Candidates backed by teachers for local school boards in the Denver area (including Denver) won all but one race.
Candidates supported by the teachers’ unions swept school board elections in Denver, Aurora, Douglas County, Littleton, Adams County, Cherry Creek, and Jeffco. The only candidate to lose was in Jeffco.
The “reformers” bold experiment in teacher-bashing has come to an end, at least for now.
Now it is time for the Colorado legislature to eliminate former state senator Michael Johnston’s failed educator evaluation law, which bases 50% of evaluations on test scores. The law was declared a failure even by its supporters but remains on the books. It did not identify “bad” teachers and it did not produce “great teachers, great principals, or great schools,” as Johnston promised in 2010 when his law was passed.
Reformer Van Schoales wrote in Education Week two years ago:
Colorado Department of Education data released in February show that the distribution of teacher effectiveness in the state looks much as it did before passage of the bill. Eighty-eight percent of Colorado teachers were rated effective or highly effective, 4 percent were partially effective, 7.8 percent of teachers were not rated, and less than 1 percent were deemed ineffective. In other words, we leveraged everything we could and not only didn’t advance teacher effectiveness, we created a massive bureaucracy and alienated many in the field.
The problem, he said, was implementation. Every failed reform is dogged by poor implementation. That’s what they said about the Soviet Union and the Common Core.
When the Waltons paid for an analysis of their failure to pass a referendum to expand charter schools in Massachusetts in 2016, their advisors told them that teachers are trusted messengers. The public likes teachers and believes them. They are more credible than out of state billionaires. The Waltons, too, concluded that the problem with their message was poor implementation, not a rejection by the public, which values its public schools (I go into greater detail in my new book SLAYING GOLIATH, which will be published January 21.)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“When the Waltons paid for an analysis of their failure to pass a referendum to expand charter schools in Massachusetts in 2016, their advisors told them that teachers are trusted messengers.”
Reading between the lines: The Waltons wanted to know where their misinformation and brain hacking went wrong and learn how to fix it so they are better at fooling and manipulating “THE people”.
The FIX: The Waltons will want to find a way to break that bond of trust between “THE people” and teachers.
That bond of trust was forged when “THE people” were children going to school.
Definition for “THE people” = everyone but billionaires who, because of their wealth, are not human any longer and have evolved closer to HELL.
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Lloyd,
I love reading your comments.
There needs to be more than this 2 party system of DYSFUNCTION and GREED.
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I agree that the U.S. needs more than two major political parties but I hope it never becomes like India that has like thirty to fifty political parties that get little to nothing done since they are squabbling all the time.
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That’s what they said about the Soviet Union and the Common Core.
Exactly
And we shall have new national “standards” when Gates pays Achieve or some other such organization to reconvene its Politburo in a few years to do, once again, the deciding for the rest of us.
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And those improved, higher higher standards, now with scrubbing bubbles and a new, clean, fresh scent, will, unlike the bad old standards of the bad old days, require students to [fill in the blank–think critically, use substantive texts, work gritfully, apply social and emotional skills]–you know, all those things never, ever done in a classroom before, and once they are in place, test scores will rise like fundies at the Rapture and all children will be proficient and America will be great again.
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