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 […]

“The Authoritative Allocation of Values”

Late political scientist David Easton once defined politics as “the authoritative allocation of values.” More precisely, politics (in a representative democracy) is the system where one group or another gets to determine how society will operate and can compel adherence to their set of preferred values through laws, sanctions, and rewards. This authoritative allocation of […]

A Solution for America’s School Shooting Crisis

In the wake of yet another horrific school shooting, the public debate re-opens about what we might do to prevent such tragedies in the future. Some responses are predictable. From one side, we get calls for greater gun regulation – limiting who has access to what kinds of firearms and placing limitations on the second […]

Launching Jeffco University

One of the early goals we have for Jeffco Public Schools is working to engage our community with the things happening in our schools, building up that important reciprocal relationship. Toward that end, we’ve started taking applications for Jeffco University, a citizens’ academy to engage with our schools and learn more about how they work. […]