Author: Paula Noonan

072023-cp-web-oped-noonan-1 How many ways can Suncor screw with the people of north Denver and Commerce City, and now the 143,000 who live in Thornton? The answer: so many ways they’re impossible to count. How many people have been sickened by Suncor’s air and water pollution? That’s a number neither Suncor nor the state government wants…

Paula Noonan In the ongoing saga of school reform, accountability, and standardized testing, the next step in the story is for the Colorado Department of Education to hire an entity to lead the messy political troop appointed to the task force to study the k-12 accountability system. Here’s a review of the consultants’ proposals and…

072023-cp-web-oped-noonan-1 There’s nothing like leaving a subject that requires objective, unpolitical consideration to politicians. Our public schools deserve the most well-grounded, open-minded examination of what works to create wonderful schools. Ideally, HB23-1241, legislation that creates a task force to examine our school accountability system, should provide that unbiased analysis. Instead, the House speaker, Senate president,…

Paula Noonan Education skirmishes continue this summer. A school district in Garfield County is considering the adoption of American Birthright social studies standards as revised by the Woodland Park school district. This action would go against the vote on standards by the State Board of Education. The social studies standards argument centers on the concept…

Paula Noonan The Supreme Court’s decision to take affirmative action off the table for college admission decisions was expected. Affirmative action helped relieve the original stain of slavery and the numerous other insults to people, democracy, equality and opportunity for all, but its basis was insecure from the get-go. There’s another way to achieve some…

Paula Noonan Did anyone catch the recent message from nature? It gave rock concert at Red Rocks a whole new meaning! And the throw down on Highlands Ranch and environs the next day was astounding. Now the heat is coming and the air is browning up. So let’s examine what’s going on at the home…

Paula Noonan Who knew the four members of the State Board of Education who voted against giving away the school life records of hundreds of thousands of students to a University of Colorado “researcher” are followers of the Taliban? This is a June 15 tweet from Van Schoales, education reformer frequently consulted by Colorado’s news…

Paula Noonan It’s a truth universally acknowledged in Colorado that education fights go on and on and on. Denver is the locus because of arguments over current and past school boards and their policies. Past DPS school boards, supported by wealthy philanthropists who made their money in the usual ways, controlled DPS under the reform…

Paula Noonan The state Senate is known as the more somber body of the two General Assembly chambers. It can also be seen as the kill-House-bills chamber. The toll is 36 passed House bills chopped at the knees in the Senate to 11 passed Senate bills taken down in the House. There may have been…

Paula Noonan Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made this statement about an education union leader: “It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teachers’ unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math…