U.S. Senate
See Full Big Line
(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
See Full Big Line
(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
See Full Big Line
(D) George Stern
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
40%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
See Full Big Line
(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
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DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
May 08, 2010 03:06 PM UTC
87 Comments
from the Denver Post
Is there no end to this melodrama?
I received my JD yesterday, and am looking for a position in progressive policy design, analysis, advocacy, and implementation. If anyone has any leads, please send them my way at steve.harvey.hd28@gmail.com. Here’s a link to the equivalent of a resume: http://www.steveharveyforcolor… Thanks.
my biography, rather than the campaign home page.
If anything comes to me attention, I’ll certainly let you know. Enjoy that hammock and book in the meanwhile. Your girls must be very proud:-)
I know I give you shit sometimes, but that’s such a big deal and I’m proud of you.
You still owe me a stout…. 🙂
I remember living in NYC when JFK, Jr flunked. The cover of the Post was “The Hunk Flunks!” When he failed the second time, the cover was, “The Hunk Flunks Again!” I have never felt so bad for a person, in that the whole world knows you didn’t pass the bar. Twice.
But I digress. Congrats!
I just got my Juris Doctorate degree on Friday; passing the bar exam is another step yet to be taken. Most of my classmates will take the bar in July; I’m postponing taking it either til February or next July (it’s offered twice a year), due to my campaign, and my inability to just fall off the grid for the time it takes to prepare for the bar.
So you’re going to have to hold onto those congrats for six to twelve months! But I appreciate the thought.
…right at the Miami airport as she was coming in to help babysit.
He still passed, first try.
I can’t imagine the pressure.
You can do it!
It’s mostly about investing the time and effort in preparing for it. At least it’s not a traditional law school issue-spotter exam! God, I hate those! (They’re a cross between three-hour speed typing contests and how much law you can artificially stuff into a long and convoluted fact pattern).
My poor six year old had to sit through two hours of boring speeches (at graduation). She insists that since she did that for me, and now that I’m not studying for finals, she owns me…. (As if she didn’t already).
I remember being at your house and announcing that you were off to law school in the fall.
Funny, all of a sudden, in a manner of speaking, you’re done!
My brother and sister have JD’s. The latter could never pass the bar, the former got disbarred. Me, I did the logical thing and got a degree in theology……….
I agree; it is “all of a sudden, in a manner of speaking.” Feels good! So, are you flying in for the celebratory carne asada and margaritas?
You know that this means, from now on, you have to counter me with “Oh brother! If it please the court.” 🙂
Or is it too early to promote myself to the bench?
medical care back in the days of patent medicine? Tenure reform is one part of approaching education effectively, but boy is there a lot more that needs to be done. From Newsweek
Yes tenure reform is a key advance. But there is a ton more to do. The good news is there is a ton of things we can do to dramatically improve K-12 education.
And it feels like most people around here prefer Dr. Quack’s Cola-Flavored Miracle Cure-All than difficult research which might take time.
sxp, I’m generally in sympathy with your position on these matters, but is there any lack of research on education? Everybody can point to studies to back their positions. Something tells me it isn’t more research, but political will that’s needed.
There are lots of studies, but a lot of them are of the form that Raphael was quoting a couple days ago: statistical analysis of debatable validity. Finding a correlation between this or that.
What I mean by research is using the big reform proposals that have already been enacted, seeing what the results of those proposals has been (over a few years), and then using them if they get the desired results and discarding them if they don’t.
I guess that’s a nonstandard use of the word “research”; I was kind of hoping it could mean whatever I wanted it to mean. 🙂
Actually I think David’s quite right here. I’ve gone to a number of training sessions where someone is proposing some awesome new method that everyone should be using in every classroom, and it sounds more like a Tony Robbins pitch than the result of anything that’s actually been researched in a scientific way. And the two problems with most such methods are 1) it almost never allows for variation in individual teaching styles, so for example I always get asked to use flashy stuff, and 2) it assumes that everyone is teaching the same thing, so for example the 15 minutes they say should be devoted to group discussion every day doesn’t seem to work that well in math.
