Like an acrophobic man wearing cement shoes, Colorado’s bid for the second round of “Race to the Top” federal education money fell way short. Some, like Governor Ritter, attribute this second failure to “bias against the west.” Others believe it was the lack of union buy-in. Whether it was bias or lack of CEA support remains to be seen. But what we do know is that Colorado education officials were banking on that money, and for awhile, most everyone believed we were a shoe-in. Why? Well for one, the legislature passed SB 191 – great teachers and leaders – last session. Indeed, the passing of SB 191 was intended to be our winning lottery ticket! However, our “race to failure” this time around should once and for all teach us that counting on Powerball for money is almost always a suckers bet. (and if you believe otherwise, you’re probably that pathetic guy who goes to the casino to play Keno).

One guy I know for a fact does not play Powerball OR Keno (but will crush you in fantasy baseball) is our education policy analyst Ben DeGrow. Ben recently sat down for a discussion of our second losing bid for Race to the Top monies with State Board of Education member Randy DeHoff. Randy is like the Brett Favre of the State Board of Ed by the way – 12 years of service and still going strong. Anyway, the two of them sat down to talk about what they believe cost Colorado this time, and whether we’ll even bother applying again if there happens to be a third round of Race to the Top funding. Additionally, they discuss the impact of SB 191 and what might happen during its implementation and the Common Core Standards recently adopted by the State Board of Ed.

My main minion created this brand new education video about Colorado teachers unions. In it, you’ll hear the emotional story of a mother struggling with massive medical bills who unfortunately missed a deadline to opt-out of union fee paycheck deductions. As a result, she was charged hundreds of dollars that she did not want and could not afford to pay. For more information about opting out of union membership dues, visit IndependentTeachers.org. Please take a few minutes to watch this heart-breaking story.

Attorney General John Suthers is a very busy man, so we appreciate his taking time out to do a podcast with our Education Policy Center. Ben DeGrow was the lucky one who delivered an informative podcast with the AG about the ongoing Lobato v. State K-12 education funding case.

In this case, the court will determine whether Colorado’s K-12 education funding is spread so thin that schools are not funded adequately – or as the official language goes – education funding is not “thorough and uniform” per the requirement of our state constitution. As Colorado’s attorney, AG Suthers will defend the state in this case against an array of school districts who have signed on as plaintiffs. In the podcast, the AG explains that he has amassed probably the largest amount of school budget data the world has ever known. By looking at how school districts spend money, the state can show that maybe the problem isn’t the funding, but rather, where school districts spend the money they have.

There are a couple of interesting points to make regarding this case. First, a result is not expected for at least a year, maybe two. Secondly, taxpayers are not only funding the defense (as we do anytime the state is sued), but some of us are funding the plaintiffs as well! 18 school districts are suing the state, therefore, 18 school districts’ taxpayers happen to be funding BOTH the prosecution AND the defense! Ouch. And with the case set to go over a year, that’s a whole lot of money going to both sides. It’s almost like we’re suing ourselves! Oh wait, we kind of are. That’s sad…

Need a hot Friday date night idea?  Dim the lights, pop a cork and put on a Barry White album (turned way down low) and get warmed up watching public affairs television with the Independence Institute on KBDI, Channel 12.  First at 8:00,  enjoy some round-table political analysis with Research Director Dave Kopel on Colorado Inside Out, then move on to some K-12 education wonkery on Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara at 8:30.

Tonight State Board of Education member Peggy Littleton and State Senator Michael Johnston join Caldara to debate whether the requirement for Colorado to sign on to national Common Core Standards is a price too high for $175 million in Race to the Top money.

Then at 9:00…well, by then we’ve done our part to set the mood and you are on your own, my friends.

My DU colleague Thomas Russell, who used to teach at the University of Texas Law school, has a written a paper, available on SSRN, which urges the University of Texas Law School to rename Simkins Hall, a law and graduate male student dormitory named for William Stewart Simkins. Simkins taught equity, contracts, procedure, and related topics at UT for three decades in the early 20th century. He was also a founder of the Ku Klux Klan in Florida, and every year at UT he gave a formal speech extolling the Klan.

