By Lisa Weil, Executive Director of Great Education Colorado
Maybe you saw it in the news: “Colorado GOP Calls for All Children to be Pulled from Public Schools.”
There was a time when this headline would have been shocking. The idea that a major political party would encourage parents to abandon public schools would have been dismissed as preposterous. It would have been universally and rightly rejected as contrary to basic American values.
But in these times, the GOP’s dramatic announcement is just another manifestation of a broader political landscape where, it seems, anything goes.
Thankfully, the Colorado GOP’s outrageous recommendation that “Colorado parents should be aiming to remove their kids from public education” is still completely out-of-step with the bipartisan understanding that public schools are the heart of our communities. Coloradans of all political stripes know that everyone has a stake in ensuring we have excellent, welcoming, and successful public schools.
But it would be a mistake to shrug off this cynical political stunt. Though this particular attack is based on the misleading and vile accusation that efforts to make trans kids feel welcome at school are “indoctrination” and “turning kids trans,” it is just the latest ploy in a long and troubling history of using fear to promote division, in service of the ultimate goal – privatizing public schools.
Before this salvo, anti-public-education forces have used countless other strawmen to sow fear, and distrust of public schools: Critical Race Theory, “furries,” masking mandates, AP US History, and “freedom of choice schools” to name just a few. Of course, this is the go-to strategy of the anti-public-education playbook, which seeks to demonize, defund, and privatize.
All of those tactics may be heading to the Colorado ballot this November:
Demonize, Defund, Privatize
Demonize: The GOP’s email is just the prelude. Signatures are currently being gathered for initiatives that would target LGBTQ+ students, including one that would turn educators into the “gender incongruence” police.
Defund: Colorado’s already lagging school funding system could be further compromised through numerous proposed fiscal measures, including ones that would decimate local funding of schools; decimate state funding of schools; and reinstate school district, local and state spending limits that were specifically overridden by local and state voters.
Privatize: Initiative 138 would create a constitutional right to school choice (a right that parents already have), paving the way for vouchers – which would take dollars away from public schools and funnel them to unaccountable private schools that are free to discriminate against students and teachers on any basis they choose.
But assuming that well-funded disinformation doesn’t overwhelm the facts, Colorado voters aren’t going to fall for the propaganda campaign of the anti-public-schoolers. Bipartisan support for the very American ideal of public education as the “great equalizer” is alive and well in our state.
According to a recent poll conducted by Magellan Strategies, Colorado voters oppose using “limited state education dollars to fund private schools at the expense of all other schools” by a ratio of 3 to 1. In addition, 63% of voters believe that additional funding will improve education for Colorado students. And only one-third believe that their local school district currently has the financial resources necessary to prepare students for the future.
Colorado voters oppose using “limited state education dollars to fund private schools at the expense of all other schools” by a ratio of 3 to 1.
Nearly a quarter century ago, two Colorado education champions, Republican Al Meikeljohn and Democrat Barbara O’Brien, captured Colorado’s bipartisan aspirations for, and support of, public education:
Generations ago, our country committed itself to the ambitious goal of a public education for every child in America. Since then, the country has discovered that the guarantee of a seat in a classroom was not the goal line, but only the starting line for a marathon. Our generation’s challenge is to revitalize public education and recommit to the goal of a full and effective education for every child.
With a little luck, the Colorado GOP’s screed will be soon forgotten. With the determination and action of public school supporters, the voters will protect our schools from this November’s onslaught.
Then we can get back to the real work – making progress toward a public education system that prepares each and every student to lead their best lives.