DENVER AND THE WEST

Colorado a finalist again in "Race to the Top"

By Colleen O'Connor
The Denver Post

POSTED: 07/28/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

UPDATED: 07/28/2010 05:54:57 AM MDT

Education Secretary Arne Duncan praised Colorado for passing Senate Bill 191.

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Colorado is one of 19 finalists in the second phase of the federal "Race to the Top" competition, and independent observers say the state has a good chance of being among the 10 to 15 winners, who will be announced in September.

"It's not unrealistic to be enthusiastic," said Joe Williams, executive director of the New York-based Democrats for Education Reform, who noted that U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised Colorado when he announced the finalists Tuesday.

"In dozens of other cities, from Tampa to Pittsburgh to Denver to right here in D.C., union leaders and administrators are moving beyond the battles of the past and finding new ways to work together," Duncan said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. "And I urge union leaders, administrators and school boards all across America to follow the example of their reform-minded colleagues and have a much more open mind towards common-sense reforms."

The tough work Colorado lawmakers did this year passing Senate Bill 191, which ties educator evaluations to student academic performance and changes the way teachers get and keep nonprobationary status, "is exactly the kind of stuff this administration is looking for," Williams said. "I think Colorado will be rewarded for that."

In the first round of competition for $600 million in grants, Colorado was one of 15 finalists. Delaware and Tennessee took home the prize in March.

Colorado lost big points for not having in place a plan to get effective teachers and principals into schools.

For the second round, Colorado scaled back its $377 million request, asking for $175 million over four years. About $90 million would go directly to the participating districts, while the rest would go to statewide support of the districts.

The second-round winners will share a $3.4 billion pot.

"Sense of momentum"

Sen. Michael Johnston, D-Denver, credited for the passage of SB 191, said moving into finalist position again suggests "Colorado has regained its place among the leading states in the country on education reform."

"There's a sense of momentum right now for Colorado," Johnston said, "and that's a good place to be."

Much of Duncan's speech focused on the importance of data in assessing student achievement, and Colorado has an edge there too, said Rich Wenning, associate commissioner of the Colorado Department of Education.

"Colorado is a leading state when it comes to making information public about school performance," he said. "We've been recognized by other states, and the National Council on Measurement in Education just gave us an annual award for outstanding dissemination of education measurements to the public."

Nina Lopez, director of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the Colorado Department of Education, is cautiously optimistic.

"Our chances are better this time, given that (Duncan) said a number of states (would get grants)," she said. "The big unknown is how much the other states changed their applications."

On Aug. 10, a Colorado delegation will go to Washington to defend the application before a review panel.

One challenge will be explaining that most education decisions are made by local school districts, rather than the state Department of Education, Lopez said. The delegation will have to convince reviewers that "the state will do something, even though we can't really make people do it."

She is confident the state has the track record to back up this promise.

It would be an easier sell, however, if the state's largest teachers union, the Colorado Education Association, would make a formal statement of support for the "Race to the Top" bid, Williams said.

"This would help Colorado's chances of winning tremendously," he said. "If the union is on board, it would be much more believable (that things) would be implemented at the local level."

Union not in support

But the CEA is adamant that it will not support the new application.

"We were actively engaged in the first proposal," said teachers union spokeswoman Deborah Fallin. "But we parted ways over the legislation that Johnston believes is the magic answer, and our board in April took the position that we will not participate in Phase 2."

Williams, who has watched the nationwide race for education reform from the start, said Colorado's path has been particularly interesting.

"What happened between (the two phases) with the legislation was pretty dramatic," he said. "It's had a very strong finish. This is a race, after all."

Colleen O'Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com Staff writer Michael Riley contributed to this report.

CDE: Colo. standards are rigorous as common core
Posted by Todd Engdahl on Jul 21st, 2010. \

The State Board of Education Wednesday was assured that Colorado’s content standards for language arts and math are as rigorous as the proposed national Common Core Standards in those subjects.

And, adopting the common core may be as simple as adding parts of those documents to state standards, a consultant and Department of Education officials said.

