Education

The Colorado Democratic Party clearly has a master plan for education reform but they will go to any lengths necessary to make sure our citizens never figure out what it really is. This stealth strategy amounts to loudly proclaiming grandiose ambitions for sweeping school reform while behind the scenes doing everything possible to completely dismantle the important gains of the last fifteen years.

The public face of this scheme was revealed in the governor's state of the state address when he announced the centerpiece of his education program- The Colorado Achievement Plan for Kids. Long on rhetoric and short on specifics the Plan was nonetheless praised by the co-chairs of the governor's P-20 Education Council as "a monumental shift in education policy, one that would move Colorado to the forefront of education reform nationally." Insisting that "No other state does what Gov. Ritter is proposing" the co-chairs were also vague about details, and resorted to tired catch-phrases like "meaningful curriculum", "maximum flexibility", and "seamless system filled with opportunities".

The clear implication of imposing a dramatically "new system" is that the "old system" must go, and that is the real agenda of the Democratic Party, and their enablers within the education establishment.

So, what are those major accomplishments of the Romer-Owens era that the Democrats are out to torpedo, and how are they going about it?

The major reform achievements of the last fifteen years can be summed up in two words: Accountability and Choice.

Accountability took the form of a credible statewide testing system (CSAP) signed into law by Gov. Romer, and School Accountabilty Reports (SARs) signed into law by Gov. Owens which sent directly to parents not just test results and school "ratings" but also a wealth of information on other important topics. Taken together these tests and "report cards" gave Colorado citizens a truer picture of their schools than they had ever had before.

Extensive polling and focus groups made clear that the public supported these accountability measures but they infuriated the education establishment and their allies in the Democratic Party because they exposed the deep flaws in the system that these apologists had long denied.

Choice is the natural complement to accountability. It takes a variety of forms including home schooling, open enrollment, charter schools, and on-line education. All of these represent options for parents who find that available public schools are not meeting the needs of their children. All empower parents by denying school authorities total control of the child's education.

The Democrats know that Choice and Accountability have wide public support, so their campaign to undermine, cripple, and eventually eliminate them must be pursued via a "stealth strategy" of "poison pill" legislation that can be misrepresented as "improvements" or that old stand-by "just a clean-up bill".

The two most dangerous education bills running in the current legislative session-both represented as "clean-up" bills by their disingenuous sponsors- are House Bill-1186 which would artificially inflate CSAP results by fundamentally changing the scoring system and House Bill 1159 which would gravely damage the entire charter school movement.

1159 which sounds the death knell of the Colorado Charter School Institute (CSI) is a classic of malevolent arrogance. The obtuse language of the bill is a masterpiece of doublespeak and obfuscation which will bury CSI in a welter of new deadlines, appeals, reports and other contradictory bureaucratic processes. Sadly Gov. Ritter has loaded the CSI board with opponents of Choice who will make no complaint about these intolerable burdens.

Will this "stealth" strategy succeed? Tragically, it probably will because too few people know or understand what is going on behind the scenes. The enemies of reform depend on the countless distractions produced by 500 bills simultaneously and rapidly moving through a relatively brief legislative session.

The efforts of Republican legislators to resist this tide are routinely gaveled out of order or rejected on straight party line votes.

The party in power is not the party of education reform-never has been, never will be. This party is far more likely to support the needs of unions over the needs of kids. No amount of rhetoric or stealth can conceal this truth, or the fact that all Coloradoans are losers because of it.

Bill Moloney's columns have appeared in the Wall street Journal, Washington Post, Washington Times, Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Inquirer, Denver Post, Rocky Mountain New, and Pacific News Service.