But the companies or consultants coming up with these things are salespeople first, and administrators love to hear that someone has found the miracle tonic. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that almost everything proposed takes a lot more time than teachers have, since what’s proposed is always to spend a lot of time on one topic instead of the broad brush approach that’s required if you want to discuss every topic on the standardized syllabus. So you get lots of contradictory demands, and many teachers say, “Fuck it, I’ll just do what I’ve been doing since it seems to work well enough.”
There is plenty of research on education, but surprisingly little on what I think is the most important question: “Here’s something we tried on a broad sample of students, these parts worked and this part didn’t, so let’s do something like this.”
Interesting interview with Bill I saw awhile ago. He said they started off looking for what made an effective teacher and what worked best in the classroom, assuming the research had been done and they just needed to find it.
They discovered that there is no body of quality research on either question and so they are putting a lot of effort into determining the answers to both questions. This is something we need done here.
Glad to see he is still on the job.
However, if there is no research establishing what makes an effective teacher and what worked best in the classroom…..why are we going to have a law based on the assumption we know what makes an effective teacher??/
We also assume, in our competitive consumer culture, that if a man can make a billion bucks then he obviously must be an expert on education…
both great points.
Effective evaluation has always been figured out because there was a requirement to evaluate the people involved. If we look for evaluation first, we’ll never have it.
That’s just the way people handle things.
The various educational theories that keep getting taken up as the holy grail in the education community generally have no studies behind them that actually show whether or not they are effective in any measurable way by anything approaching the rigorous standards of hard science.
During the years my now adult son went through school, theories seemed to be accepted by many teachers as gospel based on no solid evidence. The general reaction to parents who weren’t buying was a pitying look and an apology for not being able to explain it better to poor ignorant non-professionals in a way that even we could understand.
My attempts to explain that I did understand, I just didn’t agree and saw no proof that I ought to agree with some latest academic faith based fad never convinced them that I might have a point. I just got pity and the latest educationalese buzz words, kind of like talking to members of a cult.
Some teachers were different. They appraoched things in a practical lets see what works kind of way, never fully investing in any one rigid educational ideology. They were usually a bit older and had been around the block with all this stuff a few times. Those were the teachers who seemed to have the most engaged and successful students.
“approach” correctly or caught it before sending response to a teacher. I will now type “approach”… how many times would you suggest?
from the Colorado Independent
With inflation effectively at 0, what on earth are universities doing with a 9% inflation rate? Can the schools get a couple of the economics professors there to explain to them how ongoing increases way above the rate of inflation are not sustainable?
And before everyone yells “reduce state support,” the cost per student (not funding – the actual cost) has been rising at twice the rate of inflation since 1980.
but in-state tuition at Colorado universities is way below the national average, despite the fact that our universities are somewhat better than average. That’s OK as long as plenty of money comes in from alumni donations or the government, but once that starts drying up, things have to be paid for.
State support for the universities is (last I heard) about 5% of the budget. So, um, yeah. Reduce state support. See how that affects tuition.
Personnel (think health care benefits)
and
Infrastructure (think energy).
While prices for crude oil and natural gas have gone down on the spot markets, it doesn’t always translate into lower costs from utilities.
I don’t recall seeing anything about health care costs dropping much over the last year.
So, figure out a way to cut those costs. Also, figure out a way to reduce the number of staff/faculty that teach remedial courses, and you might see higher education costs drop.
Put aside for the moment is the bill a good or bad thing and let’s just look at the politics of it.
If the bill passes – most teachers, many union members, and quite a few liberals are very upset. This vote is key to them and they will do what they can to help Dems in the election. As it passed, it becomes a minor issue for most others. Advantage Democrats.