The board was briefed by education Commissioner Dwight Jones and other CDE staff about line-by-line comparisons of the common core and the state standards, which were adopted only last December. Reviews were done by an outside consultant and state content subcommittees.

The core standards were developed under the leadership of the National Governors’ Association
and the Council of Chief State School Officers. But, the U.S. Department of Education has made adoption of the standards an eligibility requirement for the second round of Race to the Top grants.

Board members asked how the two sets of standards compared in their rigor. “On the whole … it’s almost a wash,” said Stanley Rabinowitz, a consultant for the education research agency WestEd. While there’s variation in some individual standards, “I’d say there’s equal rigor across the two documents,” he added.

Jo O’Brien, CDE assistant commissioner of standards and assessment, said, “It’s almost a draw.”
Standards details

The board met on the same day that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute issued its comparison of the common core with individual standards in all 50 states. Fordham judged Colorado’s language arts standards as equal to the common core but ranked state math standards as considerably less rigorous than the proposed national set.

Board members also asked what exactly adopting the common standards would mean.
Elaine Gantz Berman, D-1st District, asked if adoption would mean the state would “in no way … be watering down the Colorado standards.”

Rabinowitz said that if parts of the common standards were added to state documents, “You’re probably making the standards more rigorous in some cases.”

Berman wanted reassurance that merely adding sections of the national standards to Colorado’s would constitute adoption. “That is correct,” said O’Brien, an answer affirmed by Jones.
Rabinowitz said, “No one has fully defined what adoption means or what 15 percent means.” (The 15 percent reference is to the federal requirement that a state’s standards can’t deviate more than 15 percent from the common core.) O’Brien said there’s about 90 percent overlap between the two sets of standards.

Rabinowitz explained to the board that the comparison “was a very difficult study to do” because in many places the common standards are much more detailed than Colorado’s. “There are parts of the common core standards that read much more like curriculum than standards.”
O’Brien noted that Colorado’s “standards are an expectation of what students should know and be able to do at the end of good curriculum,” not a detailed list of what students should be taught throughout a school year.

The Fordham study judged the common standards, which were released in final form last month, to be “clearer and more rigorous than today’s [language arts] standards in 37 states and today’s math standards in 39 states. … In 33 of those states, the Common Core bests both ELA and math standards.”

In Fordham’s rating system, the language arts common core got a B+, 6 out of 7 points for rigor and content and 2 out of 3 points for clarity and specificity. Colorado’s marks were identical. (California topped the charts with an A, a 7 and a 3.)

“In sum, these standards represent a very thorough and rigorous set of expectations for the students in Colorado. Some streamlining and editing to exclude nonacademic and unrealistic goals would improve them tremendously, but as written, they earn a solid six points out of seven for Content and Rigor,” the Fordham report said the Colorado’s language arts standards.
In math, the common core scored an A-, a 7 and a 2, but Colorado was graded as only a C, a 3 and a 2. (California was the top scorer again.)

“With their grade of C, Colorado’s mathematics standards are mediocre, while those developed by the Common Core State Standards Initiative earn an impressive A-minus. The CCSS math standards are significantly superior to what the Centennial State has in place today,” the Fordham report argued.

O’Brien attributed Fordham’s math critique to a particular “point of view” that prefers a more detailed, curricular style of math standards than Colorado’s document, which emphasizes student end-of-year competencies. A memo prepared by CDE math content specialist Melissa Colsman concluded that Fordham “overlooked” or “misunderstood” elements of Colorado’s math standards.

(See the Fordham study’s contents page, executive summary and Colorado analysis, plus links to articles about common standards issues.)

Just over half the states have adopted the common standards. Massachusetts’ state board approved them Wednesday, despite an opposition campaign by some conservative think tanks.
The SBE meets on Aug. 2 to hear Jones’ recommendation and to vote on adoption. The commissioner seemed to make a point of reminding the board that Colorado has had a very open process for reviewing the common standards and the final decision hasn’t been made.
However, Colorado officials have been heavily involved in the common standards development process, including review of earlier drafts, something Jones and O’Brien also brought up at Wednesday’s meeting.

