From the editor
"The education debate in the 2007
Colorado legislature, in the view of one lobbyist, was all about significant attempts to advance incremental change," Todd Engdahl wrote in the January issue of HeadFirst Colorado. "Will 2008 bring more significant movement on educational issues?"
Deep into this year's session, our definitive answer is…yes, maybe.
Without a doubt, some difference-maker bills have appeared, and their chances of becoming law appear at least moderately good. (If you're interested in this stuff and you're not reading Education News Colorado, you're really missing out) The question now is whether these bills will get so watered down as they work their way through the unavoidable compromises of the legislative process that their initial potential to advance real change will wither.
One such bill, to hit the light of day this week, is the Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids. But we'll wait to comment on this one until next week, when we should know more about its fine-print.
In any case, Senate Bill 130, the "Innovation Schools Act," provides the best example of a potentially groundbreaking bill meeting the reality of legislative compromise.
As originally drafted, the bill would have created a wide space for individual schools, groups of schools, and even school districts to loosen regulatory and contractual tethers and operate in something approaching a charter school-like atmosphere.
But as amended last week, the Innovation Schools Act now offers significantly narrower spaces for innovation. See Todd's article below in this newsletter (reprinted from Education News
Colorado) for a detailed analysis of the amendments and their likely impacts.
The most zealous proponents of freeing schools from over-regulation have told me they would rather see the bill die than dribble to passage in diluted form. I agree that a severely weakened bill could be worse than nothing. But so far, amendments passed by the Senate Education Committee do not amount to such a weakening.
As Todd explains, the key changes put in place by amendments require innovation to applicants to specify what contractual and regulatory provisions they want waived, rather than receiving a blanket dispensation. Applicants also would have to pass a "four-part test" of support among various stakeholders.
Finally, at least 60 percent of members of the teachers union at a proposed innovation school would have to approve one or more waivers of collective bargaining agreement provisions. Originally, a simple majority vote would have removed a school entirely from the agreement.
We'll see what happens when Senate Bill 130 hits the House Education Committee, where old-line union support is strong.
Assuming the bill passes, school districts and the state Board of Education will face some interesting conundrums as they ponder proposals. A current example is the cluster of 18 far-northeast
Denver schools proposing to create a zone of innovation (or autonomy -- I've heard it called both).
How should a school board handle such a proposal, if some of the schools in the cluster appear ready to chart their own course, and others do not? Denver Public Schools can boast some fine principals. But overall, the pool is not terribly strong. It is difficult to believe that all 18 schools in the proposed zone feature principals capable of leading a school through the difficult change processes and management challenges embodied in the proposal.
It will be interesting to watch how the DPS board handles this delicate matter. As one observer told me: "This is a great challenge for DPS, one where readiness to be accountable for results, boldness in academic ideas, and ability to manage an academic enterprise will converge."
Well said.
--Alan Gottlieb
Parsing the amendments to the Innovation Schools Act
By Todd Engdahl
Education News Colorado Capitol Editor
Despite the love-in atmosphere at the Senate Education Committee last Thursday, details of the amended bill remain unclear to many as the measure continues its journey through the legislature.
The original Senate Bill 08-130 proposed by Senate President Peter Groff, D-Denver, and a bipartisan group of Senate and House sponsors was opposed by unions and some school boards. The Colorado Association of School Boards backed the bill.
By the time the bill emerged from the committee after a hearing of more than two hours, union representatives, teachers, administrators, school board members and a host of other witnesses had praised the revised version, which was the product of extensive discussions between the sponsor, other lawmakers and various lobbyists. (See story about the hearing.)
How was the bill changed to create such unanimity? EdNewsColorado has parsed the original bill, the amendments and state education law to come up with his analysis. (We don't pretend this is the last word. If you think we've missed something, or screwed something up, write to us. There's an e-mail link at the bottom of this story.)
The overall concept of the bill is to allow an individual school, a group of schools or a district to seek "innovation" status by submitting proposals for alternate academic and administrative plans. Those plans can include waiver from some laws, regulations and union contract provisions.
