CO-04 (Special Election)
See Full Big Line
(R) Greg Lopez
(R) Trisha Calvarese
90%
10%
President (To Win Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Biden*
(R) Donald Trump
80%
20%↓
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
90%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
90%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(D) Adam Frisch
(R) Jeff Hurd
(R) Ron Hanks
40%
30%
20%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert
(R) Deborah Flora
(R) J. Sonnenberg
30%↑
15%↑
10%↓
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Dave Williams
(R) Jeff Crank
50%↓
50%↑
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
90%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) Brittany Pettersen
85%↑
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(R) Gabe Evans
(R) Janak Joshi
60%↑
35%↓
30%↑
State Senate Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
June 21, 2011 08:59 PM UTC
58 Comments
This sounds a lot like the federal faith based initiative. Isn’t Obama okay with that?
The Douglas County School Board is going to loose the case. The religious schools aren’t going terminate their requirements that students be taught religion or that at least one parent testify to his/her Christian faith. There is no way the religious schools mission and the education the students with vouchers receive can be separated and therefore the whole program violates several sections of the Colorado Consitution.
The plaintiffs didn’t rely on the U.S. Constitution, only provisions in the Colorado Constitution. I presume they did this because an utlimate decision by the Colorado Supreme Court, based only on state law, is not appealable to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The school district’s position on opt out does not require opt out for religious instruction and permits a school to compel “respectful attendance” of religious services, although they cannot force a student to participate. From the FAQs on the DCSD website:
Can students opt-out of religion classes?
The required opt-out does not include instruction. We recognize that many schools embed religious studies in all areas of the curriculum. Parents need to be informed that this is the practice of the school when they apply. The opt-out applies to religious services. Students may opt-out of participation, but may be required to respectfully attend, if that is the school’s policy.
that violates the Colorado Constitution.
Please provide the exact verbiage that prevents religious education, if so, you had better stop teaching man made global warming, atheism, socialism and every other magic bs you have come up with because these are all religions.
Whatever you say man. Its OK. [Back away slowly]
You flunked Civics, right?
The complaint quotes several sections of the state constitution that forbids the use of public funds for sectarian schools.
Asinine idiotic statements are truly your specialty. Guess the whole concept of a fact-based educational experience rates as “magic bs” in your backass world.
in MarkG-ism.
Colorado Constitution, Article IX, section 7.
Seems pretty clear to me.
Do you believe it applies here? Aha, I tricked you! Constitutionalism is a religion! Using the Constitution to defend the Constitution is now illegal.
</is so smart>
why did Douglas county even try?
It seems clear from this quote that even if the student were able to completely opt out of religious activities at the school, the voucher plan would still be in violation of the state Constitution.
The Douglas County School Board obtained an opinion from a lawyer in Coloraod Springs who told them their voucher program passed legal muster. He/she should have taken a cursory look at the Colorado Constitution. Probably would have changed the opinion. Perhaps not.
Why can’t the state fund me sending my children to a Madrassa? That just seems unfair. I mean if the state is going to fund some forms of religious instruction, shouldn’t it fund them all?
Why do Christians have to pay taxes to fund secular Darwinism schools? Christians should be able to opt out of this portion of taxation. Every religion should be able to opt out of secular Darwinism school taxation.
If your rebuttal is so simple as to say, “We all have to pay for things we do not like”, then you already have answered my question…
When someone locates facts that disprove Darwinism, schools will stop teaching it.
But OK, I’ll make you a deal: If every church that gets involved in politics immediately begins paying taxes, every religious person who objects to their children receiving factual education can opt out of the portion of their taxes that go to public schools.
It’s not just one man’s opinion, and it’s not a cult. Using the term, even in a response to idiocy, gives the idiots what they want: an “ism.”
Evolution is a fact, not an “ism.”
“Darwinism” is a term for the facts, hypotheses, theories, and study surrounding evolution. Darwinism is also distinct from other, post-Darwinian theories of evolution. In my book, creationists don’t get to hijack whatever terms they want and use them as insults and then the rest of us have to stop using them. I come from a family of scientists and none of us could possibly care less how creationists wish to use a term that has had a definition since 1860.
