Yes, I’m back from my long hiatus – family visits and a general sense of tedium with passing affairs are among my excuses – for the few of you who have visited often enough to notice.
But I’m back blogging now, because today was a noteworthy day in Colorado’s path toward meaningful education reform. The desperate attempt of most legislative Democrats (led by Senator Sue Windels) to undermine the charter school movement took a blow when four members of their own party voted to turn the attack upside down. At the apex of their power in Colorado, enough Democrats have gained sense on K-12 education to deeply dampen the dreams of educrats who are trying to regain control of areas of the “system” lost to consumer empowerment and common sense.
Today’s landmark development reflects a phenomenon I highlighted a couple weeks ago.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This is a positive sign, but certainly no call for complacency or withdrawal from action. There is still much progress to be made – and as the Denver Post highlighted on the front page today – some kind of sweeping school reform is coming soon to our state.
The big question is how much the reform plan will look like the Tough Choices report touted by Speaker Romanoff. While the report contains some good components, the nature of the overhaul it suggests contains the significant danger of investing too much into the statist model. (Put quite simply: do we want a German education model or a pro-freedom American model?)
Colorado’s friends of parental choice have reason to rejoice today, but our work remains cut out for us.
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