From the editor

Anyone who has ever thought that the school reform enterprise is simple, or amenable to some kind of big-bang quick-fix need only try to wrap his or her head around the complex issue of teacher pensions to be disabused of that foolish notion.

And when you realize that this is but one of the enormous challenges school systems face, it's tempting to sink into despair over the prospects of every setting things on a healthier course.

A report released last week by The Piton Foundation and Donnell-Kay Foundation (both funders of Education News Colorado), lays out in stark and relatively comprehensive terms just how vexing a challenge the pension morass poses for school districts. The new report did not offer solutions; that will come in a later study.

Although the study focused specifically on Denver Public Schools and its self-funded pension plan, its findings also apply to other pensions, most notably to the Public Employees' Retirement Association (PERA) the pension plan for teachers and other state employees across Colorado.

I will not pretend to understand the intricacies of pension plans. But the heart of this problem is easy enough to comprehend, even if solutions are not. The basic issue is this: pension plans like DPS' were designed for a different era. They need to be restructured, but it's hard to see how to do so without breaking a sacred compact between current employees, retirees and the school system.

So, until we find a middle ground palatable to all, we're stuck with a system with perverse incentives. Here's how the Piton-Donnell-Kay report summarizes the dilemma:

• For the first two decades of a typical DPS employee's career, an employee receives minimal pension benefits and the pension system offers little to no incentive from a recruitment or retention standpoint.
• The cost of providing pension benefits for more senior employees prohibits those funds from being invested in larger salaries up-front for a junior employee's compensation, thus reducing the competitiveness of going into the teaching profession and the quality of those actually applying for open positions.
• Incremental pension benefits earned are so lucrative for employees during the decade before an employee becomes eligible for retirement - more than doubling an employee's annual compensation every year on average during those ten years -- that DPS employees in this decade effectively cannot afford to leave.
• Once a DPS employee reaches retirement age (which can be as early as 50 years old), the employee has very strong financial incentives to retire or leave DPS, no matter how productive or effective the employee may be.

One might hope that all parties involved in this situation - teachers, unions and district leaders - would appreciate the intent of the new report, and that it would prompt them to sit down and figuring out some possible solutions (see the blog post below by Uncle Charley for some possible scenarios). 

Instead, a Rocky Mountain News story about the study, included this wrong-headed reaction:

Monday's report "devalues the contribution of experienced employees in this district," said Kim Ursetta, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association.

Say what?? Kim, what report were you reading? The report I read laid out, in dispassionate, non-inflammatory language the crux of a problem that hits DCTA members hard, particularly those younger than 45. How in the world does that devalue anything?

As long as we have influential leaders viewing these tough issues in hard-nosed, positional  terms, we will make no progress in any of the myriad areas where reform is so desperately needed.

-- Alan Gottlieb

The following article is the latest installment from members of the West Denver Preparatory Charter School.

Son's turnaround shows value of West Denver Prep

By Tommy Rivera

Why did I send my son to West Denver Prep for 6^th grade?  

My first experience with WDP was the school's words.  Words I searched for desperately when I was looking for a place to entrust my child's education; words that made up the school's core values:

1. Every child deserves a demanding, standards-based education.
2. 2. Accountable community develops character.
3. 3. Great teachers are essential for academic excellence.

My son and I had one year of previous experience with a local grade school. It was the first year my son lost his desire to learn.  The first year he didn't look forward to perfect attendance. The first year he actually tried to get sick in order not to have to go to school.

Although I knew for years that his educational journey was off to a bad start, he didn't - until fifth grade  For those first six years, he may not have been doing his best, but he was trying and he loved school.  My son dealt with many social issues in school, and this often became the focus of his educational experience.  

In desperation, I tried to do whatever I could as a parent to help him so that he could focus on the positive parts of learning, instead of just the negative social aspect that was a recurring event.  

Unfortunately, I seldom felt that his previous school was willing to collaborate on implementing any type of plan for resolution.  I often felt overwhelmed, stressed, depressed, desperate and, always, a failure as a parent.  The school did not recognize its failure, but I felt it every day.

My fears in relation to the neighborhood school were based on this lack of responsiveness, combined with my own impression of youth today. Kids seem to be growing up too quickly -- and not in a good way.  They seem angry, discouraged and unaccountable for their actions.  

West Denver Prep has turned that fear into an opportunity to remove the negative 'norm' and help our kids learn in a safe environment.  WDP's strict guidelines are successful --not letting little things get out of hand so that in turn, there are fewer (if any) instances of extreme issues.  Creating fewer distractions in the classroom also has an immediate and positive impact on everyone.

West Denver Prep offered everything I was looking for in a school for my child. My son didn't start out as excited I was with WDP - there were longer hours, more days, homework center, and the uniforms?  Ugh.

But we talked about his future as well as his 'here-and-now.'  We talked about the opportunities he has to make the most of his education and the impact it will have on his life. And it brought a smile to my face every time he came home and said "Mom, I found out something else good about the school...."  