In sensible, rational circles, the term is not used at all.
Then why was it coined in a positive 1860 review of Darwin’s “The Origin of Species?” I guess that guy must have been a closeted creationist nut, right?
It was one man’s opinion.
More than 130 years of solid science has gone on since then. Evolution and Natural selection are now as established as gravity.
Religious zealots want to ignore that science and return to 1880. I’m not going to conduct the argument on those terms.
But hey, if you want to call gravity “Newtonism” too, be my guest.
Evolution is not based solely on Darwin’s theories. Pre-Darwinian and Neo-Darwinian study of evolution also contributes to the overall body of knowledge in the field. Darwinism is a term, and has been since 1860, for the theories proposed by Darwin about evolution. He was unquestionably the most influential scientist to study evolution, and he certainly was first to identify and describe it accurately, but he did not give the last word on the specifics of how natural selection progresses and creates physical evolution.
Creationists don’t get to just say “Because we use this as an insult, all prior meanings are null and void.”
Why don’t you provide some links to articles in refereed American scientific journals that use the term “Darwinism.” And I don’t mean pseudo-refereed journals that espouse “scientific creationism,” which is anything but scientific. I also don’t mean articles referencing so-called “Social Darwinisim,” which is a pseudo-scientific term that excuses eugenics and racism.
The AGI Glossary of Geology, Fifth Edition, does list the term “Darwinism” as synonymous with evolution by natural selection. But a search of USGS Publications finds no instances of the term “Darwinism” in publications by the USGS.
“Darwinism,” as far as I know, is a deprecated term in American scientific literature. It’s currently used only as a pejorative by people who deny the fact of evolution by natural selection. The Brits still use the term; however Darwin was, after all, a Brit.
It’s called a Republic. The way it works is there are things called elections. This is an opportunity for you Mark G to locate other people of your ilk (the internet has made it easy, Mark, there are probably tens of thousands of you! I mean, you can find just about anything!) and work together to elect representatives who will enact crazy ideas. Of course you have to get to 50% +1, so good luck with that.
not the 1st with that diagnosis on this blog
or are you for real?
“Darwinism,” as you call it, is in no sense a religion. Evolution is an established scientific fact, popularly misunderstood only due to the ignorance that you have demonstrated here and that is unfortunately all too common.
If you do actually buy into this notion that Darwin’s theory – and, please, remember what a theory is – is b.s., then you need to seriously consider improving your education.
No matter what some of the Christians say, and what they obviously want to believe, evolution is real. We are the result of it, as is every other living organism on this planet. I’m sorry that upsets you, but reality doesn’t turn on hurt feelings or offended yet misguided religious faith.
has to resort to lying (which is what it is when you call science “religion”) to make a point? A: The kind that isn’t Heaven-bound.
i.e. beyond the authority vested in the district by state statute and not entitled to state funding as contemplated under the appplicable Colorado education finance laws,
is probably stronger than the constitutional argument under federal law, although the state constitution is arguably more explicit on the point.
Presumably this is partially a product of U.S. Constitution First Amendment voucher jurisprudence, and partially a strategic choice (a good one in my humble opinion), to deprive the U.S. Supreme Court of jurisdiction over the case.
There are both state constitutional and state statute claims and they are both quite solid.
Also interestingly, by making the state board of education a party, the Plaintiffs secure venue in Denver rather than Douglas County, another savvy tactical decision.
The state constitution is so clear on this point that Douglas County is going to have to argue that the state constitution is superceded by the federal constitution or federal law on multiple grounds to prevail.
Control of state participation in the lawsuit may be tricky given that the Democratic Governor, the State Board of Education (which is GOP controlled), and the Republican Attorney-General (at least) all have legitimate arguments for having a say in how this lawsuit is managed.
ohwilleke, I know you’re pretty good at this law stuff, but I am not sure where you’re going with the sentence on what DougCo would have to argue.