If the bill fails – most parents will be very open to the argument that the Dems stopped improvement of the schools. Teachers, union members, etc. will be thankful but as it was defeated, it’s not gigantic. Advantage Republicans (and the few Dems who voted for it).
Politically I’m guessing that if it doesn’t pass this session, then the legislative change that will occur because of it’s failure will guarantee it passing next session. And as additional fallout, we could see redistricting affected by the vote on SB-191.
should be very helpful for Democrats. The bill will be passed by a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate, and signed by a Democratic governor. I know as a liberal I’ll be especially motivated to maintain Democratic control of the state after I see how they demonize my profession when they get complete power.
I have an idea where you come up with this stuff, but do you actually believe it?
All people are saying is that a few, a very very few members of your profession are not doing an adequate job. How on earth is that demonizing?
In fact, do you even disagree that a few teachers should not be in a classroom? Even the CEA members I have talked to agree that they are a few that are not doing a good job.
As to how this will play out politically, what am I missing? Keep in mind a lot of races in this state are decided by the voters in the middle – and they view K-12 as a mess and that it is important to fix it.
You may be using the phrase “very very few” (which I have no problem with) but not a lot of people are. Much more typical is “everyone in the CEA wants what’s worst for students” (that’s a paraphrase of a Laughing Boy quote, the sort of simple-minded statement which always gets a lot of support here). There is hardly any appreciation for teachers among the people most vocal about education reform. Open contempt is much more common.
As to how this will play out politically, you said the people most opposed to this bill will be motivated by its passage to give more support to the people who passed it. That don’t make no sense.
I have been and will continue to be highly critical of DPS for reasons stated already. But this bill demonstrates all the reasons that DPS is in such a mess..
1) Pushing for a change without first identifying what the problem is and how to measure it and/or define the elements which make up the problem.
2) Pushing for a change without first identifying how the change will be evaluated.
3) Political motivation; politicians going ape shit.
4) Band wagon rolling.
5) No built in way to protect children if things go haywire
And quite a few here shared that, including many teachers who think the CEA does an ineffective job representing them. So I’ll agree with you that there is contempt (I think demonizing is excessive).
But I don’t recall posts here demonizing teachers. By and large the posts here have been supportive of teachers in general and lots of posts about how the best teachers do an incredible job.
As to playing out politically, my point is if it passes the CEA members will work hard to elect Dems to seats presently held by Repubs.
that you say fixing what you just described as a problem involving “…a few, a very very few members…” would fix what’s wrong with our schools. This whole Idea you’ve conjured up that eliminating the worst of the worst teachers will somehow inspire all the rest to reach for the stars is absurd on its face in my view.
This bill is political quackery. Michael Johnston’s lightning career through the education field (he was a teacher, he was a principal, he was an advisor to President Obama in the field of education AND he’s written a book! BTW, has anyone here read it? And he’s all of what, 35?) does not make him an expert, not does it justify this attempt to institute through legislation what districts and parents should be able to do through their own local processes. Thi sis a one size fits all approach that I believe is doomed to fail and will hurt people in the process.
Teachers aren’t necessarily in it for “the stars?” You mean some are in it solely for job security?
It’s easy to see how some teachers won’t want to be evaluated solely on their performance.
Are you sure this is the point you were trying to get across? To me, it seems to undermine your argument.
Hey, what a surprise, you think the worst of teachers. Too bad you can’t be open about it.
The fact that teachers ask for money at all is proof they don’t really care about students, right? If they cared, they’d do the job for free!
they’d get more money.
so why would anyone try?
you’d understand the point I was making was that punishing the admittedly (in David’s own words) very, very small number of people WON’T somehow miraculously make other teachers more productive or effective at all. The basis of SB-191 is a false premise in its entirety.
And the corollary to the admittedly very, very small number of really ineffective teachers is that most are really already effective, probably exceedingly effective given the dysfunctional system they work in.
It’s interesting Ralphie how you jump on one phrase in my comment to prove your point about teachers, but it really undermines you, not supports you.
