Category Archives: Independence Institute

Roy Romer is the former governor of our state and leader of a national group that wants politicians to talk more about education. This very important man sat down with Berny Morson from the Rocky Mountain News to answer five questions. Here’s the very first thing Gov. Romer said: Since ’83, we’ve really made relatively little progress, we’ve really been static. The rest of the world has been going up very rapidly. Among 30 industrial nations, we’re 25th from the top in math. We’re 21st from the top in science. Other countries have made great progress. Poland, South Korea, Singapore, Finland, Canada – we simply have not kept pace with the progress in education worldwide. Graduation will occur in a couple of weeks, and nearly 1.2 million kids won’t graduate who should have graduated. We have a real crisis on our hands. A good reminder for people around Denver to come out this Wednesday, May 21, to see Flunked: The Movie. Gov. Romer might want to see the successful innovations featured in the film, innovations that offer hope to America’s public schools. Time is running out to sign up for this exciting, limited-space event.

According to the Washington Post, voters in Florida have a chance to remove the bigoted Blaine Amendment from their state constitution. The Post points out that the Blaine Amendment has been used in different states to discriminate against certain kinds of educational opportunities: Patricia Levesque, the commission member who pushed to add the measure, said she acted because a 2004 appeals court decision cited the Blaine Amendment while striking down then-Gov. Jeb Bush’s effort to allow students in failing schools to enroll in parochial and other private schools at public expense. Independence Institute senior fellow Krista Kafer, while she still worked at the Heritage Foundation in 2003, noted the background that put the offensive Blaine Amendments in 37 states (including Colorado): Vestiges of an anti-Catholic movement, these provisions are named after Congressman James Blaine of Maine for his efforts to add such language to the U.S. Constitution. In the mid-nineteenth century, anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant bigotry found expression in American institutions and politics. The emerging public schools were commonly Protestant in character, requiring, for example, the reading of the Protestant King James Version of the Bible in classrooms. Efforts to secure funding for Catholic schools were resisted. After the Civil War, […]

Do you live around Denver? Are you concerned about educational opportunity in Colorado? Do you want to see real-world examples of what can be done to fix our current public education system? Then please save the date of Wednesday, May 21. The Independence Institute is sponsoring the Colorado debut of Flunked: The Movie, a 47-minute film that’s more exciting than your average documentary. Here’s a preview: To learn more, listen to an iVoices podcast interview with the producer of Flunked. If you are interested in coming to watch the film on May 21, go here to find out how to sign up.