The federal constitution sets a floor for civil rights protection, not a ceiling. States are able, in their own constitutions, to go beyond the provisions of the federal Bill of Rights.
This is a well-established principle. DougCo has no argument that any federal constitutional provision overrides the relevant language of the Colorado constitution.
I doubt it has a supremacy clause argument based on a federal statute, either, as I do not know of any federal statute that compels Douglas County, or even authorizes it, to execute the voucher program at issue.
Moreover, because this lawsuit contains only state constitutional claims, and no federal constitutional claims, and no diversity of parties, a federal court – up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court – has no subject matter jurisdiction over it.
The Colorado Supreme Court will have the final say in this case and it is exceedingly difficult for me to see any legal argument that would be likely to convince the members of that court to ignore the plain language of our state constitution.
requires that religion not be disfavored, that as a result the state constitutional provision barring funding of religious instituions is unconstitutional as anti-religious, and that in the absence of that state constitutional provision, the home rule powers of a local school district trump the lack of express authorization for vouchers in the state school funding law.
One would then argue that the ban on funding private entities is not abridged by student based funding of a non-profit, much like other grants, and that the interpretation of the state school board regarding student counts under state school funding laws should be honored as within its discretion.
The strongest precedent for this argument would be the case that recently held that an Christian College must be permitted to particpate in Colorado’s higher education voucher program for state residents.
There are a lot of moving parts in that argument, with the most important one that is distinct from the higher education case being that it dealt with a voucher established by state law, while state law does not require or even clearly permit Douglas County to do the same, and the state has valid secular reason not to permit it to expand its pupil count with private school students of any kind in order to secure more state funding.
But, the previous higher education precedent involving state funding via student directed vouchers to private religious colleges certainly makes the outcome less obvious.
I find this interesting in light of the allegations in the Complaint that CDE suggested the structure of the program and “assured” District officials the scholarships would be funded. Looks like the CDE may be positioning for a motion to dismiss on the grounds that because they have taken no action, there is nothing to enjoin and the lawsuit is, therfore, premature.
Statement from ednewscolorado.org:
Colorado Department of Education spokeswoman Janelle Asmus released a statement this afternoon, saying both the department and the board “recognize the value of locally elected school boards and districts’ ability to develop programs to best meet their children’s educational needs. Those programs and school choice option decisions are a matter of local control.”
But Asmus said neither the board nor the department has received a formal proposal or request from the Douglas County district:
“When Douglas County Schools officials came to CDE this past year asking for advice, the department provided technical assistance. The department made clear that it was not its role or responsibility to approve or disapprove any school option idea thus underscoring the fact that these decisions were up to the local board of education,” the statement reads.
“To date, neither CDE nor the state board of education has received any official proposal or waiver request from Douglas County Schools; therefore no approval or action has been taken.”
on the part of the State as a whole, as opposed to the Board of Education, on the theory that this impacts the entire state budget and the assumptions that it was based upon, which must be balanced and must be approved by the Governor.
I sttrongly believe vouchers to religious schools are a blatant violation of separation of church and state. Can’t wait until the law catches up with the obvious.
Know most of the people on that list, and couldn’t be more proud. AWESOME, AWESOME, AWESOME!
And why are DC voters ok with spending state money on this program but not their own? And why are they ok with outside funding for the legal defense? If they really believed in this they would commit their own money.
Ok three-
Where’s my madrassa?
One — I’m OK with spending your money instead of mine.
Two — I’m really OK with someone else spending their money on me.
Three — Use you own money to build your own damn madrassa, what’da think — money grows on trees?
If you somehow think teeing off on Mark G. gives you a win against this brilliant, beautiful program in DougCo., have at it.
Mark’s just a convenient rhetorical punching bag because he sets himself up for it so beautifully.
The real juice in this is in the state Constitution, as quoted above by RadioFreeDenver.