Most of Russell’s paper concentrates on Simkins’ career at UT, as well as the 1954 decision (five weeks after Brown v. Board was announced) to name the dormitory after him. I was curious to learn more about Simkins had actually done with the Florida Klan, so I read Michael Newtown’s book The Invisible Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Florida.

The Florida KKK organized in 1867–68. Simkins later described himself at the Klan leader in Taylor, Madison, and Jefferson counties. These three contiguous counties are part of the eastern panhandle, east of Tallahassee. As far as the record shows, Simkins never claimed that any Klan actions in those counties had been carried out contrary to his orders, or that he regretted anything the Klan did in those counties. Accordingly, it is plausible to hold Simkins personally responsible Klan activity there.

Federal troops were withdrawn from Florida in July 4, 1868. From July 8 through 14, five blacks were murdered by “white regulators.” In mid-July through October 1868, the Madison County KKK murdered seven more blacks, including Randall Coleman, a leading Republican.

In Taylor County, “masked night riders paraded with KKK flags and threatened farmers who refused to join the Klan.”

Florida’s Governor Reed had purchased two thousand muskets for the state militia. On the night of November 5, 1868, while the train carrying the muskets had stopped at the Greenville station in Madison County, Klan raiders removed all two thousand muskets–destroying some, and keeping the rest. Simkins later bragged that “Every telegraph operator, brakeman, engineer and conductor on the road was a Ku Klux.”

The Jefferson County Klan coerced white farmers into refusing to sell land to freedmen, or to taking the money, and then having the Klan drive the freedmen off his new freehold.

According to Newton, Madison County was the second-worst county in Florida for Klan violence, with 25 murders from 1868–71. The victims were always members of the Republican party.

On the night before the November 7, 1870, election, “armed riders invaded” the town of Madison, “harassing black voters.” On election day in Monticello, Jefferson County, “Georgia Klansmen joined the local mob and hundreds of shots were fired in a rioutous demonstration of white solidarity,” intended to frighten blacks against voting.

The election results left the state government weakly in reconstructionist hands. The store belonging to Madison County Sheriff Montgomery was burned on December 17.

Congress passed a new, stronger Enforcement Act in April 1871, and in November, a congressional subcommittee held four days of hearings in Tallahassee about Klan crimes. Even so, another Republican’s store was torched on November 6, 1871. However, President Grant’s October declaration of martial law in nine South Carolina counties had a chilling effect on the Klan, and by 1873, Florida Klan supporters were denying that there have had been a Klan in Florida, or were claiming that if there had been one, it was no longer active.

Simkins himself happened to leave Florida for Texas in either 1871 or 1873. (Sources conflict.) He particpated in two 1894 U.S. Supreme Court cases, Reagan v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. and Reagan v. Mercantile Trust Co. He supported the Texas Attorney General’s argument that the judiciary had no power to review the reasonableness of railroad rates which had been established by the Texas Railroad Commission. The Supreme Court, in an unanimous opinion by Justice Brewer, disagreed.

That Simkins was an advocate of the unreviewable power of unreasonable government economic regulation should be no surprise. As David Bernstein explains in his book Only One Place of Redress: African-Americans, Labor Regulations, and the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal, the caste system of Jim Crow was founded on government power to prevent black and white people from freely choosing to engage in economic relations.

Last Friday, the University of Texas announced the formation of a special working group which will issue a report on the Simkins naming controversy by the end of June.

Simkins should have been denied admission to the Florida bar in 1870, based on his admitted role in the theft of firearms from the militia of the state of Florida, and his role in organizing and leading a terrorist organization which appears responsible for numerous homicides and many other violent felonies. In 1870, the Florida Supreme Court did not know of the evidence regarding Simkins’ terrorist crime spree in 1868–70,  but the 2010 working group will have more information.

Of course the fact that a person is an unrepentant, retired, terrorist is not necessarily a bar to being a professor at a prestigious law school–not for William Stewart Simkins at Texas in the early 20th century, or for Bernardine Rae Dohrn at Northwestern in the early 21st century.

Readers who are interested in more on the Simkins controversy may enjoy the blogging thereon at The Faculty Lounge, which has been covering the story since Russell released his paper.

Check out this cool little supplement to our last Independent Thinking show with Bob Maranto. Associate producer Drew McCullough digs deeper into the “politically correct university” by speaking with some students at couple local universities.

