Colorado's madcap Lefties over at ProgressNow have taken their disingenuous use of statistics to a new level today, with a press release "responding" to Governor Owens' State of the State speech, sent out within minutes of its conclusion. I have yet to find a copy of the release on their Web site but have pasted the email message below, followed by a response to their egregious selectiveness and gross mishandling of K-12 education statistics (that's my area of expertise - I'll let others dismantle their other assertions): … [Read more...]

Buried in this Denver Post article about post-election recriminations is a salient example of what the big vote meant to the tax-and-spenders: Advocates for public education blamed the loss of Referendum D on the failure to set aside enough money for public schools. Lisa Weil, co-founder of Great Education Colorado, said Referendum D would have had a better chance of winning voter approval if schools, and not roads, received more money. Referendum D called for using $1.2 billion of the borrowed money on 55 road projects around the state. "Transportation is not the highest priority of Coloradans right now," Weil said, touting her organization's polling results that said voters would have been more supportive of letting the … [Read more...]

Yesterday, as promised some members of the Rocky Mountain Alliance sat down for 30 minutes with Gov. Bill Owens. The Kestrel has already posted his thoughts, while Joshua was in attendance, too. While we talked about a range of issues, mostly stemming from his State of the State Address earlier in the day, the Governor gave the sense of a leader committed to defending and extending his legacy in his final year in office. … [Read more...]

Quote of the day from Vincent Carroll of the Rocky Mountain News (notably, a supporter of Referendum C): If Gov. Owens had devoted even half as much time trying to defeat Amendment 23 five years ago as he spent boosting Ref C, Colorado today would not be saddled (that word again) with a requirement that K-12 education funding never, ever share in the sacrifice required by falling government revenues during a severe recession. In light of Carroll's observation regarding the governor, what takes precedence: conservative credentials or popular appeal? Draw your own conclusions. … [Read more...]

What lesson ought we to take from the whole Jay Bennish fiasco? David Harsanyi hits a home run with his column today: "Teacher Fuss Shows Need for Choice." Go and read it. … [Read more...]

Looking for a worthwhile cause to support? Know someone who is? Then please read this message from Paul Marrick, co-founder of Parents for Truth in Education: We’re two parents in the town of Fort Collins, Colorado. Next week we go head-to-head with the teachers unions in court, and we desperately need to get the word out about our cause. We filed a legal complaint against our local union for violating election law last year. In our first hearing, the union’s motion to dismiss was rejected and we managed to get the statewide Colorado Education Association and the local school district enjoined as co-defendants. We go to trial next week. Our legal complaint states that the union illegally conducted blatant campaign … [Read more...]

Reading this story in today's Rocky Mountain News, I'm reminded that I wasn't the only one who sat and suffered all day through yesterday's School Finance Interim Committee meeting at the State Capitol. Weeks before, the Interim Committee (under the direction of State Senator Sue Windels, D - Arvada) charged a task force of school officials, school finance experts, and a variety of interest group representatives to come up with a report making recommendations for a new way to fund K-12 public education in Colorado. The Task Force has sat through the series of meetings, as have I, listening to a variety of presentations, the details of which I will not bore you with. But today's story in the Rocky reflects the problem with the … [Read more...]