Merida, in her position as a board member, has been an aggressive critic of a pension refinance deal orchestrated by current Superintendent Tom Boasberg and former Superintendent Michael Bennet, Romanoff’s Democratic primary opponent So it’s not surprising the Post and others have called her out for a potential conflict.

Read my blog post, and Mary Seawell’s as well for some further thoughts.

I spoke with Merida by phone Monday afternoon. She had been uncharacteristically silent over the weekend. Normally, she is active on Twitter and Facebook, expounding on issues related to Denver Public Schools. She frequently lambastes Boasberg, (including this unsubstantiated broadside from her Facebook page: “Well, let’s recap, shall we? Flat CSAPs, spending time at the state capitol lobbying against transparency, knowingly giving misleading financial information to Board members….bonus? I think not. Sorry, Mr. Boasberg.”), heaps praise on teachers and their unions, and points to schools that are bucking the odds and succeeding with high-poverty populations.

She doesn’t shy away from a fight, that’s for sure, so I’ve been expecting a social media barrage, an impassioned defense of her actions. What I got instead during our conversation was at least a partial apology.

“I’m guilty of being naïve and having tunnel vision on some things,” she said. “In my naïveté I failed to reveal information I should have revealed.” She has elaborated a bit on her website as well.

Merida said she works for Romanoff as a consultant on field organizing. She develops walk lists and call lists for volunteers, organizes canvassing teams and phone bank teams, and does some translating of campaign materials into Spanish.

Given the controversy, Merida said she is mulling her options. “I understand the concern, it is valid, and therefore am seriously considering (whether to stay on the payroll) in talking with close advisors.  My commitment to DPS and its students, as well as my constituents, is the most important thing,” she said.

Later Monday, she decided to step down from her paid position, but will remain a Romanoff volunteer, at least for now.

During our conversation, Merida also took some shots at her critics. She says they have unfairly accused her of using her school board soap box to criticize Bennet. “Go back and look at the tapes. I don’t talk about Michael Bennet. My focus has been on Tom Boasberg and what do we do now? Bennet isn’t here anymore. He can’t help us.”

Since I’m not a beat reporter these days, I’ve been spared the exquisite agony of sitting through school board meetings on a regular basis. So I can’t verify Merida’s assertion. But even if she hasn’t launched assaults on Bennet by name from her school board seat, she has used other forums to bash him. This is within her rights as an individual in a free society, but can sow confusion.

First, there’s last week’s column in the Denver Post, in which she picks Bennet apart for using a tired line about “the ZIP code you’re born into is not the place you end up if you work hard and behave responsibly.” Merida writes in her guest column that this statement insults decent, hard-working people who reside within those ZIP codes.

On her personal website, Liberal Latina, Merida has blasted Bennet, questioning his credentials as a true Democrat and criticizing his campaign tactics.

“…before he was appointed to the Senate there is virtually no evidence of Michael Bennet speaking out for minorities or expressing any opinions at all on civil rights or other issues important to progressive Democrats. That is why it is all the more appalling that his campaign is attacking the integrity of Andrew Romanoff.”

Again, she is free to say these things. But let’s not pretend the general public notices whether she’s saying them as a private citizen or in her capacity as a board member.

And she has linked to withering assaults on Bennet by others, in particular those by former school board candidate Christopher Scott on Huffington Post. While they aren’t her words, the links are a tacit endorsement of their message. And she and Scott have worked together on the pension issue.

As Mary Seawell wrote in her thoughtful blog post, this particular primary election is unique in its convoluted ties to the world of public education, particularly Denver Public Schools. So I’m not sure there is any universal lesson to be learned here.

In her post, Seawell makes a heartfelt plea for transparency, which seems the best place to start. Let’s hope Merida, and the rest of us, have learned a lesson from this latest, unfortunate episode. If you’re a public official, when in doubt, be an open book.

I am stepping away from the editor’s seat and assuming the role of publisher. This means that while I remain ultimately responsible for the site’s content, I am removing myself from day-to-day decisions about news coverage.

I will be responsible (as I have been all along) for organizational development, partnerships and fundraising. I will remain in charge of the opinion section of EdNews, as well as oversee new projects, including our upcoming website for parents. I will also continue to write this weekly letter and produce the Tuesday enewsletter.

