The Education Policy Center is the education-focused arm of the Independence Institute, a nonprofit, non-partisan, free-market think tank based in Denver.
The Education Policy Center promotes issues such as school choice, school accountability, and teachers’ rights through its in-house publications, print media, Internet, radio, television, and legislative briefings. Calling for greater involvement of parents in the role of educating children, this Colorado think tank was the first in the state to promote ideas such as educational vouchers, charter
01/28/2020
Free Movie Screening: Miss Virginia - Independence Institute In celebration of this year’s National School Choice Week, the Independence Institute will be hosting a free, public screening of Miss Virginia on January 29 at 6PM. The movie tells the story of the school choice advocate Virginia Walden Ford, her efforts to secure better educational options for h...
10/07/2019
07/19/2019
Read Eddie's new post:
EdisWatching In light of the Supreme Court’s granting certiorari to Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue last month, it is worthwhile to highlight the fact that the Montana case is not the only ongoing challenge to a state ban on the provision of aid to religious or “sectarian” institutions. Currently...
01/22/2018
Colorado Celebrates National School Choice Week Colorado Celebrates National School Choice Week https://schoolchoiceweek.com/states/colorado/
09/06/2017
Greeley charter school showing marked improvements using unique teaching model “They get to celebrate Cinco de Mayo and Dia de los Mu***os here. They get to experience these holidays with others outside our home that know what they are. And it’s made a good connection with my grandparents because as they’ve gotten older they speak more Spanish than they do English, and so it’s...
06/19/2017
Ed is Watching » PARCC Rides Off Into the Sunset… On a Circular Track , states were practically tripping on themselves trying to get away from the unpopular test, which was originally designed to provide comparable results across state lines. That trend has continued, and only a handful of the original dozens of PARCC states remain. Now, it looks like Colorado is jump...
06/13/2017
Back November 2016, the Education Policy Center published a report showing that many unionized school districts in Colorado have unlawful or otherwise questionable teacher layoff provisions in their union contracts. The most common response from districts was that they didn't feel obligated to update their contracts because teacher layoffs are so rare.
Thompson was one of the districts with a questionable layoff provision that might meet the letter of the law but actively sought to circumvent its spirit. We hate to say we told you so, but...
Thompson: School closures, layoffs, boundary changes on the table to cut costs The Thompson School board plans to decide around first of the year how to cut about $4 million from its expenses by closing schools, redrawing boundaries or laying off staff, or through a combination of those "difficult choices.
06/09/2017
Ed is Watching » The Education Establishment is Dead, Long Live the Education Establishment? .” Have you heard that one before? It’s a phrase a variety of countries have used to simultaneously announce the death of a monarch and the ascension of a new one. The phrase has survived into the modern era in part because it provides an excuse to use the word
06/07/2017
An interesting take from Rick Hess at the American Enterprise Institute:
Ultimately, it feels like we’ve lived through a sea change in school reform, one which means reformers are increasingly inclined to behave as proud stewards of a new establishment... The same reformers who once sought to combat stifling bureaucracy have slowly become a new breed of bureaucrats. Of course, as you’d expect, they don’t see it that way. That’s not because they’re innately bossy; it’s more a function of where they now sit. Many reformers now see themselves less as a vanguard trying to create room for others to reimagine schools, after all, than as guardians of ambitious paper plans to promote the “equitable distribution of teachers.”
It's Easy to Become 'The Man' - Education Next Reformers are increasingly inclined to behave as proud stewards of a new establishment.
06/01/2017
Ed is Watching » Superintendent Subterfuge: Broken Promises, Empty Words, and the Crystal Ball in Jefferson County back in 2015? Of course you do. We all do. In fact, a fair number of folks are still suffering from the edu-PTSD that nasty fight caused. Many speculated as the dust settled that the dishonesty underlying the Jeffco recall portended broken promises and bad behavior by the new 5-0 anti-reform board.…
05/31/2017
More "do as I say, not as I do" from Jeffco's anti-reform school board. Recall proponents used the superintendent selection as ammunition against conservative board members in Jeffco in 2015. Now, they're engaging in the same behavior they condemned.
In Jefferson County, some parents see hypocrisy in recent school superintendent selection Parents of students in Jefferson County Schools are crying hypocrisy over two school board members who supported the “one finalist” process that yielded the district’s newly named superintendent be…
04/18/2017
A new national column from our own Ross Izard encourages us to step back and recognize how far we've come in the realm of educational choice.
The battle is over, and school choice won OPINION | Students across the nation are experimenting with innovation in education.
