Blog posts are the opinions of the writers and do not necessarily reflect the views of A+ Colorado.
This post was updated 9/12/2016. The State Board unanimously voted to keep the Aurora campuses of HOPE Online charter school open despite the local school board’s decision to close the schools. Recently, A+ Colorado CEO Van Schoales compared HOPE Online campuses to the Ford Pinto. For all of you who lack enthusiasm for vintage cars, or were…
When I talk about the use of data in education (and specifically school accountability) I tend to get one of two reactions– it’s seen as either a pet project, at best peripheral to, and at worst a distraction from, school improvement strategies; or that I’m a cog in an (evil) technocratic takeover of public education.…
Aurora Public Schools will close out this school year with big decisions impacting district improvement and access to high-quality school choices for Aurora’s kids. At this week’s meeting, the APS Board will hear proposals for four charter schools looking to serve Aurora Public Schools students: Academy of Advanced Learning, Vega Collegiate Academy, Dean’s Institute for…
Tom Boasberg, the superintendent of Denver Public Schools, is about to return to his position after a six-month sabbatical with his family in South America. After seven years as superintendent, he has been one of the longest serving superintendents of an urban school district with an elected school board in our country’s recent memory. During…
Denver has recently begun discussions regarding a new mill levy proposal that would provide an additional $50 million to the city’s schools. As in most debates, there is ample evidence on both sides of the issue of school funding: there is evidence that the money could make a big difference, and also a great deal…
Aurora Public Schools will be approaching the State Board of Education in May with a proposed Innovation Zone to implement next year. Five* schools in the Aurora Central High School feeder pattern will make up the zone that will be organized around a theme of global leadership. We’ve been monitoring the process closely, and provided…
Post originally appeared in the Thomas B. Fordham Flypaper blog, republished here with slight modifications. Education Cities and Great Schools recently released a useful new educational data tool called the Education Equality Index (EEI), which allows users to compare cities and states across the nation that are “closing the achievement gap.” The tool compiles school-level…
By Laura Lefkowits In 1995, Federal District Court Judge Richard Matsch terminated the decades-old desegregation order for Denver Public Schools claiming that the district had “removed the vestiges of past discrimination to the extent practicable.” As it turned out, the “extent practicable” in Denver was minimal given the exit from DPS of over 30,000 mostly…
Did you make any New Year’s resolutions? Though I generally prefer to think of life as a “continuous improvement plan,” I appreciate the social pressure to reflect and take stock of the past year, and set goals for the next one. Some things I’d like for myself in 2016: do more art, read more books,…
It’s been about nine months since kids started taking PARCC tests and one month since the state released some of the data on schools, and yet many families still do not have results for their kids. The data we do have is not disaggregated by student groups (a key tool for monitoring that all students…