Editing duties will be shared by Nancy Mitchell, who is now the news editor, and Todd Engdahl, who remains the capitol editor. Nancy and Todd will make all day-to-day decisions about what stories to pursue and where on the web site to place them.

Why these changes, and why now? As I mentioned above, EdNews is growing. We started out three years ago as an online version of the old Headfirst magazine, with a sometime snarky blog attached, and a few dozen site visitors per day. When we morphed into EdNews, we became a staff of two. But that still meant both Todd and I had to do a bit of everything.

News organizations live and die on their credibility. For the past 18 months, since Nancy came on board, we have maintained a strict separation between writers of news and opinion content. But that wasn’t always readily apparent to people. My dual role as editor of the news site and the blog perhaps created a perception problem.

My becoming publisher clarifies roles and signals to our readers that opinions expressed in my newsletter pieces and on the blog do not bleed over into the news. Anyone who reads the site carefully knows this has always been the case. But perceptions have a way of becoming reality, so we’ve decided to make our lines neat and clear.

Meanwhile, EdNews has forged a couple of significant new partnerships. We are teaming up with Education Week, the preeminent source for national education news. Soon our home page will feature links to top EdWeek stories. People who go to these stories through the EdNews site will circumvent the EdWeek pay wall.

In addition, we will be publishing an occasional EdWeek story on our site. And our blog will now feature each month a few posts written by EdWeek staffers for their blogs. EdWeek will also run some EdNews stories on its website and in its weekly printed newspaper.

We’ve also launched a partnership with Rocky Mountain PBS. Some EdNews stories will appear on the newly redesigned Rocky Mountain PBS website.

And our valued existing partnerships with 9News and In Denver Times continue as well.

Stay tuned for announcements about further enhancements, including details about our unique site for parents, slated to launch some time this fall.

During my time at the Piton Foundation, I took two delegations of Denver school board members, central administrators, principals and community advocates to Raleigh, N.C., to experience first-hand the wonders of the Wake County Public School System’s integration program.

Despite the enthusiasm generated by these trips, we never succeeded in getting Denver Public Schools to make voluntary socioeconomic integration a priority for the district. Successive superintendents viewed the idea as a political third-rail.

Then, earlier this year, voters in Raleigh elected a new conservative majority to the school board, and the new board’s first move was to dismantle the integration program, which was doomed because it increasingly relied on busing the children of affluent parents long distances. Not to be cynical, but programs that try to force wealthy people to do things they don’t like always end up getting killed.

So I began to think that in this day and age, with the U.S. Supreme Court barring all race-based integration programs and the shining star of income-based integration relegated to the ash heap, mixing incomes in schools was dead as a strategy for improving public education.

But now I am feeling more optimistic. I spent the day Monday attending the first meeting of The Century Foundation’s Consortium on Socioeconomic School Integration. Rick Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the foundation and the nation’s leading expert on socioeconomic integration, convened the gathering.

It was a great day and an impressive group. I attended with the understanding that the gathering was off the record, meaning I can’t quote anyone or say exactly who was there. But I can say this: 35 school districts showed up, representing states from coast to coast and in the heartland. Other attendees included researchers from Stanford University, Harvard University and Duke University.

Districts represented by either school board members, superintendents or senior administrators included some as large as about 200,000 students and as small as around 600. Urban, suburban, and rural districts had a place at the table.

And all of these districts are facing similar challenges. They are becoming increasingly diverse, racially and socio-economically. The number of children in poverty is increasing, across the board. And, in the post-busing era, all are seeking strategies to make sure all kids receive an equitable education.

What better way to promote equity than to do everything possible to make sure kids do not attend schools segregated by socioeconomic status? All 35 districts in attendance are struggling to figure out how to promote socioeconomic integration in a challenging political climate.

I found the commonalities fascinating. Districts of all sizes want to promote integration without being coercive. One popular strategy in almost all districts is creating dual-immersion language schools, which attract affluent parents and also have a natural population of immigrant kids, many of whom are low income.

Listening to district representatives, it also became clear that many suburban districts in particular are grappling with rapidly rising poverty rates. Socioeconomic integration is not some high-minded concept for these districts but rather a survival strategy.

