Failing to Teach Our Kids

In today's Denver Post, head Post opinator Dan Haley hits the nail on the head.

See the article here.

At issue is the botched state attempt to land millions of federal dollars for public education. At play was nearly 400 million dollars for Colorado, which was a slice (big one) from a huge federal pie/grant of funding designed to improve public education.

The problem is that the state failed to include in its application a key piece: "improving the K-12 teacher tenure process by tying teacher evaluations to student achievement."

Simply, Colorado Democrats in the state legislature blinked in challenging the Colorado Teachers Association (CTA). The CTA has historically been one of the main funders of Democratic political activity in Colorado. They would have fired many bullets at this idea and vehemently opposed any linkage between teacher tenure and student achievement.

So, in our opinion, Governor Ritter and his Democratic legislative allies made a political calculation that they were better off keeping the CTA happy and the political donations coming than improving our kids classroom experiences.

Our kids will be the one to suffer.