconsistency within CDE.”

The consultant’s report noted that it was working on a tight schedule, so specific recommendations for change will require more detailed analysis. But, the report does recommend creating “a Data Program management Office (PMO) to oversee the entire data collection process from legislation to implementation to collection execution.”

Also, “It is recommended that CDE take a comprehensive view of the data that is collected and the reports that are generated and work with the legislature and other stakeholders to determine if the data answers the questions as originally intended.” (Translation: Find out if the department is collecting data that nobody uses.)

“The data collection and reporting efforts must be viewed as a whole system, not independent collections.”

The report did suggest some short, medium and long-term fixes. It put a price tag of $2-3 million on longer-term upgrades.

The report catalogued more than 100 different data collections that the department runs every year. One interesting tidbit: Data on out-of-district pupils is still being submitted on diskettes that are sent back and forth between districts and CDE.

If you’re up to digging into something that’s harder to read than a Microsoft manual, click here.

I must have gotten up on the wrong side of bed this morning: I’m feeling optimistic. Why? The release yesterday of the Colorado Department of Education’s Forward Thinking report, subtitled "The Voice (and Future) of the (CDE)."

It’s not that the report is perfect: far from it. It’s long on vision and short on detail. Costs associated with its sweeping proposals are conspicuously absent.

But as the Donnell-Kay Foundation’s Tony Lewis says in today’s Denver Post, the mere existence of this report represents a "sea change" in the long-moribund department. Forward Thinking suggests that CDE is awakening, and that under new Commissioner Dwight Jones, plans to take a leadership role in pushing the kind of wide-ranging changes needed to improve public education in Colorado.

Sure, the report is vague in places and give us no clear idea of how we’ll get from Point A to Point B. But such criticism (usually my strong suit) seems like nit-picking at the moment. Let’s take it on faith that Jones is going to be aggressive pushing a change agenda. Let’s hold him accountable for making it happen, and let’s help him get his long-dormant department back on its feet.

Read this polemic about White Hat Management and you’ll wonder anew: what, exactly, prompted the state Board of Education to urge renewal of Life Skills Academy, White Hat’s Denver charter, over the strenuous objections of DPS?  (Read earlier posts on this topic here, here and here)