My kid went to Catholic school for grades 1-8. He was on a waiting list to get in, and was the last kid admitted from that list. There weren’t extra spaces waiting to be filled by public school kids with vouchers. However, if vouchers had been available, I bet lots of the Catholic school parents would have been happy to take them to defray some of the cost. Result: Kids wouldn’t get to leave public school for the greener pastures of Catholic school because there wouldn’t be any room for them, but the Catholic school families would be taking tax dollars to pay for the schooling they had previously been paying for themselves. And tuition would have jumped up because of the new money available to pay it.
But what if the families with students currently attending private schools were ineligible to receive vouchers? OK, they wouldn’t get the vouchers, but they’d leave their kids where they were, so there still wouldn’t be any place for the public school kids with vouchers to go.
Where would the voucher kids go to private schools? They’d have to go to the schools that weren’t good enough to be full of students already, wouldn’t they? There might be new schools opening, but since private schools don’t have to follow state laws regarding teacher certification and the like, would they really be better than public schools? How would the parents know?
Finally, what happens when you dump a bunch of new money into a system? Wouldn’t the cost of the private schools increase because of the increased demand and increased money available? If that happened, and it would, then the public school kids with their vouchers STILL couldn’t afford private schools, and the private school kids would get to enjoy the new facilities, equipment, and supplies that the schools could buy with the extra tuition money.
I’ve never understood how vouchers would help kids. I guess the theory is that they would allow more kids to take advantage of private schools, but that assumes that there are seats available in higher-quality private schools, which may not be true. It would encourage new schools to open, but with no guarantee that the teachers and administrators were able to provide a high-quality education. It would jack up the price of private schools, while draining money away from the public schools.
We sent our kid to Catholic school for a reason, but sometimes I feel like we did him a disservice. He is a bright and talented kid (got a 36 on the science section of the ACT), and now that he’s in public high school, he sees kids with ability like his who are taking advanced physics as freshmen because their public middle schools were able to provide them with accelerated classes that the Catholic school didn’t have. And now the voucher proponents want to drain money out of that public school system and send it to the private schools, which will weaken the public school programs but probably won’t get the private schools to implement G&T programs.
Pardon the rant. Carry on….
But it will also drive up the numbers of kids that graduate from high school because they were able to escape from our outrageously incompetent public education system.
Isn’t that the goal?
American performance not actually declining.
It appears that declinist narratives about American education have ignored the fact that America has never scored well against other nations in standardized testing of students.
I’m not a fan of traditional education myself; I went to a school that probably would have given you the vapors. We ran around barefoot all day, went on peace marches after 9/11, took a ten-day coed trip to France, ran around on Mount Evans for three days every year (once we were attacked by bears!) and didn’t get letter grades. The school does terribly on standardized tests, but it produces young adults who are well prepared for higher education, the workplace, or whatever they choose to do in life.
Combine my own educational experiences with the above information suggesting that standardized test performance is a poor measure of ability to innovate and produce, and I’m wondering if the “outrageously incompetent” public education system is really just outrageously pressured to test higher, higher, higher, more, more, more. Thus, we lose sight of what could prepare graduates to deal with the world that is.
For instance, I know of only two high schools in my county that have auto shop now. No funding for that silliness, too busy teaching to the test, right? But then where do the kids learn the much more important life skill called “If you have a problem, why not solve it and learn something?”
My opinion is that is a complete twisting of logic. It doesn’t surprise me, coming from Ravitch, though.
I work with DPS kids, and a 30% minority graduation rate isn’t acceptable to me. Is it to you?
Was your school public or private, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m absolutely not trying to find out anything personal about you so if you’re uncomfortable answering that, I’m cool with it.
Mine was a public school. You could figure it out from that description if you’re familiar with educational offerings in my area, but which it is doesn’t really matter. It’s potentially on the list for closure due to test scores, even though I’m in touch with numerous graduates who are doing very well in the workplace, involved in their communities, or if still in college, enjoying academic scholarships and top grades. CSAP scores suck there, because half the kids are probably too busy actually making and inventing and traveling and doing to bother with much filling in of bubbles.
Graduation rate is a statistic and children are individuals–I have a hard time agreeing with anything along the lines of “Let’s blame teachers more and put more fear into the learning environment.” My best teachers were always the ones who had absolutely no fear, so they took risks to reach either the kids who were disengaged from learning or the ones like me who had very little respect for authority.