I don't get phone calls every day or even every week that he is having behavior and social issues.  I don't get a note at the end of the term that half of his homework was incomplete or missing.  What used to be a fight about what he had to do, and whether he was getting it done -- is no more.  

In the past, he had less homework, but it took him all night long to do it!   I find that the accountability placed on my child at WDP ensures that the first thing he does is come home and complete his homework.  And if he needs help, he knows assistance is available.  Now, he's not just getting by, he is excelling and he is proud.  And his self esteem is growing every day.

WDP values families as well as the community as a whole.  I have been encouraged to join both Parent Council and Board of Trustee meetings, which are giving me the opportunity to contribute to the success of the school.  

The values.  The accountability.  The high expectations.  The strict guidelines.  The support.  The community.  The encouragement.  The caring.  The results. These are the reasons I send my child to West Denver Prep.

Tommy Rivera is Co-Chair of the Parent Council and a member of the Board of Trustees at West Denver Prep.

Blog highlights

It's time to tackle the teacher pension morass

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Written by: Uncle Charley

Amid all the CAP4K hoopla, what about this study  on the Denver Public Schools Retirement System that came out Monday from the Donnell-Kay and Piton foundations? While everyone is singing kum-ba-yah about the innovation school bill and the governor is unveiling his bipartisan plan, even the tiniest hint of teacher pension reform seems like the equivalent of bringing partisan political flyers to a family reunion (i.e., a great way to start a heated argument).

Nevertheless, there are some significant findings that cannot be ignored. Most remarkable from the joint study is the graph on page 8, which shows the profitability of retirement skyrocket between a teacher's 20^th and 22^nd year, climb steadily up to year 30, then plummet.

One of the study's co-authors summed it up well in the Denver Post:

"What we found is that if you are an employee who doesn't last for 25 years, the pension doesn't do you that much good," said Tony Lewis, director of the Donnell-Kay Foundation.

A system that makes employees wait that long to get lucrative benefits may not be attractive to workers when the workforce tends to be highly mobile, the study found.

The findings for Denver are consistent with the research on five states' teacher pension systems highlighted recently in Education Next:

Teachers typically earn relatively little in the way of pension benefits until they reach their early fifties, when much larger benefits start to accrue. The system therefore pulls teachers to "put in their time" until then, whether or not they are well suited to the profession. Beyond that point, the pension system quickly begins to punish teachers for staying on the job too long, pushing them out the door at a relatively young age, often in their mid-fifties, even if they are still effective teachers. These "pull-push" incentives are embedded in the patterns of pension wealth accumulation over teachers' careers, patterns that feature dramatic peaks, cliffs, and valleys that can greatly distort work decisions for no compelling public-policy purpose.

So what's the solution? The new DPS study echoes the call of Dr. Marguerite Roza "to provide more generous, portable, up-front retirement benefits as a means of recruiting younger teachers who expect to change professions multiple times throughout their careers."

The Education Next piece is more specific in its advocacy for reforms that bring neutrality, transparency, portability, and sustainability to teacher pensions. Knowing that unions exert a lot of political pressure against Defined Contribution proposals, the authors also promote the middle-ground proposal of "cash balance (CB) plans"-in which guaranteed retirement returns are more closely and consistently tied to employer contributions.

I've never seen CEA rail against cash balance plans, so maybe we could hope for another kum-ba-yah moment around teacher pension reform-first in Denver, and then statewide for PERA. On second thought, maybe I'd better not press my luck.

Racial equality in ed. goes beyond schools

Monday, March 24, 2008

Written by: Captain Haddock

Last week, for the first time in recent memory, a high-profile politician took on issues of race and class that are usually confined to university classrooms and barber shops.  Barack Obama's speech was notable for a number of reasons, not least of which was its even, thoughtful tone.  Perhaps Obama's greatest moment of righteous indignation came when he addressed the relationship between racial inequality and education:

Segregated schools were, and are, inferior schools; we still haven't fixed them, fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, and the inferior education they provided, then and now, helps explain the pervasive achievement gap between today's black and white students.

Obama's speech provides an opportunity for us to ponder the relationship between race and schooling in our own backyard.  Here in Colorado, for example, fewer than half of all students of color graduate high school, and the number of black students who score at the highest levels on the CSAP in our urban schools is embarrassingly small.  

We're right to hold schools and districts accountable for those things within their control, such as refusing to accept low expectations for certain groups of kids, and providing the means to assess the progress of different subgroups of children.  But some of the most effective means of achieving educational equality lie beyond schools.  

Consider, for example, housing integration, which can have a variety of positive effects on the achievement gap.  We know that kids of color perform better in more integrated schools than in more homogenous ones, and there are other advantages, too.  The Rev. Jeremiah Wright hullabaloo reminded us once again how differently blacks and whites perceive the American experience.  Sharing fences, parks, and schools with neighbors who look different from you is perhaps the single best way to promote mutual understanding.

