Don’t Punish Students in American Indian Charter Success Story for Controversy
A sad education story is emerging from Oakland, California. Poor kids soon could be deprived of the option of attending the city’s top-performing high school and producing some of the best results nationwide. Why? Because a state audit found financial mismanagement by Ben Chavis, charismatic leader of the successful American Indian Charter, and lack of […]
Devil’s Advocate: SB 213, Billion-Dollar Colo. Education Tax
Senior education policy analyst Ben DeGrow discusses Senate Bill 213, the massive piece of legislation attempting to change how schools are funded if Colorado voters approve a billion-dollar tax increase initiative.
A Different Way to Look at Coloradans’ Financial Contributions to K-12 Education
Writing over at Hot Air, Mike Antonucci came up with some new ways to measure how much is spent annually on public education. He digs into the data from 2010 to make some interesting calculations at a national level. Well, using the help of my Education Policy Center friends, here are comparable numbers for Colorado, […]
Amy Oliver Show: Adams 12 Union Resists Open Negotiations
Norm Jennings, Adams 12 school board director, talks about the district’s efforts to bring discredited union accusations into the light by holding collective bargaining negotiations in full public view.
Colorado Watchdog Cites Critique of Weak SB 213 Reform
The Education Policy Center’s Ben DeGrow was cited in a Colorado Watchdog article for his criticisms of the weak changes in proposed school finance reform legislation at the State Capitol: “For being marketed as a grand bargain, there isn’t really much reform,” said Ben DeGrow, a policy analyst with the Independence Institute. DeGrow said the […]
New Hampshire School Choice Defensive Victory Brightens Hopes for Colorado
Parent educational power has made some great strides in a number of states in recent years, prompting not only 2011′s aptly-named “Year of School Choice” but also the rapidly-growing National School Choice Week phenomenon. That doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels nor expect opponents to sit back and do nothing. We’ve seen the […]
Dishing Up a Little Friday Irony, American Federation of Teachers-Style
It’s a busy Friday at the end of a sad and difficult week. So I’m happy just to follow Mike Antonucci’s witty lead. Today on his Intercepts blog he pointed out some true “Hedge Fund Hilarity” in a Wall St. Journal column about national teachers union president Randi Weingarten “trying to strong-arm pension trustees not […]
Devil’s Advocate: Cage-Busting Education Leadership
American Enterprise Institute education scholar Rick Hess and Douglas County School District superintendent Liz Fagen discuss the importance of strong leadership in bringing about effective education reform. Senior education policy analyst Ben DeGrow makes his debut as guest host.
Amy Oliver Show: Empowering Students with Real School Finance Reform
Following up on his op-ed for the Denver Post, John Conlin from End the Education Plantation talks about a better K-12 reform idea than what is presented in Colorado’s school finance reform bill, SB 213.
Of Broken Records or Repeating MP3 Files: Colorado Remediation Rate Still Too High
I was going to say that sometimes my blog can sound like a broken record, but I’m too young to know what a record even is. So how about, please forgive me in advance if this post sounds like an MP3 file on a repeat loop. (Someone else can figure out how to smooth out […]
Latest Research Builds Winning Record for School Choice: Still Waiting for DougCo
Gold-standard research on the positive impacts of school choice keeps rolling in. The latest work by Matthew Chingos and Paul Peterson measures the results for New York City students who received modest privately-funded vouchers to attend private schools. The study directly compared how many voucher students successfully completed high school and enrolled in college compared […]
Hey, Colorado: Billion Dollar K-12 Tax Hike OR End the Education Plantation?
Often it’s very easy to get bogged down in a big education policy debate like Colorado’s SB 213 school finance reform proposal. Then along comes a Denver Post op-ed piece by a motivated citizen that exhales a breath of fresh air: Colorado currently spends about $10,600 per student per year on K-12 education. You can […]
