Despite the supposed curse about “living in interesting times,” most of us probably do want to be players or observers of interesting activities in our domains — Colorado education in this case. So, I hope we all appreciate the exciting current state of play in education, finance, and related topics in Colorado this summer.
By my count, Denver or Colorado is currently very much in the running for 3 possible sets of new resources to improve our education systems. Most important is the federal Race to the Top (R2T), where maybe 10 states will get $400 million each for reform efforts (and where a recent EdWeek article touts our chances highly).
Also important is a possible multi-million Gates Foundation grant for human capital systems. DPS is competing as a finalist with some other urban districts. And, the Ford Foundation seems to have considerable interest in Colorado, as one of 8 or so states they are studying, with the idea of possibly funding reform efforts in a few states.
If we win all, or even some, of these national competitions, Colorado will have the resources to engage in a lot of important reforms.
And, the summer schedule is filled with key interim legislative commissions, studying school finance and overall state budget issues, respectively. Each commission is packed with legislative heavy-hitters and they are getting input and studies from all of the most informed and interested parties.
With K-12 and higher ed making up 52% of state General Fund spending, both commissions are inevitably going to have big impacts on education in Colorado, if they can find some appropriate financial changes to propose.
And, with Joe Blake now heading CSU, the two major university systems have business leaders at their head (Bruce Benson at CU). Many of the other state higher ed institutions are also lead by people with strong business ties.
With the state budget, and higher ed’s share in particular, poised to “fall off a cliff” in two years, when the federal stimulus money runs out, there could be no better time for these leaders to rally the business community behind supporting reforms. Such a business coalition could probably work effectively with state political leaders, to fashions solutions to the state budget and higher education problems – and to help sell these solutions to voters, if/when a ballot proposition is required.
Summer is typically the doldrums for state policy decisions, but for education policy in Colorado, there couldn’t be a more interesting or vital time.
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Anyone care to make some bets as to metrics for improved outcomes with all the resources? Paul lists a pretty impressive list of both money and people. What should this be able to accomplish? This isn’t rhetorical – I’m genuinely interested in some sense of the potential outcomes given the opportunity.
Perhaps it’s a pipe dream, but, whatever reform or reforms are selected, I would like to see large-scale, randomized, controlled experiments conducted–like the Tennessee STAR (class size reduction) study. I’d like to see not only quantitative but qualitative data collected from the experiments so that if they work or fail or, as is most typical in education, work in some ways for some students but fall short in others, we have some hint as to why and how. That way, we might have a better idea of what can be done to improve the reform (if it works in any meaningful manner) and how to adapt it to different types of environments.
These are great comments.
Holly I think you are right on, that some controlled experiments would generate information helpful not just in Colorado, but beyond.
Alex, I like to think of this in terms of inputs, outputs and outcomes. The inputs would be the money, time, attention from these new resources and programs. The outputs would be new policies, legislation, programs, etc. I am confident that the inputs will be translated into interesting, potentially valuable outputs, in Colorado. But the final impact on outcomes, like test scores, grad rates, etc is so much harder to estimate – I think there will be positive impacts, but probably more modest than all of us would hope for.