SB-191 does not go far enough.
The time has come to make all public employees have the same status as private sector employees: At will.
The time has come to crush the teachers’ unions.
As it is fully supportive of the teacher’s union and does not eliminate a single union job. As to “at will,” do you want your kids showing up at school every day wondering if their teacher will be there. We need a fair system.
Would you want the ability to shitcan an employee taken away from you?
How successful would your company be if it took 5 years to fire a poorly performing employee?
Because branches of government (which a school district is) always work better when the executives in charge (e.g., presidents, governors, county commissioners, city mayors, district superintendants, and school principals) are given more rather than less authority. Our theoretical love of constitutional democracy notwithstanding.
Governments are often left with the jobs whose output is hardest to measure, and which, when office holders are empowered to do so, are given away as party favors to friends of the executive (something which I personally have seen take place in one of our metro area school districts).
School district management is a politically dominated enterprise. Many engaged in it are noble people devoutly committed to doing the best they can to improve the educational services our children receive. Some are just blind ideologues. Some are narcisistic exploiters of opportunity. But the notion that increased authority to fire automatically means that the worst teachers will be the ones who get fired is a notion divorced from reality, based on the application of assumptions drawn from an inherently different sphere of the political economy.
Furthermore, public education can’t be a market-driven enterprise, because we offer it to everyone, and mandate that they accept it, without charging them for the service. Instead, we all collectively pay for the service, a marvelous social innovation that has served the world extraordinarily well, for all its flaws. Careless attempts to apply market logic on an inherently non-market enterprise create all sorts of unintended consequences, usually in the form of perverse incentives.
In this case, since we are, in political reality, only capable of funding schools to a certain limited degree, and since the demand for teachers is enormous, their salaries by far and away the highest cost borne by school districts, but still salaries far below average for a profession that requires a degree of professional expertise (both in subject matter knowledge and pedogogical skill), reducing the teaching career to a career like any other private sector career, but with inferior pay, practically guarantees a dramatic downturn in the quality of new applicants.
But, you know, don’t let me get in the way of your socially destructive blind ideology.
But I’ll give you a simple one. If I hire the wrong people, I go out of business. If the school district hires the wrong people, they get the exact same tax revenue. There no self-correcting mechanism for public sector jobs.
but with many years of experience working in the public sector (but not school systems), I’ll say this: Public sector managers have plenty of power, and it is used and abused regularly. While working at the state, I saw personnel rules grossly abused so that a friend of the decision maker could be hired. I saw abuses of the evaluation and corrective action systems carried out because of personal vendattas. I saw incompetent management. I saw people “sent to Siberia” in the organization, as retribution for manufactured wrongs.
I’ve long advocated for a more rigorous system to hire, promote, train and evaluate public managers, because the public sector “bottom line” is not the same as the private sector bottom line, and never will be. But I don’t expect to see the changes that are needed.
My wife worked for the state until she could not take her abusive manager any more. She had to quite for her sanity’s sake. Six months later the manager was fired, too late for my wife though.
Many people not in education (or the public sector) apparently have no idea the degree to which petty local politics dominate decision-making. Until that problem is addressed, making teachers more vulnerable only serves to exacerbate one problem rather than solving the other one toward which it is addressed.
I have no problem with a hypothetical public education system devoid of teacher tenure; in fact, the ideal system would not include teacher tenure. But, as I’ve always argued, the order of reforms matters.
The reforms in accountability have to be from the top down rather than from the bottom up. Otherwise, you have those lower on the ladder accountable to those higher up making dysfunctional and unfair decisions due to gaps in the latter’s accountability.
Many people are under the mistaken impression that, thanks to teacher tenure, teachers have cushy jobs. Not only the personal accounts of people like me who have seen that it is otherwise, but also the raw statistics themselves, tell a completely different story: 50% of all new teachers leave the profession within their first five years.
