COLORADO

Article Dated May 18, 2007 - Mike Rosen, writing in the Rocky Mountain News reports on SB 73 and why it died in "Education's union label".

In February, freshman Democrat, Sen. Chris Romer, sponsored a bill to require schools to adopt competency in the English language as a graduation requirement for high school students starting in 2012.

Rosen writes that Senate Education Committee Chair Sue Windels dismissed Romer as a "wild-eyed newbie," who just doesn't understand the way the game is played.

Under public pressure, the bill was rescued from the Appropriations Committee graveyard and was ultimately passed by the Senate 33-1 (Windels being the sole dissenter). In the final weeks of the legislative session, SB 73 was killed by Democrats in a party-line vote in the House Education Committee, preventing it from coming to the floor for a full vote in the House. Their lame excuse was that the bill would be an "unfunded mandate" on public schools.

He continues,

The ease with which this perfectly sensible bill was killed in the legislature is testimony to the death grip that the teachers' unions have over education in our state.

All four of the Democrats on the Senate Education Committee are current or former members of teachers unions. Of the eight Democrats on the House Education Committee, five come from the ranks of unionized teachers, one is the husband of a former teacher, and another was a winner of the Jeffco teachers union's "Friend of Education Award."

He concludes,

The teachers' unions spend lavishly to get their people elected to public office. As long as they're calling the shots in the state legislature, public education will continue to be subordinated to their special interest at the expense of students, parents and taxpayers.

TT - Outrageous. It's Colorado.