Each district had five minutes to describe itself and its current situation. Afterwards, Kahlenberg boiled what we heard down to nine succinct points. They are worth producing here, in brief:

1. Positive incentives must be provided to middle class and white parents to integrate. Examples: dual-language magnet schools. A “liberal” ideology alone won’t work.
2. Solicit feedback from the community regarding what choices (of school models) to provide.
3. Leverage community assets by partnering with private community institutions, such as hospitals.
4. If we are to sell this convincingly, the primary argument must be about student achievement, even though we may hold other social goals for integration as well.
5. Language matters. Example: “transportation” vs. “busing.”
6. Simplicity is an important value in designing socioeconomic integration plans.
7. Keep in mind the connection between schooling and housing. There may be possible partnerships with authorities in the housing sphere regarding integration goals.
8. Magnet schools themselves can create new problems: jealousy among teachers pertaining to resources. What are the solutions to these problems? Controlled choice is one possible solution, which strives to make all schools in a district attractive so there is no division between magnets and non-magnets.
9. Think about integration WITHIN school buildings. It’s not enough to integrate schools if the classrooms within these schools are segregated.

Did I hear some things that didn’t thrill me? Sure. There was a bit too much reflexive skepticism, bordering on hostility, about charter schools. Too many people, for my taste, also had a knee-jerk reaction against using standardized tests to measure student achievement. But there were more reasonable voices in the room as well.

The Century Foundation is seeking foundation funding to sustain the consortium and make it a powerful advocacy voice for a proven strategy to which many politicians are indifferent. I hope Kahlenberg and his team succeed in making this group a force in school reform for many years to come.

Today I want to pay homage to another sterling educator, who hasn’t been on the scene nearly as long as Lutz, but whose departure from Denver Public Schools this spring should not pass unnoticed.

I am talking about Rob Stein, who is leaving the helm of Manual High School after three years. Stein and I have been friends for a decade, so my judgment may not be objective. But I spent a lot of time at Manual during his first year there (I had thoughts of writing a book about it) and some time there last year as well. So I’ve seen a fair amount up close.

I can’t say that Manual under Stein’s leadership has become a break-the-mold school that will blaze a new trail for urban educators. Stein, in my view, would be capable of starting and operating such a school. But the hard truth of Manual is that the deck was stacked from the start. Politics at various levels are largely to blame.

While I still worked at The Piton Foundation, I served on the Manual Community Council, which was charged with coming up with a blueprint for the new school after the school board made an abrupt decision to close the old Manual in 2006.

The community council was a large, unwieldy group. It consisted of representatives from a wide variety of constituencies, whose interests frequently were divergent. Knocking the sharp edges off people’s positions resulted in a compromise document that was watered down and filled with vague generalities and platitudes. It basically gave the district latitude to  do what it wanted with the new Manual, within a few constraints. I suspect that was then-Superintendent Michael Bennet’s goal from the start.

Bennet, working furiously on damage control after northeast Denver power brokers erupted in outrage over the school’s closure, promised that Manual would reopen after a year’s hiatus. He pledged that its replacement would be a “premier” high school.

But then, thanks to bureaucratic intransigence, DPS did just about everything possible to give the school a rocky start. Hiring Stein away from Graland Country Day, one of Denver’s top private schools, was a brilliant move. Hiring him so late in the game  — in the spring of 2007 to open the school late that summer — was a major blunder from which the school long struggled to recover.

During the community council process Rich Harrison (now principal of the Denver School of Science and Technology middle school) and I repeatedly urged the council to recommend delaying the school’s opening by another year. That would give Stein time to build his team, and for the team to engage in careful, unhurried planning.

Our pleas were shunted aside.

Cities across the country have learned the hard way that to turn around a school requires time and careful planning. Giving a principal a few months to hire a staff and open a school is a recipe for failure, one that has been followed with disastrous results time and again from coast to coast.

To the best of my recollection, Stein accepted the job in March 2007. But he was contractually bound to Graland through that school year, meaning he could not dedicate himself full-time to Manual until late spring.

Thanks to Stein’s reputation and torrents of national publicity showered on Manual, Stein managed to assemble a strong teaching staff, many from out of state, even so late in the game.

But Stein’s team did not have time to do the kind of careful preparation required to get a school off to a strong start. Even though Manual opened with only ninth-graders, a lot of basic systems, notably around culture and discipline, weren’t in place on the first day of school.