An innovation plan would be submitted for review to a school board, which would have 60 days to consider it. Approved plans would go to the State Board of Education, which also would have a 60-day consideration period. If a plan is rejected, the reviewing body would have to give reasons, and the applicant could submit an amended plan. The state board would have to OK a plan unless it decided the plan would result in a decrease in academic achievement or was fiscally unfeasible.
The amendments leave intact the basic goals of the bill (pages 3-5), which encourage flexibility and experimentation. The contents of an innovation plan (pages 6-9) also remain much the same. (Link to bill text below.)
First big change
The original bill required only "a statement of the level of support" for the plan by school employees, students and parents, and the community. The amended bill requires a four-part test of support among various constituencies: "a majority of administrators," "a majority of teachers" and a "majority of the school advisory council," plus "a statement of the level of support" among other school employees, students and parents, and the surrounding community.
The amendments add a requirement to the application process - a description of the elements of any collective bargaining agreement that would need to be waived for an innovation plan to work.
Second (really) big change
The original bill gave innovation schools blanket exemption from laws and rules on: performance evaluations, authority of principals, employment of teachers, transfer of teachers, dismissal of teachers, salary schedules, teacher licensing and teacher salary payment.
All of that was struck by the amendments and replaced with language allowing a school board to waive any requirements deemed necessary to an innovation plan, except provisions of the school finance law, the exceptional children's educational act, data requirements necessary for School Accountability Reports, laws requiring criminal background checks of employees and the children's Internet protection act. (The original language barred any waivers of CSAP and No Child Left Behind requirements, and those remain in the bill.)
Third (really) big change
The original bill allowed innovation schools to be removed from a district's entire collective bargaining agreement by a vote of a majority of the personnel at the affected school or schools.
The amendments require "waiver of one or more of the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement" (italics added) to be approved by vote of "at least sixty percent of the members of the collective bargain unit who are employed at the innovation school."
Final (and important) big change
The original bill required reports on innovation schools but didn't seem to provide a mechanism for ending innovation experiments that didn't work. The amendments set up an every-three-years review process through which a school board can "determine whether the innovation school or innovation school zone is achieving or making adequate progress toward the achieving the academic performance results identified in the school's or zone's innovation plan." If a school or group of schools isn't making the grade, a board can end the innovation experiment.
What's it all mean?
Whether the proposed amendments are sound or just water the bill down is probably a conclusion affected by the philosophical views of an observer. It can reasonably be concluded that the amendments will make it harder to draft innovation plans, but it also can be argued that plans drafted with more rigor will have a better chance of success.
In an era of accountability, it seems reasonable to include provisions to end innovation plans that don't work.
And, as has been pointed out a number of times during the debate of SB 08-130, several school districts already have initiated innovation and autonomy plans under existing law. Fiscal analysts who studied the bill for lawmakers concluded, "This fiscal analysis assumes that of the 178 school districts at least 10-15 plans will be submitted for review."
You can play legislative analyst yourself - take a look at the language involved:
Blog highlights
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Written by: Alan Gottlieb
Back in the early days of this blog, I wrote a post blasting the state Board of Education for pressuring Denver Public Schools not to close the Life Skills Center, a low-performing charter school. The
Denver school board had wanted to close the school, but bowed to the pressure and let it reopen for this school year.
Tonight, the board votes on whether to let Life Skills, and several other low-performing charters, stay open for another year. Having visited Life Skills, I've changed my mind on this one, and hope the board will let it keep operating.
My superficial impression of Life Skills is that it's not a great school. It's probably not even a particularly good school. Still, I find myself at odds with my own thinking from last August, when I wrote:
DPS did its homework on this one. Life Skills was failing its students. But here's (state school board member Bob) Schaffer, as quoted in the Rocky Mountain News: "The bigger question is, how does the school compare to the street? Because that is the option being weighed and compared here."
Of course the street is a lousy option. But if that false dichotomy is played out to its logical extreme, then we should just abandon all quality standards for schools serving at-risk kids. That's not going to get us very far, and certainly Schaffer knows that.
Why the change of heart? Simple.
Life
Skills
Center is a last-gasp chance for young people who have already dropped out of school to reengage and get a diploma. DPS wrote into the school's charter contract that it could recruit only those prospective students who had dropped out of school, and had been out of school for at least 60 days.
