These posts are the opinions of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of A+ Colorado.

No Sunlight for Colorado Kids

Imagine this crazy story: every year, kids across Colorado take assessments to help us understand how much they’ve learned. Weeks of student, teacher, and district time go into making sure we really know how kids are doing. Families, education leaders, and civil rights groups ask the question – well, how are they doing? The State’s…

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Appreciate teachers? Show them the money!

I am with the teachers here in Colorado, Oklahoma, Arizona that are calling for higher pay and more funding for public education. This is my thirtieth year in education. So much has changed in public education over the past three decades, yet the calls for professional pay for teachers remain much as they were in…

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Has Denver become Mississippi or maybe Chicago? 4 Takeaways from Denver’s NAEP scores

Denver has had a remarkable transformation from the sleepy cow town that I moved to 20 years ago. We now have five nationally recognized art museums (we had only one back then) and many new amazing restaurants, some with James Beard awards.  Denver has a thriving economy with a 2.8% unemployment rate with impressive growth…

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Where Should Send Your Child?  High School Choices Worth Exploring

We are in the midst of school choice season.  Thankfully, Colorado and many of Colorado’s large school districts have policies and practices that make it easier for families to find the public school that best meets their family needs. I wanted to pull together a list of high schools that families might consider as they…

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Are Colorado’s Charter Schools Public?

In order to answer the question, it is important to define what is a public school.  There are many ways to answer the question from a legal, political, practice and mission perspective.  Some of these are easier to answer than others. The simple but incomplete answer per Colorado law, a public school “is a school…

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Does Race Matter for Colorado’s Influential Education Organization Boards?

  As we enter another education policy season with hundreds of legislative bills designed to improve public education, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at who sits on some of the state’s most influential education organizations. Colorado is a diverse state with a growing number of non-white students (46%). Our largest…

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Has Denver Reached the Peak or is it Starting the Climb?

It’s been over a year since I opined about Denver Public Schools’ strategic direction What Will Tom Do? and I thought it would be a good time to reflect. In particular, the recent elections are the perfect time to step back and think through the next stage of the work in Denver.  I congratulate all…

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Denver’s Good But Is It That Good?

Reviewing the latest distribution of colors from the Denver Public Schools (DPS) release of the 2017 School Performance Framework (SPF), you would think that DPS made the biggest improvement of any school system in the history of American public education in just one year, where the district went from identifying 1 in 7 elementary schools…

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Learning from the Navy?

A few years ago, I had the privilege of spending a few days learning about the US Navy’s training programs which included 24 hours on the USS Stennis, one of ten Nimitz class aircraft carriers.  There is nothing like sitting on the deck of an aircraft carrier at 11 PM in total darkness and 10-…

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Spinning Our Wheels: Are District Efforts the Key?

Colorado has been a leader on state education policy but we have little to show in terms of achievement improvement in spite of two decades of bipartisan support. More than 75% of Colorado’s jobs by 2020 will require some sort of post-secondary degree yet fewer than 23% of Colorado’s high school students are currently persisting…

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