Still, the school immediately began outperforming other Title I high schools in Denver. Its performance has not been stellar, but it has looked pretty good in an admittedly weak field.

Late in Manual’s first year, the neighboring Bruce Randolph School asked for and received autonomy from union and district rules and regulations. This was, among other things, a clever political maneuver; a successful attempt by Bennet and his team to outflank the union.

Manual jumped on the bandwagon almost immediately and won similar freedoms. Then, when the state passed the innovation schools law in the spring of 2009, codifyng the districts autonomy efforts, Manual sought and achieved that state designation as well.

One major difference between Randolph and Manual was that Randolph perceived its biggest roadblocks as coming from the collective bargaining agreement. Stein and his staff felt more limited by school district red tape than anything in the union contract.

As time passed, and the superintendency was transferred from Bennet to Tom Boasberg, Manual and Stein continued to feel stymied by the district’s reluctance to free up money that would have granted the school freedom from district services and requirements. Much of the money Stein felt should flow directly to an autonomous school never showed up. Other autonomous school principals have voiced similar complaints.

For specific examples, read this Education News Colorado interview with Stein from earlier this year.

Stein’s willingness to speak out when he sees something he thinks is wrong has not endeared him to district leadership. In my view, he has been uncharacteristically diplomatic when discussing his reasons for leaving Manual.

Still, he’s now viewed as something of a pariah at 900 Grant Street. Disloyal. Not a team player. People say things like he has “gone off the reservation.”

Yes, Stein can be prickly at times. He has been careful in his private pronouncements about his departure but more direct behind closed doors. This has angered some people high up in the district chain of command.

Stein did not leave Manual to walk into another job. He hasn’t figured out his next career move. But you can bet it won’t involve DPS.

There is a basic lesson in this.  If big bureaucracies like DPS can’t listen to and learn from friendly critics, especially those on the inside, then they are doomed to wallow forever in mediocrity. And good people will keep leaving.

Meanwhile, let’s play a science fiction game. Imagine that the act of traveling somewhere far away and culturally distinct alters not only your perspective but also realities on the ground at your place of origin. What if I were to return June 12 to find Colorado’s educational landscape changed in significant ways? What would I hope those changes would look like? (fade to blur)

When I return to work Monday, June 14, here is what I find.

1.    Denver Public Schools has gotten serious about autonomy. Instead of paying lip-service to freeing schools from district bureaucratic entanglements, DPS has given a dozen of its schools the kind of freedom normally reserved for charter schools. At the same time, the district has said an emphatic ‘no’ to a dozen other schools that sought autonomy but lacked the visionary leadership to succeed.

DPS Assistant Superintendent Kristin Waters made a strong case last week on the Education News Colorado blog for allowing equity concerns to override autonomy in cases where autonomy threatened equity. So let’s imagine DPS has hit upon an elegant solution: Only schools with strong leadership and poverty levels above the district mean would be granted autonomy. If equity means unequal resources for unequal needs, then DPS finally started walking its talk in this regard.

2.    Leadership at the Colorado Education Association has had an epiphany and realized that for teaching to be considered a profession, teachers had to be treated like professionals – by school districts and unions alike. Across Colorado, massive collective bargaining agreements detailing working conditions to absurd levels of detail have been replaced by thin contracts dealing with pay, benefits, due process and other essential elements of professional employment. All the extraneous garbage is gone.

3.    Speaking of equity, schools across Colorado now operate on different calendars. Schools with sub-par achievement and/or large numbers of low-income students now have school years 210 days long. To pay for this, schools in affluent areas have shorter years, and families fill the gap through self-funded experiential learning opportunities, for which students get credit.

4.    Colorado’s open enrollment law has been amended so that  school districts have the ability to promote socio-economically integrated schools through “controlled choice” assignment programs. This change has reduced achievement gaps by 25 percent and has not caused much-feared white flight.

5.    The state has figured out an assessment system that measures student growth in a manner acceptable to the CEA and other unions. Highly effective teachers earn $120,000 or more. Teaching in Colorado becomes the “hot new profession,” as a Time Magazine cover story puts it.

6.    David Singer’s University Preparatory Charter School has opened and replicated, and, despite its 98 percent free lunch population,  each year outpaces Denver’s Bromwell, Southmoor, Steck and Slavens schools as hands-down the best elementary school network in Denver.