That's a tough crowd to engage. So one would expect a high rate of failure, low attendance, and a lot of attrition. And that's exactly what happens at Life Skills.
But something else happens as well. At least some kids apparently learn a significant amount, and go on to graduate. Some 80 percent of the school's 260 students are in line to graduate within a year.
And according to Measures of Academic Progress, a national assessment Life Skills uses, students have been making over a year-and-a-half's worth of growth in reading for each academic year. Since all Life Skills students read at far below grade level, they have to make these kinds of gains if they are ever to catch up.
Of course in math, students are making less than half a year's progress each year, and in language just under a year. So the news is decidedly mixed.
Attendance rates of just over 50 percent also are nothing to brag about. But again, given who these kids are, the fact that many hold down multiple jobs, and that the attendance rate two years hovered around 40 percent, 50 percent looks like progress to me.
If DPS had a viable alternative for these kids, one that was being drained by the existence of Life Skills, I'd favor shutting down the school. But these are kids DPS has given up on, and vice-versa. What possible harm is there in giving them another chance, even if it's less than ideal?
DPS needs to close a low-performing charter or two. After all, the school board has begun closing its own low-performing schools. There's no reason to treat bad charters differently than bad district schools. But I now believe that
Life
Skills
Center is a special case.
3 Responses to "A case for
Life
Skills
Center"
-
Santiago Lopez Says:
February 21st, 2008 at 12:49 pm e
Alan,
I am glad that you had the opportunity to come to the school and see what we do. It pleases me, for the benefit of our students, that your position is favorable of our school.
Thank you for your support.
- van schoales Says:
February 21st, 2008 at 3:07 pm e
This is a very tough call. Alan makes some excellent points about the standard for these kinds of schools and real alternatives for kids that have dropped out of school but I'm not sure that's enough to continue public funding of this school. We do need a real standard for dropout recovery and alternative high schools and a plan for what to do with the thousands of kids that dropout. Schools like Life Skills should not be compared to East or DSST but their need to be standards. If I were a DPS board member, I would have some serious concerns as to whether we should give Life Skills Charter and White Hat Management $8,000/kid to keep a 17 year old off the street for several hours per day and give them a diploma in a very condensed program? I worry that we do not know what graduation or a diploma from this school really means. Do graduates from Life Skills have the habits and skills to succeed in work or college? Are we being honest with kids about what is required and providing them with the support for them to really succeed? This is a very difficult decision for the DPS board. It is not just about the kids at Life Skills but has ramifications for all the other kids that drop out of school and the school choice movement.
- Ben DeGrow Says:
February 21st, 2008 at 4:07 pm e
Alan,
Glad to see the willingness to change your mind. You say you see Life Skills as a "special case." Is there anything you could see the district doing that would preclude that status?
Back in August, when this issue was debated, it was brought forward that the State Board & DPS agreed to put Life Skills on one-year probation. Is there evidence that the school is addressing the probationary concerns? Is the school on track to keep its doors open longer?
Here's the question: If Life Skills doesn't sufficiently address the concerns that put it on probation, should it still remain open as a "special case"?
Friday, February 15, 2008
Written by: Captain Haddock
The usual suspects were on hand Wednesday evening for a private screening of "Two Million Minutes, "a new documentary by entrepreneur Bob Compton. After the screening, a panel of
Colorado educratic types, including the lieutenant governor and education Commissioner Dwight Jones, were on hand to respond.
The film is a sort of video version of Thomas Friedman's "The World is Flat" - schools in other countries train their kids to do what we do better and cheaper, and there are lots of ‘em. The film, which while not ready to enter this year's Oscar race, is a heartfelt and often insightful study of the educational experiences of top-tier high school kids in the United States, India, and China.
But, in its desire to strike fear into the hearts of complacent upper-middle class Americans who take for granted our status as Greatest Country in the World, it fails to consider a set of key points. The first point --made forcefully by Commissioner Jones in the discussion following the movie -- is that Chinese and Indian schools are dealing with a wholly more homogenous population than ours. Our school systems are charged with educating all children, and with this diversity comes challenge and opportunity. But the Indian children we see -- in a private school in high-tech
Bangalore — represent a select group of a select group; we do not see the hundreds of millions who cannot afford to attend school of any kind.
