Search Results for: Douglas County choice

A couple weeks ago I filled you in on how there are two separate groups that have filed their legal complaints against the Douglas County Choice Scholarship Program. Well, as Ed News Colorado reports, now they’ve taken the next official step: Plaintiffs in two lawsuits challenging the Douglas County voucher pilot are asking for an immediate halt to the plan, arguing it must be stopped before any public dollars flow to private schools. “Once the money is illegally diverted away from public schools, the bell can’t be unrung,” said Gregory M. Lipper, attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, one of the plaintiffs.

Court briefs are terrifying to kids like me. They are long, complicated, and governed by a system of rules in which words like “pagination” and “certiorari” are commonplace. And, in a cruelly ironic twist, they are anything but “brief.” Worse still, they have absolutely no pictures. To be honest, I look at most legal briefs as potential stockpiles of spit wad ammunition, not worthwhile entertainment reading. That said, when someone files a legal brief aimed at supporting increased educational choice, it’s hard not to take notice. Such is the case this week. Back on August 4, my friends at the Independence Institute and the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice filed an amicus brief on behalf of Douglas County School District in the ongoing litigation over its pilot Choice Scholarship Program. As you may remember from one of my previous posts, the Colorado Supreme Court agreed to hear the case after an appellate court overturned a lower court’s initial ruling against the program. As David Kopel, the brief’s filing attorney, outlines in a recent blog post, this particular amicus brief is heavily focused on Choice Scholarship Program’s design and the empirical evidence on voucher programs in general.

I think a lot of the policy makers, experts and officials out there don’t get how little patience a little kid like me has. (Or maybe they just don’t care.) But there’s only so many hours I can spend playing Legos, or running around the house screaming and getting on my parents’ nerves, without knowing the details of what’s going to happen with Douglas County School District’s groundbreaking private school choice idea. The last news we heard, my Education Policy Center friends reported on the GoBash blog back in early December. That was right after the DCSD board unanimously adopted a resolution to increase parental choice. A few weeks before that, I told you about the public debate and shared informative arguments in favor of the school choice proposal. At last, today the Denver Post is reporting that district officials have released their first draft including details about their groundbreaking private school choice program (known as the Option Certificate Program):

So last night the Douglas County Board of Education hosted an hour of public comment on proposals made by the community’s School Choice Task Force. Of course, the testimony overwhelmingly was about the “Option Certificates,” or voucher, proposal. The Denver Post‘s Jeremy Meyer reports that public comments “were evenly split for and against the plan.” Ed News Colorado’s Nancy Mitchell says the comments were about 60/40 against the private school choice proposal, though their embedded five-minute video dedicates 80 percent of airtime to opponents. In addition to the Ed News video, you should watch the local 9News report, including a great comment from Douglas County resident and task force member Charcie Russell: “It’s not about private versus public, it’s really about more choice, and I see that great for kids, great for parents, and great for the district,” Russell said. It’s not surprising to see passion on both sides. The opposition, though, should consider the merits of their arguments. Drawing from resources at the Foundation for Educational Choice and the Institute for Justice, my Education Policy Center friends have compiled the following document to address concerns about effects on public school performance, fiscal impact and constitutionality:

Update, 11/9: Douglas County’s choice proposals have been noticed east of the border (the Colorado border, that is). A blogger at Kansas Education notes: …why are so many private schools religious ones? The answer. As a parent, you’re probably already paying taxes to support a school district to which you can send your child. What’s going to motivate you to pay tuition on top of that? Religious faith is one compelling reason. Let parents take some of the money spent on behalf of their child to a private school, and you’ve expanded the range of choices for those parents. Isn’t that a good thing? Most Americans like having more choices rather than fewer. Update, PM: A great resource I overlooked is this Douglas County Choice Task Force FAQ sheet (PDF). Find out why the task force exists, what it’s been up to and what’s coming next. I’d like to think it was my Friday blog post about Douglas County’s private school choice proposal that fired up everyone. While I may be just a little tyke, I’m not that naive! Anyway, let the discussion (and the good times) roll…. On Saturday the Denver Post‘s Jeremy Meyer followed up with a second […]