How to integrate neighborhoods?  Well, that's a different post for a different blog.  But we should keep in mind that achieving educational equality is a task that goes well beyond teachers, schools, and districts.  Only visionary thinking at the broadest level, combined with good old fashioned perspiration at the smallest, will get us there.

CAP4K essential flaws endure, says educator

Friday, March 21, 2008

Written by: Alan Gottlieb

Rona Wilensky, a long-time Colorado educator, weighs in again with her dissenting view on the governor's CAP4K plan, which now exists as a leaving, breathing bill: Here's Rona's take:

The new version of CAP4K is clearer than the last one, eliminating the conflated focus on both academic and 21^st century skills (by opting to focus primarily on academic skills and only including 21^st century skills to the extent "practicable"), further lengthening the time lines for the development of new standards, clarifying the relationship between standards and "post secondary and workforce readiness", as well as the relationship between this initiative and the Graduation Guidelines Development Council.

This clarity, however, only further highlights the unchanging core premises of the bill:

• That there is little variation in the level of academic preparedness that a student must achieve in order to succeed after high school, regardless of the student's aspirations.
• That "post secondary and workforce readiness includes a demonstration of a sufficiently high level of comprehension or skill to successfully complete, without need for remediation, the core academic courses identified by the (Colorado) commission (on higher education)."
• That the "adopted assessment or assessments to measure students' post secondary readiness my include, but need not be limited to:

o        a standardized, curriculum-based, achievement, college entrance examination (e.g. ACT); and

o        the basic skills placement or assessment test administered by institutions of higher education in Colorado" (e.g. Accuplacer).

In short, the bill equates post secondary and workforce readiness with college readiness, no matter what else it says.

As I have said in earlier comments, when we raise the bar without increasing supports, we set students up for more failure; when we raise the wrong bar, we compound the error by wasting time and misdirecting resources.

If this were just another bureaucratic exercise it wouldn't matter.  But when real live students will be disenfranchised by the hyper-academic focus of the post secondary and workforce readiness program; when living, breathing adolescents will be denied the endorsement that the state sets up as the sine qua non of school success; and when educators are spending their precious time rewriting standards instead of teaching children, the human costs of this misguided public policy become more apparent.

I hope that a wider discussion of this bill will bring both more reality and more compassion to whatever formulation eventually becomes law.

Another take on paying students to be students

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Written by: Alan Gottlieb

My friend Brian Weber, a vice president at the Stapleton Foundation, sent along these thoughts about paying students to take tests, come to school, etc., in response to my post the other day about Manual High School.

Note: Brian was a reporter for many years at the Rocky Mountain News before moving into the rarefied foundation world seven or eight years ago.

This isn't the first time Manual has paid students to show up. Nor is it the first time financial incentives paid off at Manual and elsewhere.

In the summer of 1997 Manual was beginning to adjust to post-busing boundaries which meant it would become three-quarters low income and 90 percent kids of color.

Then-Principal Nancy Sutton launched for ninth graders the city's only high school summer school. Most of the freshmen were several grade levels behind so they were required to come. Others had a choice but that was not stressed. About 250 kids were expected; but 320 of the 380 ninth graders showed up. (Source: my own story on 7/7/97 in the Rocky Mountain News where I was an education writer from 1995-2000).

And they had an incentive: students were paid $5 per day to attend the four-hour sessions, do their class work and community service; they also earned 2.5 hours of academic credit. Kids I interviewed said they'd be almost anywhere else than school in June and July without the $25 a week. (Note to Alan Gottlieb: I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that Ms Sutton got some of the money from your former employer, Piton.)

More recently I saw similar incentives work at the William Roberts E-8 School in Stapleton. In the fall of the 2006-07 year (Roberts' first year) approximately 50 students were well behind in reading, writing or math. Nearly three quarters were in sixth and seventh grade, and the majority of all the students were low income.

I worked with the principal, Trich Lea, to organize two, six-week Saturday School sessions for those kids, one hour of tutoring for each subject. Half dozen teachers were paid to help; another 15 or so volunteers from the Stapleton neighborhood association also tutored. Letters and calls went home strongly encouraging parents to get their kids to school on Saturday.

And the kids had an incentive: my foundation gave them each a $10 King Soopers gift card every Saturday they showed up for all their assigned tutoring. Those that had perfect attendance for each six-week session, were engaged and showed academic progress also received a free bike from the nonprofit Bicycle Recycle Program which is run by Bruce Lien, a former middle school teacher from Adams County.

On average we had 35 kids attend each Saturday and 28 qualified for a bike. Teachers reported that the majority of Saturday School kids progressed more than expected, and they performed better on CSAP than their work earlier in the year indicated.

As Alan and Rob Stein and others have noted - and I would agree - such "extrinsic motivation" is not the preferred method but eventually it may lead to the more desirable intrinsic variety.

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