Tripped up by teachers union
The CEA's opposition was a major factor in Colorado's failure to acquire Race to the Top funds. Still, reforms will move on.
By The Denver Post
Posted: 08/25/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

Colorado's largest teachers union stubbornly refused to support Colorado's Race to the Top bid and it ended up being a major factor in the state being shut out of big-money federal education grants announced Tuesday.
The Colorado Education Association must be tickled.
The decision means Colorado schools have lost out on a grant potentially worth $175 million. And, we must point out, the chief reason the union opposed the state's bid, Senate Bill 191, is still state law.
Way to go, CEA.
Close scrutiny of the results of the federal review of Colorado's application makes clear how severely the state was graded down because of the teachers union lack of support.
There's an unfortunate lack of consensus in Colorado political circles regarding education reform. While we applauded Gov. Bill Ritter for eventually supporting SB 191, the centerpiece of the state's bid, he failed to build a coalition to support it.
Reform still will happen in Colorado, it just may take longer and will be difficult to pay for.
Local districts, which would have gotten a significant portion of the grant money, still will have to implement the promised reforms. They just won't have the federal cash to help pay for it.
The refusal of the teachers union was a big factor in the loss, but not the only factor. The state's application also was marked down because of a lack of buy-in from all of Colorado's school districts.
That loss of points is puzzling, since the districts that did support the application teach 90 percent of the state's public school children.
And it made us wonder whether the folks in Washington, D.C., were uncomfortable with the notion of local control, a guiding principle in Colorado's K-12 education system.
Another disheartening portion of the Race to the Top results had to do with the scores attributed to the state's groundbreaking teacher tenure bill. The application appears to have been marked down for lack of union support for the measure.
Senate Bill 191 was hailed around the country as an aggressive reform. The CEA fought it tooth and nail, despite numerous efforts to include the union in shaping the bill without allowing it to gut the measure.
In an op-ed piece that ran in The Denver Post in May, Education Secretary Arne Duncan spoke of the need for bold plans and political courage, and said Race to the Top strategies that relied on "watered-down reforms with broad buy-in" were not what he had in mind.
Colorado followed this blueprint in pursuing SB 191. Getting the bill through the legislature was a bloody fight, and the CEA was an obstructionist force every step of the way.
The bill passed anyway, and the governor signed it. The CEA, however, refused to support it.
Still, it was the right thing to do for Colorado school children.
Education reform still will happen in Colorado. It may take longer, and sadly, there won't be any extra federal money involved. But it's clear the momentum is there for game-changing education reforms whether the CEA likes it or not.