7.     No one in Colorado even knows what the term “direct placement” means. When they hear about it from other states, they respond with “How stupid is that?”

So, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks. You’d better get busy: As you can see from the list above, there’s much work to be done before I return.

Last Thursday I followed State Sen. Mike Johnston, the driving force behind the law, to O’Connell Middle School in a low-income pocket of Lakewood. Teachers, some unhappy with the law and others seeking more information, had gathered in the library to meet with Johnston.

Would the session be a shout-fest? A smack-down? A spirited debate? As it turned out, it was none of the above. It was a reasoned, low-key conversation that ended after 45 minutes with both sides better informed, and with even the most skeptical teachers apparently feeling at least a bit better.

Johnston is 35, and a novice politician, with just one legislative session and no political campaigns behind him. But anyone who doubts his skills, even after he shepherded a highly controversial piece of legislation through to passage, need only watch him interact with a group of potential adversaries.

When it comes to educators, of course, it helps that Johnston was a teacher and principal for many years before becoming a politician. Still, the way he walked into O’Connell and won over those teachers was impressive. He empathized with them but didn’t pander. He talked directly to them instead of assuming the politician’s phony veneer of jocularity or know-it-all-ness.

And it worked. Not because he employed some tactic or trick to win over the teachers, but because he convinced them, or seemed to, that when you get down to the essence of this debate, people on all sides ultimately are after the same thing: Schools that work for the vast majority of kids.

There is wide disagreement about how we get there, or even whether we can get there. All too often it’s the disagreements that take center stage, as firebrands on all sides paint their adversaries as having ill intent. But with rare exceptions, that’s not the case.

It wasn’t just Johnston’s bravura performance that I found encouraging. It was also the response to last week’s “From the editor.” I wrote, after attending an education writers conference, that many of the journalists there were as skeptical of self-described reformers and their perceived arrogance as they were of entrenched interests in school systems and teachers’ unions.

I received about a dozen calls and emails in response to that column. Most were from people with whom I usually differ on education policy issues, and they got in touch because they appreciated what I wrote.

This threw me, because even though I usually come down on the side of those pushing for rapid systemic change, I like to think I’m open-minded. But the people who contacted me did so because they were pleasantly surprised that I had deviated at least this once from what they perceive as the party line.

“You see, we’re not idiots and Neanderthals after all,” one public official said, paraphrasing a line from last week’s column.

I didn’t write the column as an olive branch, but that is how some people took it, and that’s fine. It shows that the disagreements are not necessarily intractable; that people want to find ways to bridge the divide and work together.

Is this possible? Yes, of course. But it won’t be easy. Fundamental change is a threatening phenomenon. People on both sides will make mistakes as we stumble forward. But I’m encouraged that if we make even modest efforts to reach out, as Johnston did, and I suppose as I did, there will be people willing to meet us half-way.

Something probably will happen in the next week or so to wash away this trickle of optimism. But I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.

The networking was great, as was the company. It’s refreshing to be surrounded by grizzled skeptics. There are no sacred cows as far as this crowd is concerned.

Two themes emerged that I found especially interesting. One was a growing impatience among journalists with today’s self-styled reformers. A number of veteran education writers said this group’s certainty about the correctness of its positions borders on the arrogant and hubristic.

The other oft-repeated theme was disgust with “the polarized education conversation” (there was even a session by that name) and the media’s role in exacerbating that polarization.

First, the journalists’ view of reformers. For some conference participants, an appearance by filmmaker Davis Guggenheim epitomized the reformers’ smugness. Guggenheim, who directed “An Inconvenient Truth,” has a new documentary film coming out in October, focused on education reform. “Waiting for Superman” is being awaited with breathless anticipation by the reform crowd.

Guggenheim showed about 20 minutes worth of clips from the film. It’s beautifully made, and delivers a powerful message about how the latest generation of change agents (Geoffrey Canada, KIPP’s Dave Levin and Mike Feinberg, Harlem Success Academy founder Eva Moskowitz) are transforming education despite stiff resistance from entrenched interests.

