Colorado Public Schools / Education (teaching jobs, school districts, calculated)

[hello-world]

Just thought it would be interesting to get people's thoughts on public education, specifically public education in Colorado.

-How does Colorado do relative to other states? (bottom half of states, from what I see)
-How do various school districts in Colorado do? (haven't seen much on this)
-What measures are used to determine these things and how valuable are they? Math and reading proficiency at various grade levels? (CO bottom 10% or so for 4th grade - as in ranked about 45 out of 50 states) Teacher salaries? (CO bottom half or so) Teacher salaries relative to cost of living and other salaries in the region? (I've seen CO is dead last for this one) Spending per student? Education spending relative to state revenue?
-What does the CO Tax Payers Bill of Rights (TABOR) have to do with it? (a lot, as far as I can see)
-What does No Child Left Behind have to do with it?

etc. Thanks!

Here are some links I've seen in the past concerning this kind of thing:

Smartest State Prior Years' Rankings
Smartest State Factors (methodology for prev. link)
Public Services and TABOR In Colorado, 1/13/05
The State We're In: An Education Report Card for the State of Colorado

[Katiana]

Interesting thread. I'll look at those links some time when I have a few hours, LOL!

A lot of those issues can be calculated many different ways to make Colorado look better or worse, depending on what criteria are used. Almost every state says they are in the bottom half or so for funding when they want to raise taxes, for instance. Teacher salaries might not be great, but there is a lot of competition for teaching jobs. What does that say? I'm not sure.

Anyway, this thread looks like a "keeper".

[hello-world]

Originally Posted by pittnurse70

Interesting thread. I'll look at those links some time when I have a few hours, LOL!

A lot of those issues can be calculated many different ways to make Colorado look better or worse, depending on what criteria are used. Almost every state says they are in the bottom half or so for funding when they want to raise taxes, for instance. Teacher salaries might not be great, but there is a lot of competition for teaching jobs. What does that say? I'm not sure.

Anyway, this thread looks like a "keeper".

thanks for the props. each of those links has sort of a "highlights" section as the first thing you'll see, so, no "hours" necessary it looks abysmal (well, maybe just "pretty bad") for colorado as far as this goes by pretty much ANY measure. hoping for some other perspectives on some of this. thanks.