Bill Ritter, education funding and the schools of New Orleans

Everybody wants something for nothing. For instance, the state education fund will be insolvent by 2010. But Governor Bill Ritter's plans to fund it - first by using federal mineral-lease royalties, then by freezing the mill levy - have met with stiff opposition.

Next up, Ritter follows the President's lead and borrows the money from China.

But what if solutions aren't what the GOP is after? What if it wants to create seemingly unsolvable problems as an excuse to foist charter schools upon the state?

Charter schools certainly seem to be on the agenda of Dr. Barry Fagin, an Independence Institute senior fellow and adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. (A name which ought to raise a red flag for many of you.)

Fagin's column in the Monday, March 19 print edition of The Denver Daily News sang the praises of Daniel Hudson, who Fagin says he first read of in The Atlantic. Fagin lauds Hudson as a "tough disciplinarian" who is fighting "Big Easy bahavior" in the emerging schools of New Orleans. Coincidentally, I also read The Atlantic. So I know the article was ambivalent about Hudson's methods and results:

[Hudson's story] seemed to make no impression on the young man. I couldn't tell whether it was because the student was already too far gone, or because Hudson was so busy talking, and yelling, that he had forgotten how to listen... As Hudson himself knew well, the time he spent in the halls, the endless meetings with parents, meant he knew little of what was happening in the classroom. What was clear, in the time I spent in classes, was how little of the training Jarvis had mandated for teachers seemed to have taken.

Fagin calls the education experiment in New Orleans "unprecedented in American history... Parents have complete freedom to send their child wherever they want. The money follows their child, period. In response, schools are springing up like wildfire." In fact, New Orleans' "experiment" has led to a scary reality - school administrators who want to screen out underachievers and blacks:

Huger would have preferred that his school have selective admissions, by which students are screened on criteria like test scores and grade-point averages. He also would have preferred more of what he delicately called "diversity" - as in white children. But under the guidelines, choice ran only one way: Huger would have to educate any child who chose him.

The same article reports that across America, charter schools are failing to meet academic benchmarks. In Washington, D.C., "the latest numbers showed that only four of thirty-four charter schools had met academic benchmarks. And in Philadelphia, the most recent data showed schools run by educational management companies - which Huger saw as the best bet when run in partnership with local nonprofits like his - lagging behind public schools in improving performance."

As Ritter said at a recent Bell Policy Center event, education is the key to opportunity and economic growth. And there's little doubt that our schools need an overhaul; Democratic leaders like Andrew Romanoff are leading the way. But charter schools are far from the silver bullet the free market fundies make them out to be.

In defense of a governor who shouldn't need defending

Governor Bill Ritter is arguably the most powerful person in Colorado. His election in November was just short of a landslide. And in the two months since his inaugural, he has helped calm the Amendment 41 debate, directed aid to Colorado's blizzard ravaged southeast counties, recommended full funding for the new science and engineering complex at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, indicated he will approve major renewable energy legislation, saved the state a reported $1.6 million on prescription pharmaceuticals...

I could go on like this for quite awhile.

But a casual observer of Colorado politics might get the impression that Ritter is a governor under siege, taking heavy fire from all sides. Today the Post's Tom McGhee reported that Ritter is attempting to win back labor's trust after his veto of HB-1072. The Rocky's Berny Morson wrote that Ritter is considering vetoing two education bills, one carried by a Republican and one carried by a Democrat. And the Post's Jeri Clausing reported that "in just two months in office, Gov. Bill Ritter has emerged on the opposite side of candidate Bill Ritter on two key issues, raising questions of credibility and the reality of carrying out his sweeping Colorado Promise."

The last statement is especially disingenuous. Nether of the issues Ritter allegedly flip-flopped on - HB-1072 and the allocation of federal mineral lease dollars - was even part of the Colorado Promise, a document the Ritter for Governor campaign released in September of 2006. At the time, I wrote that, "The comprehensive 52-page policy book takes on every issue facing Colorado, from healthcare to the economy to the environment to illegal immigration." On February 11, 2007, I reread the document and realized that'd I'd been wrong. Themes like "energy" or "education" were mentioned far more than issues like, say, union voting procedures.

It's true that some of the voters who cast their ballots for Bill Ritter were voting against his Republican opponent or for pet issues. But I believe most voters chose Ritter because they wanted major, 21st Century reforms for our state's healthcare, transportation, education and clean energy systems.

In other words, voters want the Colorado Promise.

There is no excuse for breaking a campaign pledge. But the two flip-flops alleged in the Post are less serious than Clausing makes them out to be. The first is that Ritter's veto of HB-1072 contradicted earlier statements to labor groups; I discussed that situation on February 9, 2007. The second is that using increases "in federal mineral lease money to shore up the state's failing education fund" would violate Ritter's pledge to "give priority to energy-impacted areas for severance tax and federal mineral lease moneys." Even those alleging this change of heart state that they haven't seen Ritter's plan yet, which makes the whole thing sound like preemptive politicking.

In politics, the perception of smoke can create a very real fire. But there's not even smoke here. Just a lot of hot air.

Cross-posted at SquareState.

Ritter pledges to pay special attention to Western Slope

Western Slopers are still demanding appeasement for Bill Ritter's Front Range-centric cabinet appointments. (See Colorado Confidential and The Grand Junction Sentinel.) Nevermind that Ritter got to make "so few" appointments, according to Republican Rick Enstrom. And nevermind that a majority of applications came from in and around the metro area. And nevermind that the new cabinet has won bipartisan accolades.

Ritter has pledged to pay special attention to the concerns of the Western Slope. From the Sentinel:

Ritter, who said he was surprised at the lack of Western Slope candidates who made it through the candidate selection process, said he plans to work with his Cabinet to ensure the western half of the state does not fall off the map. "In the meantime, I will pay attention personally to the issues (the Western Slope) cares the most about..."

Since I crunched these numbers, I'm going to share them. Colorado is home to 4,301,261. A slight majority - 2,224,804 - live in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Denver and Jefferson Counties. Include Colorado's biggest Front Range counties - El Paso, Larimer, Pueblo and Weld - and you add another 1,090,831. Meaning 77% of the state lives in a handful of Front Range counties. Meanwhile, all of Colorado's western-most counties - Delta, Delores, Garfield, Jackson, La Plata, Mesa, Moffat, Montezuma, Montrose, Ouray, Rio Blanco, San Juan and San Miguel - combined have 368,086 residents, or 9% of our state's population.