Schools for Tomorrow Blog

IF there was any doubt, this article by the irrepressible Diane Ravitch looks as the Gates (Bill, not Rubber) initiative to create small high schools and finds that there are no quick fixes for urban education.

The Denver Scholarship Foundation  has at long last produced clear guidelines for its "last dollars in" scholarships for Denver high school graduates.

Months of miscommunication that led to dashed hopes and bruised feelings among students should be resolved by this latest decision by the foundation’s board.

Beginning next year, students attending  a participating public university can receive up to $3,200, and those choosing a pricier private school can get a maximum of $5,000.

What’s less clear is why the foundation board so quickly backed away from providing scholarship aid to undocumented students. At the risk of incurring the wrath of anti-immigration crazies (and please note that I’m NOT saying that anyone who opposes aid to undocumented immigrants is crazy. But the crazies are out there as well), this decision looks so risk-averse as to be self-defeating.

Just a wild guess, but I’d bet a significant percentage of students at Lincoln, South and Montbello high…

The recent announcement of a $60 million Gates and Broad Foundation funded “Ed in 08″ campaign, heralded on the front page of the Denver Post, has ed policy wonks and wags buzzing everywhere. Is this a good way to raise awareness? Is there enough specificity to mean anything concrete for actual reforms, even if it does raise general awareness of education issues?

The campaign does employ the considerable talents of former Colorado governor, and former LA schools super, Roy Romer, so it will be interesting to see how much Colorado focus the campaign ends up having, especially with the Democratic convention in Denver in August 2008. One focus of the initiative is quality teaching, with a push for the idea of paying high performing teachers more. Already that theme has been taken up by N.Y Times columnist Nic Kristoff (see Tuesday May 1 NY Times), who doesn’t normally write about education. We’ll all be watching.

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The New Schools Venture Fund, a marriage of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and forward-thinking philanthropists, held its annual, one-day meeting this week. Instead of gathering in the rarefied air of NoCal, however, the group this year convened in New Orleans, ground-zero for innovation bred by desperation.

The meeting was held in the plush oasis of the Ritz-Carlton, on the fringe of the French Quarter. As high-powered high-rollers Blackberried the day away, revelers on Bourbon Street, two blocks distant, strolled and drank their way through another day. The air on Bourbon Street is redolent of rotting trash, spilled beer and vomit, but that’s a topic for another blog.

The meeting produced cognitive dissonance on a couple of levels. First, hinted at above, is the bizarre disconnect between life in the French Quarter and the struggles of the rest of the city. One need only walk or jog a half-mile to see boarded up houses…

Another stinging story in today’s Denver Post about the Denver Scholarship Foundation illustrates how even the best intentions can go awry when communication is poor. If the Post story is accurate, the DSF, after promising all graduating students at four Denver high schools that, as a final resort, it would bridge funding gaps to ensure all students could attend college in Colorado, has begun issuing a confusing series of caveats in recent days. At this point, you have to feel sorry for students, who must be confused about whether they’re facing a $3,000 scholarship cap, a “soft” cap, or no cap at all.

None of this should reflect badly on the generosity of Denver oilman Tim Marquez, whose $50 million gift has launched this ambitious enterprise. Marquez’s gift, and the civic capital being pored into the DSF effort are remarkable. But it appears the logistics and assumptions undergirding the DSF have not…