Are these kids coming to school hungry? That might affect graduation rate. Are they afraid of their parents? Are they sleeping in a motel? Are they hearing from their older siblings that school is for nerds and real men/women drop out and work? Are they facing subtle, unconscious racism from teachers who don’t call on darker skinned kids as often or don’t go out on a limb to create opportunities for them? There are so many community-based factors that affect education, and I don’t think standardized testing can or does measure how schools cope with those. The charter schools pick out the brightest kids from supportive home structures and turn down kids with disabilities, so of course they can do better.
That’s not good enough. Anecdotal stories of productive, happy members of society does not trump the fact that they can’t demonstrate proficiency. I want schools to produce graduates that can show on a test that they know history, math, science, etc.
I realize that some kids are different and require different learning environments (and I wholeheartedly agree with you about vo-tech – we need a HUGE vo-tech academy in every area of the State).
But, Ravitch is simply moving the goalposts and IMO providing cover to the unions, who have since the late 60s presided over the collapse of the US public school system.
And I’m not talking about standardized test results. I have several friends my age (young enough to have taken CSAP in middle and high school) who scored proficient or above regularly who did poorly in college, or did not attend college and are doing poorly in the workplace, or are unemployed, so on and so forth. I looked for studies of how K-12 standardized testing does as a predictor of employment, college graduation, lifetime earnings, or any other metric of adult success other than “proficiency” as defined by the test itself–not outcomes for students tested. Therefore, I don’t consider standardized test scores an accurate metric in substantiating detrimental effects of strong unions on student outcomes.
Really, I’d be quite interested to see if my personal experiences have biased me against an effective educational method. Student outcomes are most important. I am strongly pro-union, but if reducing teacher job security significantly and positively affects the future success of students as functional members of society, I’ll support it. However, I have yet to see (and I’ve looked, including in subscription-only academic databases) any studies that can demonstrate that teachers with less job security produce students who do better in the real world.
Show me facts about employment, earnings, homeownership, anything that indicates kids with teachers who have weaker unions become more empowered, effective adults, and I’ll give it serious thought.
I don’t think it’s the strength of the union that necessarily has anything to do with it.
Check out my link below – here’s a quote from the report: [Emphasis mine]
Just calling something a “twist of logic” without explanation doesn’t work, especially when coupled with the appeal to motive fallacy.
Vouchers will not get more kids out of public schools and into established private schools with a proven track record of success. It will drive up the cost of those schools to the point that vouchers will not make them affordable, and it will drain money away from the public schools thereby making them worse.
My personal experience with public schools isn’t really relevant, as it’s a long time ago and far, far away from here. But my son is in public school now, and he is having a wonderful experience working with sharp kids and dedicated teachers. The kids are pretty much like the ones he went to Catholic school with, but the teachers are much better educated and more qualified to teach their subjects than all but one of his middle school teachers. (The one exception was a public school teacher who retired after 30-something years and went to teach at the Catholic school.)
It sounds like you are talking about the DPS graduation rates, right? So let’s pretend that the kids most at risk of dropping out of school at DPS get vouchers. I’m going out on a limb and assuming that those kids are towards the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. And since we’re playing “let’s pretend,” I’ll even pretend that the voucher will cover the cost of tuition (it won’t, but what the hell). So: They have to buy uniforms; who pays for that? They have to buy their own textbooks; who pays for that? They don’t have free or reduced-price school lunches; who feeds them? They don’t have school buses; who takes them to school?
And while some kids leave public schools for private schools, what happens to the kids who are left behind? The kids who still can’t afford the tuition, uniforms, books, lunches, and transportation to private school? If the public school system was failing them before, is it going to magically improve because of vouchers? Or will the resources available to those school be lower? Will the kids who leave for private schools be a representative sampling, or will they be the more motivated kids with more involved parents who would maybe provide better role models and parent activism at the public schools?