Some people falsely assume that this is due to the inherent difficulties of working with kids day in and day out. In my experience, that’s not the case: Incoming teachers generally love working with kids. The problem is that there are too many structurally oppressive aspects to being a teacher, which, rather than being addressed by administrators, tend more often to be exacerbated by administrators.
It’s not that most principals are local tyrants: In my experience, most are wonderful people. It’s that some are local tryants, and most new teachers, during the shuffles of their first years, end up under one at some point or another. And those administrators so disposed, with too much locally unchecked authority do what psychologists have long known tends to happen when local autocrats are embued with too much locally unchecked authority: They make the lives of those under them a living hell.
Contributing to this are the problems higher up. Some superintendants are wonderful people truly committed to the students’ welfare. Some are egomaniacs committed only to their own self-glorification. The latter type, in many ways, create an atmosphere conducive to belligerence and incompetence, and hostile to many of the best teachers. I don’t know how common this pattern is, but it is abundantly evidenced in Colorado’s largest school district (which isn’t DPS).
And above those superintendants are school boards, which suffer from a variety of weaknesses and self-interests that I won’t go into here.
After the children themselves, who do you think is most vulnerable to this cestpool of political and egocentric maneuvering?
There’s really only one way, ultimately, to address this set of problems, and it is the same requirement of all defects in a democratic system: We need to cultivate a more knowledgeable and involved public. The way to do that with schools and school districts is to reorganize them as coordinators of a community enterprise, with teachers not only teaching in the classroom, but guiding volunteers in tutoring and mentoring programs, and guiding parents in how to best augment and facilitate their children’s education. This is the butterfly whose wings have to flap, to create the storm of reform we are all eager to see.
Are you just resentful of anyone who has something that you don’t have?
Are you aware that there are active unions protecting the rights of private sector employees?
Are you resentful of sick leave? Vacation days? Weekends? Safe work environments? Retirement?
Has your time come?
Pena was an excellent mayor when it came to building an infrastructure which supported real civic growth and led to Denver’s renaissance. At the same time, he made neighborhoods and their associations strong. Credit where credit is due.
But when it came to children’ issues, he used the same kind of business model. His childcare commission successfully lobbied city council not to legislate background checks for daycare workers, because it would place an undue burden on the daycare business. Years later, the state finally mandated the background checks.
His first days in office, Pena put a fee structure into the recreation programs. Swimming pools had been free before Pena. Not only did he charge a fee, but he worked out a deal with the Kool-Aid company that if kids showed up with empty Kool-Aid packages, they could get into the city’s swimming pools without paying the new fee.
He promoted the Kool-Aid man….some joker dressed up as a Kool-Aid pitcher who went around cityparks as a role model. Does anyone else remember any of this or am I crazy?
Pena heads the A+Committee for Denver schools…..I remember him dancing up and down at a school board meeting, not so long ago, demanding that 40 schools be closed and yelling about the DPS “product.”
I just don’t think that this political/commercial approach is good for kids.
BYB. There are all kinds of systems with “guaranteed jobs for life.”….The military, the police/fireman service and the civil service at the city, state, and federal level. The purpose of such employment systems is to insulate the workforce from partisan politics.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node…
[For those here who missed NYT Front Page]
DENVER – When Barack Obama stood before an admiring audience at Mile High Stadium here and accepted his presidential nomination 21 months ago, Democratic leaders crowed about turning Colorado into a reliable stronghold, another step toward building the party’s strength in the West.
Those dreams of expansion have given way to hopes for survival…
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05…
After reading the entire article it seems to me that they are promoting lots of Republican talking points. Anything written about Norton should at least mention some of the many nutty things that she has said.
Ed Perlmutter is in trouble? Really? Is there some evidence of that out there someplace? If so, let’s see it!
Interesting, on my laptop the pic is Andrew Romanoff. On my desktop the pic is Norton.
Just another article in concern trolling the media is doing.
