DCTA and the DPS Bond

Posted on October 30, 2008 by axooms

Somewhat buried in an article in the Rocky on raising money to promote the upcoming District school bonds across Colorado:

While both Jeffco and DPS expect to end up with lighter fundraising totals than in past years, they differ in one respect – their donors. Jeffco’s roster includes $35,000 in donations from its local teachers union. DPS’ campaign includes zero.

Kim Ursetta, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, said the union was asked to endorse the DPS ballot question and it did so, mailing letters to 4,027 teachers union members living in Denver.

But she said she was not asked to give money or supply volunteers and the union has focused, instead, on fighting proposed statewide amendments 47, 49 and 54. DPS campaign officials said the union was asked to help but that it was clear its emphasis was elsewhere.

 

Posted in Fiscal & Economic, Teacher Unions | Leave a comment

Pension investments tank; merger problematic

Posted on October 29, 2008 by axooms

There is increased interest on these pages in pensions, which is a positive development on a serious and complicated long-term problem. What is more difficult is the financial climate in which school systems and other entities will now be addressing this issue.

DPS is trying to merge its pension system with PERA, which covers all Colorado state and local government employees. That merger — which was never going to be easy, now looks increasingly difficult, according to this article in the Denver Post:

The largest pension fund for state and local employees lost $10 billion in market value through mid-October, raising the specter of higher contribution rates or lower benefits in coming years if markets don’t improve rapidly.

Colorado PERA, which covers 413,000 paying members and retirees, saw the market value of its investments plummet from $41 billion at the beginning of the year to $31 billion on Oct. 15. That drop was not as severe as overall market indicators, but comes on top of a long-term underfunding problem that the Public Employees Retirement Association had hoped to make up through investment gains.

Full article here* Full article here**. For the varied interests of pension reform, this is not good news.

This DPS administration has approached its pension conundrum chiefly by an attempt to attach DPS to the greater PERA system; this does not so much solve the issue as much as make it part of an even bigger problem with a longer timeline, but it is a lot more forthright approach than we’ve seen before and has merit as an initial step. The pension problem in DPS has been lurking for some time, and the fall of the financial markets makes the failure of previous administrations on this issue during prosperous times an even greater error.

*Shortly after I wrote this post, the DP took down the article, which is unusual. The comments on the article remain on DP’s website. Stay tuned…

**Update: I understand that the initial article was taken down as it contained numerous errors, and this link is to the new article which, interesting, now uses the paragraph I excerpted from the middle as its new lede. The broader story remains — pension investments are down significantly, putting additional strain on underfunded programs and further jeopardizing the DPSRS and PERA merger.

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Then again, it could be far worse…

Posted on October 20, 2008 by axooms

Consider it education globalization:

Previously, the union oversaw most hiring and firing of teachers. Those who worked at government schools were allowed to decide who got their jobs when they retired, a hangover from a time when teaching was viewed more as a trade than a profession.

Many analysts blame those longtime practices for fueling rampant corruption in the education system. Gordillo, whose lavish lifestyle has made her the target of corruption accusations, acknowledged recently that teaching jobs were routinely bought and sold for as much as $6,000.

Full article here. Change some of the nouns, and it could be any number of American cities.

Posted in Teacher Unions, Whimsy | Leave a comment

DPS Bond details

Posted on October 10, 2008 by axooms

The details of the forthcoming bond have been posted in a pretty interesting interactive graph by the Rocky.

Just as the Rocky maintained school-by-school information including CSAP and SAR reports (which unfortunately seems to have vanished), they have done a remarkable public service by putting this together. Even DPS has finally put up more information (although less well presented to the average voter who wants to see school-specific data all at once).

Many people have been arguing for more transparency on the bond; here it is.

10/13 Update: The Rocky has an excellent article that asks several questions about costs. The question I would like to add is on the $48.5M to build two schools on the same campus. That’s almost $25M each (I assume without the cost of the land). I’d love to see what that works out to either per student or per square foot, and some comparisons with other recently-constructed facilities, such as DSST.