I believe in much of that message, up to a point. But “Waiting for Superman” is the third new or soon-to-be-released movie focused on this theme I’ve been exposed to in the past few weeks. The other two are “The Lottery,” centered on Moskowitz’s Harlem campuses, and “The Cartel,” a film that cheerleads for charters and vouchers and paints an annoyingly shallow, black-and-white portrait of “reformers” versus unions and recalcitrant bureaucrats.

Taken in the aggregate, these films are effective propaganda. But even though I agree with much of their advocacy, they leave me feeling used and manipulated rather than informed. They present a simplistic view of challenges facing public education. They may effectively advocate for the “reformer” position, but in the end they fail to elevate or advance the debate.

During the Q&A session, I asked Guggenheim why he thinks so many school reform documentaries are being made now. He replied that more people are recognizing this is a “break the sound barrier” moment. In “Waiting for Superman,” there’s a scene about uber-pilot Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier when most people thought it could not be done. Cutting-edge reformers like Canada and the KIPPsters are playing a similar role in transforming public education against seemingly hopeless odds, the film asserts.

Guggenheim said that when his film comes out this fall, a campaign to push for large-scale reform will accompany it. This campaign will build on lessons learned from the reaction to “An Inconvenient Truth.” Film can prompt effective, broad-based campaigns for change, he said.

Guggenheim is an engaging guy. I enjoyed listening to him. Afterwards, though, chatting with other journalists over beer, I heard a lot of grumbling—and I found myself agreeing with much of it.

“He’s so sure he’s right.” “He’s like all these foundation types and hedge fund guys who think they’ve found the answer and anyone who doesn’t see it their way is an idiot and a Neanderthal.” “Nice message, but when will these people admit that the jury is still out on the sustainability and replicability of the KIPPs and the Harlem Children’s Zones of the world?” “It’s just not that black-and-white.”

This wasn’t an expression of hostility toward the reform camp, but rather journalists’ frustration over the intractable and increasingly ugly nature of current disputes – for which they blamed both sides – and themselves.

I heard these views amplified during the jam-packed session on the polarized school reform debate the following day. Reporters in the room agreed that entrenched interests fighting change – most notably unions and district bureaucracies –  are a big part of the problem. But so, they said, are the reformers.

New York-based reporters, for example, said that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein have created such a “climate of fear” in New York schools that it is hard to get educators who view the reforms skeptically to talk to journalists even off the record. And one reporter said that Moskowitz in particular brings the debate down to a personal level that breeds acrimony.

“Maybe we just need to declare a moratorium on quoting these people,” the reporter suggested.

One idea that won favor was that reporters should seek out more people on the ground, living the school experience every day. Stop quoting the “usual suspects” – the Randi Weingartens and Eva Moskowitzes – and find some teachers and principals in the trenches. To keep going back to the same sources with their predictable sound-bites is to feed the anger and bitterness that’s fueling the increasing nasty debate over changing public education.

The debate in Colorado is at least as polarized as it is elsewhere. Some of the healthiest give and take in recent months has taken place in comments on the Education News Colorado blog, where educators like Mark Sass, Jeff Buck and J.J. Miller have put admirably nuanced thinking and ox-goring on display for all to read and appreciate.

My pledge to readers is that we will keep pushing this kind of debate to the forefront. If we can’t always avoid the “usual suspects,” we will augment their views with those of people closer to the ground.

Even if this kind of dialogue seems frustratingly inconclusive at times, that ambiguity accurately reflects the reality of school reform in 2010.

I single out Democrats for an obvious reason; to vote for Senate Bill 10-191 – aka the teacher evaluation and tenure bill – means bucking the Colorado Education Association, the most powerful education interest group in the state. The CEA is pulling out all the stops – including fear-mongering, arm-twisting and fact-twisting – to defeat this bill.

The organization obviously views SB 10-191 as an existential threat; not to teachers but to itself. Why? Because if SB 10-191 becomes law, it means the CEA failed to muster the political force to stop it, despite having both houses of the legislature and the governorship in the hands of the Democratic Party, CEA’s longtime soulmate.

If that happens, it will be a lot easier in the future for more Dems to discount the CEA’s influence. This would be good for education in Colorado – even good for teachers – but bad for the CEA, and its mothership, the National Education Association.

Legislators and others who differ with unions on this bill are being labeled “anti-teacher.” This wearisome tactic gets trotted out often. So let’s be clear: Disagreeing with a professional association struggling to maintain its influence is in no way an assault on teachers and their tireless dedication to improving the lives of children.

