Tag Archives: School Finance

Welcome back, friends. I apologize for my absence during the second half of last week. Do you have any idea how busy an intrepid policy explorer like myself gets in the closing weeks of the legislative session? Plus, I had to carve out some extra time to watch interesting education TV shows hosted by my Independence Institute policy friend Ross Izard. See here for a segment on charter funding equity, and here for one of my favorite Colorado private schools, Arrupe Jesuit High School. I’m sorry I left you hanging. But now we’re back. And we’ve got some serious edu-policy work to do. Today’s topic: school finance in Colorado. No, no. Don’t run. I promise it’ll be (mostly) painless. I started thinking about how important it is to get accurate information out there about school finance in Colorado when I read a Colorado Public Radio story about our state’s supposed failure to adequately fund its public schools despite a “booming” economy.

There’s a neat new site you ought to see if you care about public schools: Utah Education Facts. The highlight of the site is a video where they interview average Utahns and ask them questions about the financing and spending of their state’s education system: For those who aren’t from Utah, what if somebody asked you these same sort of questions about your state? How prepared would you be? Of course, the point isn’t to pick on individuals for their knowledge or lack thereof. Instead it highlights the misinformation on which poll-based demands for more education funding largely are based. Ultimately, such a project should aim to arm the populace with more knowledge and information. And isn’t that a major part of what education should be about? Does anyone doubt a similar “man-on-the-street” interview video project here in Colorado would be a good idea? I hope somebody out there is paying attention.