Road to Recovery: How Lawmakers Can Ease the Crisis for Schools

The following article appeared in the May 11, 2020 edition of Colorado Politics. Across Colorado, school district leaders are presently working to support quality remote learning as our students finish this school year. At the same time, school and district staff are also designing “restart” plans for this coming fall. This re-visioning of education will […]

Statement to the Board of Education on the COVID-19 Response

I delivered these remarks to the Jeffco Public Schools Board of Education at the 4.02.2020 regular meeting. Thank you, Madam President. Exactly 3 weeks ago, school districts in much of Colorado (including Jeffco Public Schools) made the difficult decision to close our schools to in-person learning. Since that time, I am pleased to report that […]

Our Own Worst Enemies

Imagine Apple CEO Tim Cook taking the stage at a major tech conference and delivering the following: Here at Apple, our engineers and designers are overworked and underpaid. They are stressed out nearly to the point of being unable to do their jobs. The very best ones are leaving the company and going elsewhere – […]

The Education Reform We Have Versus the Education Reform We Need

Note: A version of this posting appeared in Colorado Politics on January 22, 2019. For over three decades, the debate over education policy in our state and nation has been primarily waged on three fronts: accountability, school choice, and funding. Colorado created an elaborate accountability system of tests and ranking systems in step with federal […]

Some Thoughts on Testing

This month, students in our community, across our state, and across the nation will begin the annual rite of passage that is taking standardized assessments. As a public institution, our district is required to administer these assessments under both state and federal law. It can be rightly argued that the nation’s system of standardized assessments […]