The NEA has been on a high since last month, when more draconian legislation of a similar nature passed through the Republican-controlled Florida legislature, only to be vetoed by Republican Gov. Charlie Crist – now an independent. It will be a bummer of a come-down for the NEA if Colorado bucks the trend Florida started.

Teachers by the dozen have commented on this website in recent weeks about SB 10-191. Many of the comments on both sides have been thoughtful and provocative. Teachers who oppose the bill make some valid points against it.

And yes, the CEA as well has raised some valid concerns about the bill. Most compelling is the fact that the assessments needed to drive the new system are so far untested and of questionable reliability. Those real weaknesses can be addressed as we move forward.

But underlying much of the opposition is a fear of change. Change, however, is coming, like it or not. Whether the change is relatively benign, as Sen. Mike Johnston’s bill would be (despite the CEA’s Armageddon scenarios) or something much more severe (just see what happens if the GOP seizes control of the state policy apparatus in November) remains to be seen.

What happens in the short term if Johnston’s bill fails? The CEA will have won a big victory and the status quo will remain intact. The governor’s Effectiveness Council presumably will keep working, but to what effect is unclear.

If you believe anyone in the CEA will put forward a serious plan that would meaningfully revamp the teacher evaluation and tenure systems, then I have a bundle of subprime mortgages that would make a great investment.

I’ve said this before, but it’s striking how closely this resembles the recently concluded national debate on health care reform, with roles reversed. No one here has mentioned death panels – yet. But we still have another day left in the session.

As someone who has always fallen on the liberal/progressive side of the political spectrum on most issues, I find it disheartening, though not surprising, to see self-identified progressives playing this at times cynical, mean-spirited game.

Equally discouraging are the knee-jerk reactions and over-heated rhetoric of hyper-partisans on the House Education Committee.

Take these two quotes from last Friday’s Education News Colorado:

“I can’t support a bill that I think is an insult to my profession,” said (Rep. Mike) Merrifield, a retired music teacher serving his last session in the legislature.

“This bill has nothing to do with improving the effectiveness of teachers,” said (Rep. Judy) Solano. “This bill scapegoats teachers for all the inadequacies of public education.”

The underlying messages from people like Merrifield, Solano, and their new champion, Diane Ravitch is this: Blame the students. They deliberately sabotage test results to hurt teachers. Blame the parents. They fail to prepare their kids to learn.  But for heaven’s sake, keep your paws and your blame off our teachers.

Come on, folks. Blaming anyone is counterproductive, but there certainly is responsibility enough for our failures to go around.

Plenty of thoughtful people oppose this bill and also want change to teacher tenure and evaluation. But their voices are being drowned out by the shrill battle cries of the CEA and its allies.

Here’s a prediction: The bill will squeak through. The sky will not fall. Teachers will not be fired en masse by capricious principals. It will take years for any of this to have a noticeable effect. Eventually, things might get marginally better.

But don’t bet on it.

Up to now, we have received almost all of our funding from philanthropic foundations, which understand the value of what we provide, especially given the declining breadth and depth of traditional news coverage. But we cannot rely on foundations forever. And there is so much more we would like to do – notably enhanced coverage of school districts across the state, as well as of higher education and early childhood education.

So we need your help with our membership drive. Like public radio, we are not erecting a pay wall or requiring anyone to pay to view our content. We’re just asking that, if you find our website valuable, you make a contribution. And it’s tax-deductible.

Those of you who know EdNews primarily through these newsletters might want to bookmark our website. There you will discover:

• A searchable database showing the remediation rates (percentage of high school graduates needing additional help to be prepared for college-level work) for every high school in the state;
• A comprehensive data center showing the impact of budget cuts on districts across Colorado;
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The argument is built upon the findings in two recent studies (see here for Civil Rights Project and here for EPIC), both of which contended that charter schools exacerbate segregation. Charter skeptics on the Denver school board and their allies (and in other cities as well, I’m sure) are using those findings to contend that even charter schools achieving excellent results with low-income populations are part of the problem.

It’s a weak and cynical argument. And yet people persist in putting it forward. By contrast, see the well-reasoned back and forth on this topic in the comments under this blog post.

