“Folks are being pushed to the edges on the right and left on politics,” longtime Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg is quoted in Chalkbeat as saying at a Gates Family Foundation event held on Friday to discuss Denver’s successful model of education reform. “Part of what we’ve been able to do in Denver for some time is to reject the orthodoxy of the left and right.”
The next day, the “orthodoxy of the left” had its say.
The Colorado Democratic delegates held their state assembly on Saturday and approved a minority-proposed amendment to their education platform: “We oppose making Colorado’s public schools private or run by private corporations or becoming segregated again through lobbying and campaigning efforts of the organization called Democrats for Education Reform and demand that they immediately stop using the party’s name Democrat in their name.”
That’s one shaky, insecure, and misleading push to the left edge. And it’s a platform that this member of the Democratic Party won’t set foot on.
DFER is firmly against “making Colorado’s public schools private” or “becoming segregated again.” They lobby and campaign forcefully and successfully to make education more equitable: to increase funding, to increase the quality of schools, and to empower all families with the right to choose the best school for their child—especially African-American and Latino families in underserved neighborhoods who have traditionally been denied any educational choices.