A higher education marks an important chapter in one’s life, but what happens when this chapter is being distorted by a demonstrable lack of intellectual diversity and debate? Author Robert Maranto joins me to discuss a number of the problems, the scope, and reforms for higher education that are in his new book The Politically Correct University. Jessica Peck-Cory of Independence Institute steps up to discuss some of the issues surrounding the civic direction of CU at Boulder. Don’t miss this important discussion on the issues of higher ed this Friday night at 8:30PM on KBDI Channel 12; repeated the following Monday at 1pm.

Today is the final day of the 2010 Colorado legislature, and cautious optimists are looking forward to final passage of Senate Bill 191, a dramatic reform of Colorado’s tenure system for public school teachers. To be precise, after three years, Colorado teachers get a set of “due process” rights, not tenure, but the effect is to make it nearly impossible for ineffective teachers to be fired. Senate Bill 191, sponsored by Denver Democrat and former public school principal Michael Johnston, would change all that.

In brief, the bill would replace the current system of gaining tenure (work three years without getting fired) with a requirement for three consecutive years of teaching success. Tenure could be lost, however, based on two consecutive years of teaching failure. After that, a school district could choose not to rehire a teacher for the next school year, but if so, the teacher would be entitled to an appeals process. The appeal amendment was added yesterday, and was the price of getting the bill though the Colorado House.

Fifty percent of what constitutes “success” would be based on the academic progress made by students during the school year, according to objective tests. The other 50% is to be based on objective criteria to be established by the State Board of Education. The metrics must take into account factors such as “student mobility” (e.g., students whose live with one parent who has no fixed address, and who only attend school sporadically), which of course make academic progress much more difficult.

Senate Bill 191 is supported by the Colorado Association of School Boards, the Colorado Children’s Campaign (which Colorado’s current Lt. Governor, Barbara O’Brien, used to head), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Democratic Governor Bill Ritter, all Republicans in the state legislature, and a critical mass of pro-reform legislative Democrats. It is opposed by the Colorado Education Association, which has a much larger membership in Colorado than the AFT.

A crucial reason why the bill appears headed for passage this year is the federal “Race to the Top” grants program, administered by the US Department of Education. Race to the Top does not hand out grants promiscuously, but instead awards grants to a few states based on detailed programs for dramatic reform. Only Delaware and Tennessee won grants in the first round. Once it became clear that Colorado needed tenure reform in order to have a realistic chance in round two, Senate Bill 191 began to gain momentum in the legislature. In short, Race to the Top is helping to foster bipartisan reform.

In a January 2009 op-ed, Picking Duncan as Schools Chief, Obama Sides with Kids, the Independence Institute expressed hopes that Obama administration education policies would deliver real change, and rather than being controlled by the National Education Association. Although we were disappointed that Obama killed the DC voucher program, Obama has continued the Bush policy of strongly supporting charter schools, and Obama, unlike Bush, is helping to reform tenure so that teachers with an established record of ineffectiveness can be moved aside and new teachers given an opportunity.

If enacted, Senate Bill 191 will take several years to be put into full effect. Further, it is undoubtedly true that the most important single cause of low academic achievement is not poor teaching, but home environments that provide no support for literacy or any other intellectual skill. But better teachers can make an imporant difference for many students, and the Obama/Duncan Race to the Top program has been a sine qua non for tenure reform in Colorado.

Generally speaking, I favor much less federal involvement in local education, which is why I disagreed with Bush’s No Child Left Behind, even though NCLB had many good features. In fact, I would prefer that the federal Department of Education be abolished. But President Obama wasn’t elected to abolish the DOE. He was elected to deliver Change We Can Believe In, and in the Race to the Top program, President Obama and Secretary Duncan are providing the leadership for constructive change.

A quick correction.  The debate between Independence Institute Research Director Dave Kopel and former Colorado Supreme Court Justice Jean Dubofsky on the constitutional merit of the Attorneys General lawsuit over Obama Care is tomorrow night, April 28th, and not April 27th as we previously posted.  Time remains 7 to 9pm in the Wolf Law Room #204. Details available here.  The ACLU of Colorado will be live streaming the event on their website.