I’m not going to use this space to analyze the studies, their methodology and alleged biases. Nor am I going to address the question of whether charters in suburban communities, serving primarily middle- and upper-middle-class kids, lead to greater racial and socio-economic isolation. That may be true, and if it is, I consider it a serious issue. I am no charter zealot. I’m about results.

Instead, let’s focus on the kinds of charters that really matter, that are forging new paths. For those are the schools at which these critics are hurling their spears. I’m talking, of course about the KIPPs and West Denver Preps of the world. These are schools, as you’ve all read ad nauseam here and elsewhere, that have begun to demonstrate that it is possible for schools serving a high-poverty urban population to get the vast majority of their students achieving at levels usually enjoyed only by middle- and upper-income kids.

I say “beginning to demonstrate” because it is early in the game. These schools, a smattering of which now exist in cities across the country, have several years of data to support their encouraging stories. But before we celebrate cracking the code, we should wait for large-scale replication, and then rigorously evaluate whether the schools can sustain their success.

I am optimistic. And this is why I find the cynical attacks against these schools, primarily from misguided elements of the politically “progressive” left, so disheartening. Why would people who claim to hold the interests of low-income children close to their hearts push to deprive them of the one option that currently seems to work?

The vast majority of these “beat the odds” schools across the country operate in high-poverty neighborhoods, serving neighborhood kids. Ask yourself this simple question: Were it not for these charters, take Denver’s West Denver Prep as an example, where would those kids be attending school?

It’s an easy question to answer: In a low-performing neighborhood school, filled with low-income kids of color. Does anyone honestly believe that if these students weren’t attending a West Denver Prep they would be transported to some mythical, integrated school? Where in Denver does such a school exist? It doesn’t.

Are people making the segregation argument so blinded by their ideology that they would rather condemn students to low-performing schools than allow them to attend a much better school, just because they don’t like the governance model?

One gentleman who regularly submits vehemently anti-charter comments to the Education News Colorado web site, argues that school districts should focus on magnet schools rather than charters, because “magnet schools are more effective than charters as a tool to integrate, ethnically and economically, and that students achieve more in magnet schools.”

In theory, that sounds great. In the local context, it’s a fantasy.

Denver created magnets back in the busing days to promote voluntary integration. Since busing ended, however, many of those original magnets have become at least as racially and socio-economically isolated as neighborhood schools. They’re now either enclaves of the privileged or low-performing neighborhood schools dressed up with fancy names.

Just take a glance down the list. Denver School of the Arts: 10 percent low income. Knight Fundamental Academy: 84 percent low income. Gilpin Montessori: 78 percent free and reduced lunch. The George Washington High School International Baccalaureate program does not break out its statistics, but is overwhelmingly white and Asian, and has a huge attrition rate among its few African America and Latino students.

There are exceptions as well: The dual-language Academia Ana Marie Sandoval and Denison Montessori are well balanced racially and socio-economically. The Center for International Studies, since moving into its own building a few years ago, has become more diverse.

But those exceptions, rather than making a case against charters help prove another of my long-standing arguments. If DPS decided diversity was a primary value, the district could create attractive models and locate them strategically to attract diverse populations. But that has never happened in a systematic way.

It makes sense to continue pressuring DPS to see the light and promote integration. I will keep advocating for that approach. I suspect, however, that many of those currently crying for integration and against charters won’t be there with me.

Why? Because this isn’t about integration. Not really.

I’ve heard some of these same alleged integration advocates criticize the Denver School of Science and Technology charter for being too integrated. If the school really wanted to prove its mettle, one leading charter skeptic told me, it would take on a population that reflects the district – about 70 percent low-income — rather than wimping out by serving a population that is only 50 percent poor.

So much for consistency. When ideology trumps all, consistency becomes a nuisance. Fox News has taught us that from the right, has it not?

At times, this inconsistency looks  cravenly cynical. I ask again: How can people of good conscience argue with straight faces that putting a high-performing, high-poverty school in a low-income neighborhood, within blocks of a low-performing, high-poverty school, somehow promotes segregation? The segregation is already in place. What was missing before was a good option for those kids and their families.

I can’t help concluding that what some of these people really want is to preserve jobs and institutions that serve adults pretty well, even if this condemns thousands of low-income kids to lives of economic and social struggle.

How, exactly, is that progressive?