The department is accepting public comment on the proposed standards until July 28. About 420 comments have been received so far.

Race to the Top, lap two
By Yuan Li Ren July 16, 2010 7:56 AM EDT


Later this month, the second round of competition for "Race to the Top" grants will be announced. It's been about a year since President Obama allocated $4.35 billion from the Recovery Act to initiate the program, intended to provide quality education opportunities for students from grade K to 12.

Race to the Top's aim is to prepare students for a better future, in both higher education and their careers. States participate by competing for the federal grant and fulfilling what the program calls the four assurances: instituting rigorous standards and assessments; recruiting and retaining effective teachers; turning around low-performance schools; and establishing data systems to track student achievement and teacher's performance.

"Great teachers are the bulwark of America," said President Obama, when introducing the program. Obama alluded to China and India as our competitors in mathematics and science education. "Knowledge is the most valuable commodity a person and a country have to offer," he said.

"The best job will go to the best educator" and "the future belongs to the nation that best educates its people," Obama said.
"Curriculum is not mentioned at all in the Race to the Top," said Grover J. Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings Institute. "There are things left out of the reform effort that are important."

Whitehurst said that curriculum and instruction are ignored in the conditions to qualify for the grant. It "does not include any elements of interaction between teachers and students in the classroom where learning occurs" whereas the criteria to attain the fund is more political, "leaving out the heart of the matter," he said.

The changing trend of the first and second round of applications is that "states have done more to get the buy-in from school districts and teachers union," Whitehurst said.
Whether promises will be translated into state action, "we will have to see" because "as governor, legislator, and superintendent of education of states change, which they do regularly, what the old crowd commits to may not be what the new crowd commits to," Whitehurst explained.

On March 29, 2010, Delaware and Tennessee were announced as the winners of the first round competition. Delaware was awarded $100 million and Tennessee was awarded $500 million for Race to the Top. On July 26, the finalists for the second round will be declared. By September, results from the second round of applications will be released.

"Colorado is very anxious to be awarded the Race to the Top grant" and that was the intent behind enacting the Educator Effectiveness Bill into law, said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, headquartered in Washington, D.C. "We do not know whether Race to the Top is effective but we can see the impact it has on states to bring important reforms."

For those states that chose not to compete, they did so because they were not competent to implement legislation or enforcement of educational reforms, Walsh said.
Myug Kim, communications manager for Gov. Bill Ritter of Colorado, stated that the Educator Effectiveness Bill was a component for Race to the Top and a state strategy to improve education for children of Colorado.

The Colorado law, enacted in June, drew national attention because it ties student performance to the granting of tenure to teachers.
"We believe that Race to the Top complements the efforts we have in place" to enhance quality learning for students, Kim commented.

The Knowledge Is Power Program offers to help disadvantaged students in poor performing schools by implementing the five pillars: more timeline tasks, choice and commitment from parents and teachers to serve, accountability, high expectations, and result-oriented progress measurements.

Steve Mancini, National Public Affairs Director the Knowledge Is Power Program, describes KIPP as "a national network of 99 public charter schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia" that "defines the odds for low income kids and what is possible in public education."
"Our schools have five pillars and there's some crossover with Race to the Top," he said. "We at KIPP see Race to the Top as setting the bar high in terms of expectations for students and serving as a catalyst for a healthy dialogue among state leaders about how best to improve public education in America."

"What's important about this model is to promote what works in education and how we can improve teacher education, how we can turn around under performing public schools and encourage reforms to improve education in this country, reforms like what Colorado did with the bill," he continued.

"There is a stubborn achievement gap, both between public school students in low and high income communities, and between American students and their peers in other industrialized nations," and these gaps trigger counter opinions about Race to the Top, he said.
Jeanne Beyer, director of Communications for the Colorado Education Association, said,
"Colorado applied to Race to the Top in Phase 1 and did not get the award."