Update, 11/9: Blogger Ben Boychuk at Somewhat Reasonable gives a plug to Douglas County and to little ol’ Eddie. He echoes our remarks and raises a great point: “Indeed, what if the public schools in Douglas County, Colorado served the interests of taxpayers and parents, and not those of the unions and ranking members of the establishment with a vested interest in preserving the status quo?” I love it when the Denver Post brings big attention to issues I’ve covered here weeks before. It tells me little Eddie is ahead of the curve. It was true of this summer’s Common Core standards debate, and today it’s true of the Douglas County school board looking to expand the boundaries of parental choice. I wrote on October 18 about the DCSD School Choice Task Force: The Task Force has looked at a range of changes for possible recommendation and adoption — everything from improving open enrollment policies to enhancing services available to home schoolers to ensuring equitable treatment of charter schools to considering a local private school choice program. I wrote that after the Board itself publicly reasserted in a public memo: We believe that informed parents, not Board members, are best […]

How often do you see a local school board proactively promoting school choice — including choices inside and outside the district, for the sake of satisfying the local education customers? Let’s be honest: It’s pretty rare. So maybe it’s time to introduce you to the Board of Education for the Douglas County School District, the third largest in Colorado. Last Thursday the DCSD board sent out a memo that included this interesting passage: We also want to address the perception that the Board of Education prefers one type of school over another. Nothing could be further from the truth. Simply put, your Board supports choice. We believe that informed parents, not Board members, are best suited to determine which schools will best serve the needs of their individual students. Under our Superintendent’s leadership, schools are making efforts to define themselves clearly. We strongly support these efforts so that parents have the best information to choose which school will meet the unique learning needs and goals of their children. This work will also provide choices for teachers to match their professional styles with the school’s learning environment. Our role will be properly limited to ensuring that all schools operate on a […]

It has been a long summer break, but I’m back watching over education in Colorado!  And, oh my, what a summer it has been for school choice! On June 26, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled 7-2 in favor of tire scraps. Huh?  Tire scraps? That’s right, tire scraps. A private, church-affiliated preschool in Missouri applied for the provisioning of tire scraps for playground resurfacing under a state grant program, but was turned down because of their church affiliation under the Missouri State Constitution’s Blaine clauses.  The school challenged the decision in court.  The case, Trinity Lutheran v. Comer, made it all the way to our country’s high court, which decided that First Amendment freedom of religion rights supersede the discriminatory Blaine clauses of Missouri’s State Constitution.  The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision means that just because the preschool was affiliated with a church, that should not prevent them from being eligible for the State’s tire scrap grant program. Okay, why should Colorado care about tire scraps in Missouri? In light of this ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to rule on another Blaine-related case—the case regarding Douglas County School District’s Choice Scholarship Program (CSP). Let’s back up […]

Yesterday, we celebrated the continuing success of public school choice by taking a look at some very encouraging findings in Colorado’s public charter school sector. I mentioned in the post that despite the rapid expansion of charter schools, demand is far outstripping supply when it comes to school choice—there are thousands of students on charter waiting lists and in lottery pools across the state. Yet even as I type this, between 10,000 and 15,000 seats sit empty in Colorado private schools. Each of those seats represents the opportunity to change a student’s life, but that doesn’t stop choice opponents from fighting tooth and nail to shut down any attempt to open the door to those opportunities. Sadly, these opponents scored another win against choice in Douglas County last week when 2nd Judicial District Court Chief Judge Michael Martinez—the very same judge who blocked the original Dougco voucher program in 2011—ruled that the district’s new local voucher program, which excludes faith-based schools, is still bound by the Colorado Supreme Court’s sweeping 2015 ruling under Colorado’s Blaine Amendment.

The Pope is Catholic. The sun rises in the east, and sets in the west. The grass is green, the sky is blue. And certain parties will sue groundbreaking educational choice programs that promise to help give kids more opportunities. Two months ago, an ACLU-initiated case against the Dougco Choice Scholarship Program prevailed in the short term, while opening the door to a potential major national victory. A few weeks later, a similar program in North Carolina survived a legal assault. Before that, the ACLU’s efforts to take away tax credits for K-12 scholarship donations was smacked down in New Hampshire, while the union and school board association in case in Florida has stumbled but lives on in the form of distorted arguments about the Sunshine State’s tax credit scholarships.