National education blogger Alexander Russo broke news yesterday about a new and well-funded education reform advocacy campaign that will launch in Denver next week.
Called “One Chance Colorado,” the eight- to 10-week campaign will use billboards, slick, political campaign-style TV ads, bus stop posters and web-based strategies to push for “accountability at every level;” recruiting and supporting strong teachers and getting rid of weak ones; investing in good schools and “rapidly addressing” underperforming schools; and putting education ahead of politics.
There will also be a “field organizing” component to the campaign.
People involved in the campaign were reluctant to discuss it ahead of next week’s official launch. But here’s what I’ve learned:
- It is being funded by local foundations with an interest in education reform issues. Some said the campaign budget could approach $1 million.
- Local education advocacy groups will put their efforts into the campaign, spearheaded by the Colorado chapter of Stand for Children. Others involved include A+ Denver, the Colorado Children’s Campaign, Colorado Succeeds, Get Smart Schools, Democrats for Education Reform-Colorado and Education Reform Now. Up to seven or eight additional groups will sign on before next week’s launch.
- Although the timing might suggest otherwise, the campaign will not involve itself in the upcoming Denver Public Schools board elections. Because all the groups involved are 501 (c) (3) non-profits, advocating for certain candidates would violate Internal Revenue Service regulations governing non-profits. (Stand for Children has a 501 (c) (4) arm, which can lobby and campaign but only the (c) (3) will be involved with One Chance Colorado, I’m told).
Why foundations would pump significant money into a general advocacy campaign of this sort isn’t clear to me. What are they hoping to accomplish? What kind of return on their investment do they want? Since people aren’t saying much at this point, we may just have to wait until next week for the answers.
Earlier this week someone not sympathetic to the campaign’s goal or its players got hold of a solicitation memo sent to various advocacy groups by Lindsay Neil, executive director of Stand for Children Colorado. The memo was gussied up, made into a flyer and sent to various bloggers and news organizations. Russo and others sent it to me.
We should be having a real discussion about what “good schools” actually means to these folks. Why not help Rollie Heath get the 25K more signatures he needs?
I mean, if some charters are regularly spending more per student than public schools to get the test results they do get, aren’t they stating the case for more school funding? If West Denver Prep, for example, is spending around $9k per student just to focus on the 3Rs, imagine what a solid, whole-child education will cost. That’s the justification for charters, right, that they’re incubators for best practices. There’s no reason why they can’t help advocate for Initiative 25 with the nonprofit status they all hold.
How does this type of politicking improve schools?
What do these people want? Are you seriously asking that? They want Feudalism. They want obedience. They want to control education because doing so is the final step in controlling elections.
@ Andrea, how does your suggested type of “polticiking” help schools? I’m interested to hear how more money produces higher achievement.
We know when it’s not a good school…
Does a good school produce these academic results?
94% of 10th graders NOT BEING PROFICIENT IN MATH (Jefferson High School, 2009-2010).
93% of 10th graders NOT BEING PROFICIENT IN MATH (Alameda High School, 2009-2010).
82% of 10th graders NOT BEING PROFICIENT IN MATH (Arvada High School, 2009-2010).
In 2009-2010, Jeffco Public Schools spent more money than ever before (ONE BILLION DOLLARS). Clearly it’s not about the money.
How could anyone be opposed to the message One Chance Colorado? We do only have one chance to educate our children.
Looks like JeffCo spent a little more than half a billion, actually. A better question would be why would JeffCo hire a strip club owner as a tennis coach? See the Denver Post — I’d supply actual links but this website seems to think I am delivering spam by supplying simple http links. Why this has not become a bigger story is kinda strange. I get that John McEnroe may have other things to do and JeffCo had to look elsewhere but really…how does this happen? “Hey coach, what do you do when you’re not helping us kids with our backhand?” What does coach say (I’m just guessing here, hypothetically)? “Um, well, I pay young women to take their clothes off in front of men in a bar.”
Meanwhile, as for this ad campaign, I have found some of these groups to have made decent contributions to education in our state with personal positive history with Get Smart.
But here’s my beef with this campaign and a hundred others like it: There are any number of well-meaning groups and some not, who 1) create or add to a hyperbolic crisis mentality and 2) do “profit” in ways that only non-profits can from the public perception of a nation of failing schools. This particular ad campaign is a prime example in creating the atmospherics of crisis and the poor, pitiful kids who must endure the sins of their elders. In addition, theses groups and their ads campaigns just sit there in the mediaverse spinning their well-meaning story with no plan to actually make a difference.
Meanwhile, those of us who do make a difference in the classroom every day are, like the children in the ads, just advertising abstractions to sell the notion of “we have to do better by schools and students.” It’s a nice message I guess, but it’s still selling something without context or accountability. I agree it’s not a great thing that so many kids don’t graduate or go to college but what is the real story here? How much better are we doing in 2011 than in 1971? Is there really a crisis or have we suddenly raised the bar without historical and cultural context to guide our conclusions?
