Re:“,” Aug. 16 editorial.
How dismal does student achievement in Colorado have to be in order to really get The Denver Post’s attention? In your editorial, you referred to recent “flat or declining scores on state wide assessments” as “disheartening.”
Disheartening? Really? How about calling them tragic, unconscionable, or just plain unacceptable?
Yes, you did throw a rhetorical bone to “a few Denver charter schools that have been consistently beating the odds.” Nice! But for how many years has The Denver Post patiently called for improved student performance and then reacted to unsatisfactory scores with platitudes like those you used in your editorial — how “difficult is the task” and that it is “essential that it be done.” But you never demand real action with real consequences.
Clearly the time has come, if not already passed, for your focus to be re-directed from schools and systems to students. Students should be given the resources to attend whatever school their parents think is best for them, be it traditional public, charter public, private, magnet, home, or online.
Asking their parents, once again, to wait for the blob to find the magic sauce, the silver bullet, will not save kids who are currently imprisoned in our worst performing schools which, not coincidentally, are concentrated in our lowest socio-economic neighborhoods, perpetuating the cycles of poverty. When parents in those neighborhoods are empowered with the same ability to choose the best education for their children that more affluent families already have, their schools will need to compete. Either they will figure out how to deliver good education or they will lose their “meat in the seats” because parents will seek out and decide what is best for their kids.
Is not the obvious solution to charterize all schools, freeing them up from the onerous union-imposed rules, policies, practices and restraints that inhibit performance? Better yet, voucherize all low-income students so their parents can shop for whatever education they determine is best for their children.
Flat TCAP scores are unacceptable. But so is your toothless slap on the wrists of those who generate them.
Steve Schuck is a Denver and Colorado Springs real estate developer and education reform activist.