Ellbee, are you really saying that it’s worth flushing public schools down the toilet so a few kids, who would probably succeed wherever they went to school, can go rub elbows with richer kids at private schools?
First, you have to start from the bottom up. Milwaukee’s highly successful voucher program (that the unions dismantled) was restricted to 125% of the poverty line and below. That sounds like a pretty good starting place to me.
Maybe a mandated low-or-no-interest student loan program provided by eligible private schools, or by the State to make up the difference?
http://www.ccu.edu/centennial/…
The link above is a great piece, that I think raises some really good questions related to some eternal pillars and ideas of the US system that might not be as great as advertised, i.e. class size as it relates to success.
I would love to read up about the things that are mentioned in that piece you site. I guess I will have to go rent Waiting for Superman and read Stretching The School Dollar. I hope I pick the right sources out of Stretching The School Dollar, as they aren’t listed in the article, but its cool.
I did, however, read the piece you linked to. I especially like the conclusion that we should be more like Utah, because Utah has such good educational results. And that’s clearly because of Utah’s educational policies, and has nothing to do with the fact that Utah is just about the richest and least diverse state, where the near-ubiquitous Mormon faith results in stable, supportive families, unaffected by alcohol and drug abuse. Of course Utah’s kids perform better academically!
And of course, according to this study, we should look to the Catholic schools as models. “While Catholic schools offer a significantly narrower range of academic programs compared to public schools, they bring an impressive clarity of focus and intensity to their programs, notably
in the area of basic skills.” What the hell does that mean? I’ll tell you: They don’t offer a range of courses to address the range of abilities and interests of the students, and they teach everything through the Catholic faith filter. It happens that today I was talking with a young lady who recently graduated from Catholic high school. She told me that they had to take a class on marriage and sexuality, in which they were never told about intercourse. All they were told about sex was, “Don’t do it until you’re married, and then you don’t have to worry about contraception or STDs.” That’s the “impressive clarity of focus and intensity” that Catholic schools bring to their classes.
Your study is right-wing bullshit, and you won’t answer my questions. Let me remind you what they are:
1. Who pays for the uniforms, textbooks, meals, and transportation for the kids who get vouchers to go to private schools?
2. What happens to the kids who are left behind in public schools? The kids who still can’t afford the tuition, uniforms, books, lunches, and transportation to private school? If the public school system was failing them before, is it going to magically improve because of vouchers? Or will the resources available to those school be lower?
3. Will the kids who leave for private schools be a representative sampling, or will they be the more motivated kids with more involved parents who would maybe provide better role models and parent activism at the public schools?
4. Ellbee, are you really saying that it’s worth flushing public schools down the toilet so a few kids, who would probably succeed wherever they went to school, can go rub elbows with richer kids at private schools?
which happens to also be the easiest: No, that’s not what the voucher proponents are saying PERA.
What they are saying is that it’s worth flushing public schools down the toilet so that the parents of few kids who have won the richness lottery, and already attend private schools, can begin to have that unfair cost burden of those kids’ private schooling shifted from those wealthy parents onto the public . . . duh!
(And, in the particular case of Ellbee — any public flushing is worth, regardless of the cost, it if it helps flush some union.)
“School performance” is only a symptom of societal problems. It’s pretty simple: schools attended by “privileged” kids do well, as do schools with high levels of family involvement. Those two are often combined, which magnifies the disparity with schools that have neither.
By and large, teachers are not the problem. That was what was put in my mouth when I was on the ‘crazy radar’ a couple of weeks ago, but I never said anything like that.
However – if you do have a bad teacher that has tenure, pretty much you’re stuck with them. That’s a huge problem.
Look what happened when the L.A. Times simply published an exhaustive study of teachers, students, and raw success data over a number of years – they were boycotted by CA teacher’s unions.
I find that to be counterproductive at best.
My point is that schools are symptomatic of societal problems–to blame the schools is to put the cart before the horse.
And that there is a correlation (and causation) between the affluence of a given area and how well the schools there perform. Can you think of a poorly performing district in an affluent area?
I see no fault in your arguments.