The Educator Effectiveness Bill "will be sufficient evidence that Colorado has changed its teacher evaluation and tenure law in order to be more competitive in Phase 2," she commented. "Our organization did not support the bill and we did not sign onto the Phase 2 application as we did in Phase 1. While we definitely believed that our evaluation should be improved, we felt a lot more work could have been done to put together that piece of legislation."
"We have no way to know whether Race to the Top is effective or not because we didn't win in
Phase 1," Beyer said. "No matter how much the amount of money we will get, it's totally insufficient in terms of implementing the reform that Colorado has passed."

Beyer talked about the overwhelming cost to overhaul Colorado's K to 12 academic content standards, while implementing longitudinal growth models and new tests.
"No matter how much money we get from Race to the Top, we won't have enough money to design and implement them," she said. "We've passed a K to 12 education reform bill but there's no money. The state is short of revenue in the recession and we're further handicapped by spending caps."

According to Beyer, there are fewer states applying for Phase 2 because of "less money."
"And it was a tremendous surprise for states to see that only two states were awarded," she said.

"Race to the Top creates a real opportunity, but it will work only if all stakeholders come together to make it work," Randi Weingarten, President of American Federation of Teachers, said in a press release.

"On the positive side, officials in Ohio, West Virginia and other states worked closely with teachers and their unions," she said. "As a result, their applications include initiatives with a real possibility of making a difference in children's lives: better standards and assessments that reflect what students need to learn in the knowledge economy; time and supports to help teachers use data to improve instruction; and targeted assistance to schools and students who need it most."

"The story is very different in states where teachers' voices were ignored," she continued. "In New Hampshire, for example, state officials held only cursory consultations with union leaders. Not surprisingly, applications from such states include tired ideas and top-down reforms that will not improve teaching and learning. In Florida, state officials had frequent meetings with union leaders, but then filed an application that would codify the status quo and poison labor-management relations in all but a few school districts."

States such as Texas and Virginia are critical of Race to the Top.
"Texas is on the right path toward improved education, and we would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children's future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington," Gov. Rick Perry from Texas said in a press release.

The release also stated, "While Texas could be eligible for up to $750 million in Race to the Top funding, it would cost Texas taxpayers upwards of $3 billion to realign our education system to conform to the U.S. Department of Education's uniform vision for public education."

"We've had a great set of standards here in Virginia for 15 years, and we think those common standards ought to be a floor not a ceiling, and so they would require us to essentially reduce the quality of Virginia's standards, and we just can't do that," said Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia in a published report.

AHS Summer Update 3- Middle of July 2010

Animas in the News
Remodel Update
Volunteers

Animas in the News

Animas High School’s End of Year Report from Head of School Michael Ackerman in Sunday’s Business Briefs in the Durango Herald. Read it Here!

http://www.durangoherald.com/sections/Opinion/2010/07/18/Business_Briefs/

Remodel Update

The dust continues to fly at campus and our crews are working hard to expand and remodel our school’s campus this summer. Work is close to complete on the two new Humanities classrooms, a computer lab and digital editing room downstairs in our new wing. Upstairs, our new Biology lab is ready to be built out as soon as things wrap up in the lower level. Furniture, storage, lab equipment and all sorts of student resources continue to arrive at AHS each day!

Volunteers

There’s an immediate need to help the school receive and process shipments over the final two weeks in July. As orders show up by the truckload, it’s always great to have volunteers on hand to count items, organize shipments and help us recycle and remove packing materials. If anyone has anytime over the next two weeks, we’d love to talk with you! Email bobi@animashighschool.com or call 970-247-2474 to help out!ALSO, the final two weeks of our remodel project this summer will provide multiple volunteer opportunities at AHS. We need help with painting, assembling and moving furniture, cleaning and basic finishing work in our newly remodeled space. Work clothes, a positive attitude and some extra time to give to AHS are all that’s needed to participate.We are looking for folks starting Monday, August 9th through Friday, August 20th, 2010. Interested volunteers should contact the main office to schedule time. Thanks for all you do for Anima High!