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Straight from the teacher’s mouth

Posted on October 9, 2008 by axooms

A very interesting blog at the NY times where “a group of teachers chronicle their experiences during the first weeks of the school, offering first hand accounts of today’s classroom challenges from diverse perspectives.“

I generally say we hear from people claiming to represent teachers too much, and from actual teachers far less than we should. The current post — on teacher pay and the Equity Project Charter School — is fascinating, as are many others.

This sort of forum is really valuable – don’t miss the comments section.

Posted in Teacher Preparation | Leave a comment

Correlation and causation in arts education

Posted on October 6, 2008 by axooms

The summary of a new CDE and Colorado Council on the Arts (CCA) study titled “The Arts, Creative Learning and Student Achievement” is proof positive that someone should have spent more time with math. The first paragraph of the summary reads:

The benefits are clear: The new study shows public schools in Colorado that offer more arts education have higher academic achievement and lower dropout rates.

Um, not really. The study in no way shows that more arts results in higher achievement and lower dropout rates – this would be causation. The study says that schools with more arts education also have students that score higher on achievement tests and fewer dropouts – this is correlation. Correlation does not imply causation. The “benefits” of arts education from this study are none, and the summary is intentionally misleading (as in listing of “benefits” that include higher CSAPs and subjective claims that arts education is “as integral to learning as reading, writing and math”). One might as well argue that because wealthy people have season tickets to the Opera, having a season ticket is what makes you wealthy. The entire summary – resplendent in color and illustration – should get a straight “F”.

Let me offer a second hypothesis: schools with student bodies that are more affluent will not only have higher test results and lower dropout rates, they will have more art programs — partly through student and parent demand, partly because students will be able to pursue more electives as their basic skills are stronger. See: Denver School of the Arts (great academics, low dropout, admissions-based, and 12% FRL). Any reasonable study would simply look at FRL or some other poverty indicator and perform a regression analysis. That two publicly funded bodies like CDE and CCA would neglect something this analytically simple is disquieting, and to it’s credit, the study itself makes no such claims:

Many people somehow accept the idea that the arts help other academic areas – were that it were so easy. One of the earliest studies for the claim – the so called Mozart Effect – has been shown to be scientifically meaningless.

A former colleague recently looked far and wide for a good arts-based curriculum with some evidence of above-average student achievement for high populations of FRL students. He did not find one. Over the last few years I have asked various people for a single piece of solid scientific research showing that increased art programs result in an enhanced ability to do core subjects (math, reading, writing). I have never seen one that held up to any scrutiny.

I remain open, but the kind of amateurish claptrap like this report summary do the opposite as they intend: it shows what even the most facile understanding of statistics might avoid.

Update (Tues night): If there was any doubt about advocates claiming causation “The benefits of arts education are clear. Student involvement in the arts has a positive impact on their overall achievement and helps keep them in school,” said Elaine Mariner, executive director of the Colorado Council on the Arts.

Article here. Wow do I wish we could get her to take the 10th grade math CSAP.

Posted in School Performance | Leave a comment

DC’s teacher contract far bolder than ProComp

Posted on October 3, 2008 by axooms

There is a brief New York Times editorial on the proposed Teacher contract in Washington DC. The core of this plan, as outlined below, is in sharp contrast with Denver’s recent ProComp dispute, which focused on pay, barely touched performance, and did not address tenure. It is also a rare departure for the NYT, which has been cautious on most reforms:

Ms. Rhee has proposed a new approach in which teachers could choose between two employment options. The first would continue the traditional tenure arrangement, under which teachers would be compensated based on their years of experience and educational attainment. Or teachers could choose to give up tenure protection — for the first year of the new contract — and would have to agree to an evaluation of their teaching skills. The teachers who temporarily relinquished tenure, and passed the review, would be rewarded with higher salaries and bonuses that could push their earnings to as high as $130,000 a year. At present, a teacher with a Ph.D. and 21 years of experience makes $87,500 a year. Those who received lower ratings, however, would risk being fired during a probationary year.

How many teachers are willing to sign up for this will be very telling. With 159,000 reported job losses last month, it may be that even one year of unprotected tenure is not worth a substantial increase in salary. However that may say as much about the candidate as the contract.

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