And then, there is the matter of inclusivity. No, not that kind. The fact that I was never contacted about how I feel about their ads as a teacher is what I mean here. Seriously, if these people want to do these ads fine, but I would have like to have been consulted first. Yes, me. Personally. And every other teacher, administrator, and support staff these people think they speak for. And all the students to boot. If they had bothered to be inclusive–of the people who matter the most in their campaign–they might have discovered I agree with many of their proposals and wouldn’t their campaign convey more authenticity and power if the public knew there were real people who supported the ads as opposed to some faceless do-gooder organization of scare-mongers? And personally, I think it would be great to have some organization other than a union or a school board carry the message of supporting schools and quality teaching. Sadly, this is not the ad campaign I can support. For pity’s sake, I’m tired of being played a pawn in the gamesmanship of those with money and privilege.
There are no teachers on the board of the Colorado Children’s Campaign; Colorado Succeeds has no classroom teachers on their Boards of Trustees, Advisors or Directors; ditto the Democrats; ditto A+; and as for Education Reform Now, there is Van Schoales but then ERN is lead by Joel Klein, recent recruit of a certain Mr. Rupert Murdoch. And don’t get me started on Stand for Children: a so-called grassroots organization, does have a former TFA teacher on as Board chair (and several TFA former teachers scattered around state offices) and still none of these groups who speak for teachers bothers to include working classroom teachers not associated with TFA on any upper echelons of oversight or management. It is also worth noting how SfC’s webpages are full of “Key Facts About Our Schools.” in which every single one of these so-called facts is about how schools fail some data point or other. Is there nothing we do right? Why can’t there be advocacy groups that point out how well we do despite the odds and politics stacked against us?
Just a few days ago, a cofounder of SfC admitted to playing politics (just what this group is supposed to not be about http://onechancecolorado.info/#) to get their agenda through the Illinois machine see the Portland Tribune article, “Simmering discontent puts Stand for Children in hot water” and for fun, http://pureparents.org/?p=17619 He also explains how TFA is so influential in the Obama White House in the YouTube link on the Tribune page. It would appear that Stand is really an organization of lobbyists although it is admittedly unclear as to whom they lobby for: http://www.stand.org/Page.aspx?pid=1403 Read Sen. Spence’s own words at the bottom of the page.
While there is much to commend non-profits in support of education, there are probably many more in that group that feed off the financial largesse of politicians and citizens willing to support organizations who want nothing more than to offer American kids the best education system in the world if it weren’t for protagonists X, Y, and Z who would thwart the efforts of do-gooders everywhere. Allow me to suggest the reader peruse the boards of directors and count on how many other boards the members also serve. Seems to me, serving non-profit organizations is a great career move. Not so much, for the actual members of said organizations.
@Regan, I am not a fan of standardized tests or of curriculum truncated to focus solely on the result of those tests. My point was that if it costs that much for certain schools to produce results on a test, then we need to get serious about funding to get results in a whole-child environment.
Can you tell me what kids should be doing in schools? Can we put a price tag on THAT?
For the record, I am not really an advocate for increasing funding right off the bat. That will not magically transform anything, especially in light of the fact that only 50% of all funding from state and federal sources actually makes it out of the DPS central administration building and into the classrooms. I am more an advocate of financial transparency and spending on the right priorities that are research based and that actually graduate kids with diplomas that are worth something.
Hope that helps.
Classy – a bunch of groups all about “putting education ahead of politics” are running a political advertising campaign about education…
Jeffrey, you raise some interesting points worth exploring especially in terms of teacher voice related to these reform organizations.
Other than the lack of teacher representation on most of the boards (which I think is a valid point though a number of us are former teachers), what evidence is there that the teacher’s perspective is absent in these organizations’ work?
In my experience most of these groups are focused on supporting development of practices tied to research and what works for kids, which is in the end ultimately focused on effective teaching.
What would you suggest for getting better feedback from teachers?
On one of your other points, clearly we have raised the bar in terms of expectations for our public schools over the last 40 years. There is not a great deal of evidence that things have really changed much since 1971 on student achievement in absolute terms but what’s changed is how the US stacks up to the rest of the world. And while we seem stuck in debates about whether teachers should have lifetime employment rights and other issues tied to adults (teachers need to be treated like other real professionals with higher salaries, responsibility and accountability), the rest of the world keeps making progress on educating more people at higher levels.
I just returned from Turkey where we visited schools and talked to other policy makers with a group of CO and WY policy folks. It was truly impressive how quickly the country has been positively changing (double digit growth and nearly tripling average wages over the last decade). While it was clear that low-skilled manufacturing, political reform and their unique trade relationships was driving much of the growth, everyone in Turkey seems to understand that their continued growth is tightly linked to education.
Turkey is still far behind the US on any number of metrics (It’s no Korea, Singapore or Finland) yet their focus and planning for developing a world class education system was fairly impressive when compared to many places in the US. The Turkish 10th grade study guides for the national high stakes test looked like an AP biology exam and two of the most popular college majors are physics engineering. FYI… the top US college majors are business, psychology, education, criminal justice, education, nursing and communications. The remarkable difference between our nations in choices of most college students speaks volumes about each of our futures.
What do you think? Which country has the best bet for long-term economic growth, the country that hands out lots of bachelor degrees in college criminal justice or physics? Last I checked, the US seemed to be winning the world’s prison race.
By the way, Andrea it’s great to see that we can find some strong agreement on financial transparency and getting more funding to classrooms.