After an incredible display of bipartisan cooperation in the closing moments of the most recent legislative session, Colorado is again a national leader in student and family-centered education reform. Earlier this month, the legislature passed a historic, bipartisan school funding reform ensuring that local tax dollars for education will be shared equally with charter school students.
Colorado has long led the way on bold and forward-looking education reforms. In fact, our state was one of the first in the nation to support the creation of public charter schools almost 25 years ago. When it comes to Colorado students, charter schools have delivered results that consistently exceed traditional public schools, and have done so with far less funding and resources. Data from the Colorado Department of Education shows that charter schools not only serve a more diverse population of students, but charter school students perform better on state tests than their peers in traditional neighborhood schools.
Parents have been showing support for charter schools for decades by increasingly enrolling their children in charters, which have seen a massive growth in popularity. Charter school enrollment is up over 30 percent in the last four years, to now include roughly 115,000 students. If charter schools were a single school district, they would be the largest district in the state.
Education policy should be focused first and foremost on our state’s students and their families. That’s why the passage of House Bill 1375, which ends systematic discrimination against public school students attending charter schools, is so important.
When voters passed local tax increases for education, they rightly assumed that those dollars would go to support all public school students in their district. Unfortunately, many school districts chose not to share any of that voter-approved revenue with charter school. By passing HB 1375, Colorado became the first state in the country to eliminate this separate and unequal process for funding education.
Colorado’s most recent innovation in securing equal funding for charter school students is not only a victory for families that choose to embrace the power of school choice, it is also a repudiation of the forces that blocked funding equity in the name of their own self-interest.
There are many organizations that seek to shape education policy in Colorado, but unfortunately far too many of them are dedicated to protecting the interests of the adults in the system. This year, lobbyists from the state teachers union, the state school board association, and the state school administrators association all locked arms in an attempt to kill any proposal that ensured charter students received equal funding.
The teachers union — long opposed to charter schools because charter teachers don’t pay union dues — even set up an entire website and social media campaign to discredit charter schools using blatantly misleading information. Other groups claimed that equal funding for charter school students infringed on local control; ignoring the fact that parental control is real local control. Unfortunately, these sorts of tactics are commonplace. This alphabet soup of special-interest groups spends millions of dollars every year seeking to protect the status quo.
Thankfully, a bipartisan group of Colorado legislators ignored the noise and kept laser-focused on what’s right for students. State Sen. Owen Hill, R-Colorado Springs, Sen. Angela Williams, D-Denver, Rep. Lang Sias, R-Arvada, and Rep. Brittany Pettersen, D-Lakewood, all deserve a great deal of praise for passing this historic reform. And not just for their willingness to do the right thing, but for their ability to stand strong against special interest groups more interested in themselves than supporting all Colorado kids. In an era marked by partisan gridlock and ineffective government, these elected leaders showed the rest of the country why Colorado continues to lead the way.
Luke Ragland is president of Ready Colorado, a conservative education advocacy group.
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