VIDEO: Bennet implores senate not to play politics with education reform

Colorado US Senator Michael Bennet seems to love his job as much as he hates the senate. That is, he seems to relish the opportunity to make change that matters as much as he reviles the fact that senate rules and procedures and politics work against anyone making any kind of change at all. On Wednesday he said something just like that but more eloquently in a speech on the Senate floor, when Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a libertarian Republican, invoked one of the chamber’s myriad arcane rules to stall debate on the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, legislation Bennet has helped write and that would remake the controversial “No Child Left Behind” act.

Dept. of Education to distribute $150 million in new round rewarding innovators

The U.S. Department of Education has announced the latest round of grants for the Investing in Innovation, or i3, fund. The $150 million will be distributed to winning school districts, groups of school districts, non-profits affiliated with school districts or consortium of schools that raise student achievement and close performance gaps. It will also look for applicants seeking to improve teacher effectiveness, as well as those that address graduation and drop-out rates.

VIDEO: Hancock releases pointed TV spot–calling out DPS for failed schools

“Every morning, we drive 18 miles across town to East High School, because our neighborhood school is one of the many across Denver that are failing,” begins Denver Mayoral candidate Michael Hancock’s new television ad.

Bennet pleads case at CU Boulder: ‘If you vote, we win’

BOULDER — Swinging through University Memorial Center on the CU-Boulder campus minutes ago, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet pleaded soft and loud for students here to vote today. After speaking with several tables of students in the first room he entered,…

Colorado school districts react to furor over presidential speech

Colorado’s urban school districts are scrambling to calm conservative parental furor over President Barack Obama’s scheduled speech to schoolchildren on Tuesday—even as the state’s right blogosphere cooks up conspiracy theories and Hitler comparisons.

Salazar seat on spending panel, Chu nod leave Bennet in running for Ed

Wednesday’s news that U.S. Rep. John Salazar has won a seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu is the Obama administration’s pick to head the Department of Energy narrows the possibility Colorado will be sending anyone into the next cabinet. Don’t count Coloradans out, however, as the unfolding Illinois governor scandal might dislodge a Chicago schools superintendent from contention as education secretary, smoothing the way for Denver Superintendent Michael Bennet’s nomination.

Add DPS Superintendent Bennet to list of state’s possible cabinet nominees

Are there any prominent Colorado Democrats not under consideration for Obama administration appointments these days? The state might not have been “ground zero” for the presidential election — Ohio, Virginia and Florida took over that role after Colorado started leaning solidly Blue in mid-October — but to hear the chattering class chatter, the state has lately become an epicenter for second-tier cabinet picks.

‘No on 46′ spells out expected affirmative action cuts

A Colorado ballot initiative, Amendment 46, seeks to destroy affirmative action programs throughout the state. Brought forward by California businessman Ward Connerly, the so-called Colorado Civil Rights Initiative does not specify exactly which programs will disappear should it pass.

And until yesterday, opponents of the measure were also loath to identify the programs that might be targeted, citing concerns that Connerly and his team would single out those very programs for demolition.

English Competency Test Gets Mixed Grades From Experts

A bill that would require school boards to create a standard for English competency as a graduation requirement has reinvigorated the impassioned debate over the best way to teach English language learners and measure their progress. Later today the governor…

Teen Moms Must Balance Bonding, Books

There will be no specific maternity leave policy in Denver Public Schools, because there doesn’t need to be, administrators and school board members said this week.

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