Speaker Carroll's startling religiosity

"In ministry"? "Saving lost souls"? Come again, Mr. Speaker? State Rep. Terrance Carroll (D-Denver), who officially became Speaker of the Colorado House today, is quoted to startling effect by Rocky Mountain News columnist Bill Johnson about the continuity of these new responsibilities with his previous life as a Christian minister. "It's all the same thing," he said of the church and [a stint in CU] police work, "saving lost souls." Next would come a law degree from the University of Denver and associate pastor stints at both New Hope and Macedonia Baptist churches. "I still consider myself in ministry, even here," Terrance Carroll said, pointing to the House chamber. "We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give sight to the blind, care for widows and orphans. Yes, that's a big function of what we do here."

Leaving aside the debatable (but for a liberal Democrat like Carroll, predictable) assumption that welfare is government's main job, the evangelical overtones here clash with the proper stance of government in our state and country as pluralistic and religiously neutral.

I like the new Speaker and expect good things from him, but this statement is ill-judged and highly inappropriate from someone in his position.

My own faith in Christ is central in all that I do, and while in the legislature I tried (with imperfect success, as many would tell you) to live it daily. But if I had ever talked this way while serving as Senate President in 2003-2005, I would have been barbecued to a crisp by Democrats and the media -- and deservedly so.

It will be interesting to see if a correction is forthcoming from Terrance Carroll, and if political watchdogs call upon him for the same strict separation between lawmaking and soul-saving that they would have demanded from me or any Republican.

Colorado Winners & Sinners of 2008

Before 2008 is forgotten, here’s our annual salute to Colorado winners and sinners of the old year. Denver hosted a successful DNC and sparkled for its 150th birthday. Coffman and Polis went to Congress after tough primaries. Ritter’s tax increase flopped. Hard times for Rockies baseball and the Rocky Mountain News. So begins one of my current TV mini-debates with Susan Barnes-Gelt. The full script for this month's series on Colorado Public Television is posted on the home page, left column partway down. Our exchange continued as follows:

SBG- The biggest winner, now that we are at the end of 2008, is the American public; witnessing the end of the Bush government. Eight years of being lied to while corporate goliaths and hedge fund managers got rich, have taken a huge toll.

JA- Enough with the Daily Kos talking points. Give me some hometown humor. How about Mark Udall making “Boulder liberal” into a badge of honor with his 10-point victory? How about Speaker-designate Bernie Buescher becoming election roadkill? How about Golden changing its name to Tincup after the Coors brewery goes away?

SBG- That's a good one and Commerce City sounds like a brand all America would love to adopt! Urbanism is a huge winner. With Obama's election - a true urbanist who thought about being an architect. C I T Y is no longer a 4-letter word!

Update by JA- After this piece was taped mid-December, the ball took another funny bounce for ex-Rep. Bernie Buescher as he was appointed Secretary of State. Overnight, with Ritter's help, he became resurrected roadkill. Is that what they mean by failing upward?

Adams 50 innovates for kids' sake

Innovation by local educators! Reading of it was like a personal Christmas present to me. The background dates from 2002, when I began an exciting journey in understanding our schools by entering an educational leadership program sponsored by Boulder Public Schools and presented by the University of Colorado at Denver. Every Wednesday I trekked to planet Boulder to be trained as a school principal. At that time, UCD even allowed non-educators, like me, to enroll if a spot was available. There was a spot and my eyes were soon opened to the terminology and day-to-day life of an educator. Most of my colleagues were from Boulder Valley School District. That in itself was a truly a learning experience, yet I found most of my fellow classmates unusually open-minded to others’ points of view.

On our first day of class, our professor from UCD asked us to imagine what kind of school we would like to lead. She gave us clay and other craft objects to physically design our ideas. I was surprised that most of the class designed schools similar to traditional schools. I, on the other hand not having much experience in traditional K-12 schools, designed a school based on performance standards.

In my model, students were differentiated by their ability to meet performance benchmarks. The classes were multi-aged so a bright first-grader could be educated with typical fourth graders if that was what was needed; conversely, a student struggling with literacy, could work at his/her own pace with like students. When a student surpassed building grades’ benchmarks, he/she could log on to a web-based program to continue meeting and surpassing appropriate benchmarks even though he or she may not be developmentally ready to progress to middle or high school.

Many schools are providing instruction for students who are not appropriately meeting benchmarks by adding a Response to Intervention model, but remain the same organizationally. Adams 50 (the five star folks) School District has tried to think outside of the box in some of its pilot schools and is requiring students to meet benchmarks with differentiated classes based on student needs, according to the Denver Post on 12/21.

They are basing this pilot program on Alaska’s Chugach District. Some teachers, where this model was tried in other school districts, complained that tracking student progress was cumbersome, but Adams 50 is teaching students to track themselves on personal charts. When performance standards and district benchmarks were implemented in Aurora Public Schools, many schools showed students how to track their progress and the students learned what each standard or benchmark meant. Voila! Student engagement equals student buy-in. Unfortunately, most of the schools remained traditionally organized.

In Joe Williams’ book, Cheating our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education, he sites anecdotal information how over and over again; students’ needs are rarely placed as a primary priority in many schools. This time, Adams 50 School District appears to be doing just that! I can not applaud them enough for thinking outside of the box for students’ sakes.

Charts of Colorado GOP downtrend

Here's the pictorial story of Colorado Republican leadership, if you can call it that, trending ever downward over the past decade. Ouch. The bumper sticker to sum it all up might be: "Believe in nothing and watch your election results sizzle."

1. Overall elected legislators, state & federal

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2. State House of Representatives

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3. State Senate

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4. US House of Representatives

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5. US Senate

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Red Colorado group now on Twitter

I've been learning Facebook and Twitter in recent weeks, finding them worth the investment of time. Twitter is essentially a chatroom where very short comments with links can be blasted to your selected network of friends. Easy to sign up, free, and easy to start using - the sophisticated wrinkles can come later or be ignored. This post is particularly addressed to Colorado Republicans and conservatives who I think would benefit from keeping in closer touch via Twitter. I have created a specialty group called Red Colorado for us to "talk" in. Here's how it works...

1- Create your Twitter account at www.twitter.com, start collecting others to "follow" (hear from automatically).

2- When you write an update, if it concerns the goal of making Colorado red again, include the "hashtag" #redco

3- Any time you want to check on what others in Red Colorado are saying, go to www.search.twitter.com, enter #redco, and presto - all the comments are show there, with options for you to reply directly to the individual or to toss in your own comment to the whole group.

A number of sample #redco items are already posted to give the idea. These things can be a time-wasting toy OR a real productivity tool for our political goals. So far I see potential for the latter. Let's experiment and find out.