Anyone who writes that Andrew Romanoff is primarying Bennet “from the left” must be able to name three issues on which he is more liberal.
His supporters don’t care that he dissembles about his resume. What does policy mean when he makes them laugh?
…his shills?
has to name three reasons he is the better candidate, none of which can include “because he’s there”.
1. Hugely successful fund raiser. Knocking all of the senate candidates from either party out of the room.
2. Has stuck by things like the public option in HCR and even got a lot of others to climb on board despite being a total noob in the senate.
3. “Because he’s there,” isn’t a bad reason at all. But I’ll grant you, not the best.
Since you made up the rules of “having” to name three, I’m changing the rules to having to name only two, but very good, reasons.
DaftPunk did. I just tried to make the rule fair.
It slammed Romanoff supporters and implied that we have no legitimate reasons for supporting Andrew, reasons like Andrew helped lead Colorado to Democratic majorities in the state legislature and US Congress for the first tie in a generation. He led the fight to pass Referenda C and D, and I dread to think where we’d be now without those. What was Bennet doing during all this? Padding his resume?
Andrew has been a very effective legislator and has the background and disposition to be a great US Senator.
Also, he has better progressive/liberal bona fides than Bennet, absolutely! The claim Bennet supported the public option just does not hold up under scrutiny. He made half-hearted statements and sent absolutely meaningless letters, but when push came to shove, he did not stand where his principles were, if had had any on the subject.
And then there is the same half-hearted support for finance reform. He writes a great op-ed and letter, but when the votes are tallied, he sides with he “too big to fail” banks on Wall Street, not with Main Street.
and you “dread to think where we’d be now without those”? Well, we are rather without one of them now, aren’t we?
I wasn’t asking Romo supporters to prove it, but lazy journalists who repeat it as thought it were true.
I heard the conservative egghead on Bill Maher say it last week as an example of liberal purity tests in the Democratic primaries akin to teabagger purges of Rs who aren’t conservative enough. I don’t think the comparison is apt, but other things being equal (which they aren’t), I prefer SPLC roots to Anschutz’.
ColPol moms a Happy Mother’s Day? Well I will.
Happy Mother’s Day!
Mother’s Day Eve now? OK then.
not just for Saturday. And I like the idea of Mother’s Day Eve.
all you mothers!!
How’s that?
This is a newspaper at it’s finest – really good article that goes in to lots of detail and covers the entire story. Well done.
The rise (and fall) of Erin Toll, Colorado regulator with a tough reputation
I would reserve that for the Washington Post during the Watergate era.
But it was a good article, well-researched.
I think it properly captures the contradictions in Erin Toll.
Having gone through a similar thing, I sympathize with her, but the reality is if you are going to make enemies, shore up your own vulnerabilities. Your destruction lies in the blind spots created by your strengths.
We hire people to regulate and they are by definition imperfect. We need to understand that people doing their job well will make mistakes and we can’t crucify them for it. Not if we want others to also do their job well.
I think I part company with you here. (And I agree with what Dave said).
We need to do a better job of tapping people’s talents and not losing them as a resource because of their flaws, which everyone has. What you said is descriptively accurate, but is it normatively desirable? Might not very talented people with very exploitable vulnerabilities have an unfortunate habit of making enemies from time to time, and is it either functional or kind to accept that that should mean their professional destruction?
Not only do we lose their energy and talents being channeled to our collective benefit by doing so, but we create public deficits and dangers at the same time. Not referring at all to Erin Toll now, a lot of the people in our society who do the most damage (of various kinds) are very talented people who end up unsuccessful in mainstream ways due to their personal defects. Ted Koszinsky (The Unabomber) is an archetypical example.
I think, as a general goal, we want to do better at increasing pathways to success, and decreasing the off-ramps onto which people are routinely pushed.
I haven’t really followed the Erin Toll story, so I’m speaking in the abstract, responding only to what you said. Hope I wasn’t too far out in left field.