Contact Us:
AHS main #- 970-AHS-AHS4
http://www.animashighschool.com/
http://www.animashighschool.blogspot.com/

From the Durango Herald Business Briefs 7/18/10

Business Briefs
Article Last Updated; Sunday, July 18, 2010 12:00AM

By all measures, Animas High School's inaugural year was a great success. Animas High School is a free, public charter school that opened in 2009 to our first class of 75 freshmen.

The school continues to thrive and expand. Enrollment will double next fall, when a new freshman class will join our current students who are progressing to 10th grade. AHS will add a grade each year until it offers grades nine through 12.

Excellent, experienced teachers - Cathy Eagan (math), [Dave] Heerschap (physics), Jessica McCallum (humanities), Maria Goodin (Spanish) - will join our incredible staff, growing school personnel to 16 total. We are expanding our facility and equipping all classrooms with SmartBoard technology, funded in part by the Morgridge Foundation.

Our successes demonstrate that quality choices exist for public high school in Durango. Having quality choices adds a new dimension for local families, who can now select a public high school.
With choice comes opportunity and responsibility. We believe families should make informed decisions.

So who are we? Animas' key values epitomize our approach. Animas High's rigorous, college-prep curriculum prepares all students for college.
"The teachers are supportive, but you can't be a slacker at AHS," says sophomore Hank Stowers.

Parents frequently share that Animas' challenging academic standards and culture of excellence have had a profound impact on their teens. Northwest Evaluation Association test results demonstrate academic growth in all content areas tested. Like all public schools, we'll receive Colorado Student Assesment Program data in August.

AHS offers an engaging education where students discover the relevance of their education. It delivers its curriculum through direct instruction and through project-based learning, which allows students to apply content in relevant, real-world ways.

Eeva Reeder, a nationally recognized educator working with AHS on integrating project design with curriculum, says, "No question, project-based learning is what the times demand. The purpose of school is no longer (just) to deliver information, but to learn to use it well and wisely to solve problems and make rational decisions. Thanks to modern research in cognitive science, it is no longer an open question how human beings learn: We grasp abstract concepts by comparing, grappling, taking apart and applying, and we retain information that is investigated and used in the context of real-world events. This is true for all learners, regardless of label, and as true for learning the most abstruse quantum physics as it is for learning to cook."

Animas High promotes a culture of excellence where all students are held to high standards. An expectation to produce quality work, articulate ideas and focus on education permeates Animas.
"Students are engaged, so they care about their schoolwork," says sophomore Alicia Whiteman.
For example, in March all students participated in a United Nations simulation, researching international issues, presenting countries' positions and brokering compromises.
Another priority at Animas High is building strong faculty-student relationships. Teachers really know each student. Low student-teacher ratios - 15 to 1 - allow teachers to foster academic and personal growth, as well as ownership and accountability toward student work.
"Having strong connections allows me to have higher academic and behavioral expectations for each student in-dividually and for my classes overall," said AHS humanities teacher John Fisher. "And it works both ways - I hold them to high standards, and they hold me accountable for delivering an engaging and exciting learning environment."

With good quality high school choices, how should families evaluate their options?
First, discuss your goals for high school. What is your top priority: academics, social interactions or specific programs? Is your student college bound? How well does each school prepare students for college or post-secondary success?
Second, define your great school. How engaging and challenging is the curriculum? How will the school culture help your student thrive, personally and academically? Are small class sizes important? What options are available for participating in sports or extracurricular activities?
Third, visit the schools. Don't rely on hearsay; go see for yourself. Find out how each school operates. Do students seem engaged in learning? Ask lots of questions of students, parents, teachers and administrators. Ask students about their teachers. What do you observe about student-teacher interactions? How responsive are administrators to situations such as changing schedules or teachers? How valued are student and parent opinions and feedback?

We're excited to build on our inaugural success. Choice is good. AHS is proud to be a strong, viable part of the educational landscape in Southwest Colorado.

Michael Ackerman is the Head of School for Animas High School. He can be reached at 247-2474 or atmailto:Michael@AnimasHighSchool.com.

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