Though the movie implies that the Chinese and Indian systems convey more appropriate values than our system, even this hour-long glimpse into the lives of these children would make most of us shudder: an insistence on "global competitiveness" at any cost, seven days a week of wall-to-wall studying; hypercompetitive parents.
"Two Million Minutes" is worth a viewing, but don't go shipping your ninth-grader overseas any time soon.
3 Responses to ""Two Million Minutes" well meaning, misleading"
- Alan Gottlieb Says:
February 20th, 2008 at 12:32 pm e
I agree, Cap'n. And was I the only one who was a bit creeped out by executive producer Bob Compton's opening remarks? After a trip to
India and
China,
Compton said, he came home so alarmed by the competitive edge kids in those countries have over our coddled and slothful darlings that he forced his kids to quit competitive sports and instead undergo forced tutoring on weekends. My reaction to that was not "how enlightened," but rather ‘thank God he's not my dad."
We will not "beat"
China and
India by competing with them to automatize our children, or by forcing them into an over-scheduled nightmare of a life. I prefer the Marc Tucker version of the future, which has the
U.S. maintaining (or perhaps reestablishing would be more accurate) its economic edge by fostering not only technical and technological proficiency, but creativity as well.
- K Khan Says:
February 20th, 2008 at 2:16 pm e
Creativity can only work with knowledgeable people. Empty heads cannot start designing next generation space shuttles. While
America manages to inspire a few every year, we can only hope that the trend continues. The schools are hardly able to provide the necessary education to provide the base for creativity. People often think creativity and education are opposite ends of the spectrum. In fact it is the American education that oversimplifies Math and Science so that everyone can churn up an answer and not try to understand or appreciate it. It seems as though fewer and fewer inspired Americans are taking care of more and more less inspired as time goes by.
- Todd Engdahl Says:
February 20th, 2008 at 10:21 pm e
Actually, Commissioner Jones' comments about
U.S. diversity, the social role of the schools, etc., missed the point of the movie, which compared elite schools, not entire educational systems.
I suspect rural
India and inland
China have schools that make
Washington,
D.C.,
elementaries look like Boston Latin.
And speaking of diversity,
India reportedly has more than 400 languages, 122 of which have more than 10 million native speakers.
The movie is food for thought, whether we like it or not.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Written by: Pol Econ Ed
With all of the recent discussion about Bruce Randolph, Manual, and the far northeast schools in terms of autonomy and whether or not the DCTA would agree to more flexible arrangements on a case-by-case basis - plus the proposed Groff-Spence bill to create a new waiver process - we all could use some broader context. How restrictive is the DPS/DCTA contract, as well as other teachers' contracts in
Colorado?
Fortunately, the Fordham Institute has just released a national report that assesses the restrictiveness/flexibility of teachers contracts for the 50 largest
U.S. districts, by the amazingly prolific Rick Hess and Coby Loup. See it at here.
The report finds that 15 of the 50 districts have "restrictive or highly restrictive" contracts, according to their coding of 12 elements. About 30 large districts have fairly ambiguous contracts, neither highly restrictive or highly flexible, which may give school district management more scope than they realize.
For local context, the study finds that
Denver ranks 26th of the 50 districts (tied with
Fort Worth), almost exactly in the middle of the pack. On the study's 6-point scale between highly flexible and highly restrictive,
Denver's score is "somewhat restrictive."
The database has considerable detail on each of 12 elements of the contract.
Denver gets its top score for "performance pay," e.g., Procomp, which is an "A", but gets F grades for transfer, professional development and teacher leave elements of the contract. The report explains what each of those scores means.
For what it's worth, Jeffco ranks lower than DPS, at 36th of the 50 large districts (tied with
New York City), rated in the category of "restrictive."
So, the teacher's agreement with DPS looks pretty "average" for large American districts, and Jeffco's is more restrictive. The recent foment here, then, suggests that it could happen elsewhere, and probably will.
One Response to "The DPS teacher contract in context"
- Ben DeGrow Says:
February 15th, 2008 at 11:45 am e
Agreed: a very timely and insightful report. One has to wonder what the results would be if this analysis were duplicated for all of
Colorado's school districts with collective bargaining agreements.
Thanks for bringing more attention to the report.
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