Gates, Bloomberg, and Corporate Welfare Are Losers in Colorado Vote

With support from major plutocrats who own the U. S. Department of Education and most state departments of education, the plan to turn Colorado’s PreK-12 urban schools into segregated corporate reform schools has gone down in flames with an overwhelming rejection by Colorado voters, 65-35.  For a measure to aid education to be paid for with a tax increase, voters have to know that there is some value to be added.  

What they know from decades of corporamental meddling in Colorado and elsewhere is that, over the past 20 years, public schools have been retooled by corporate know-nothings into competitive testing pressure cookers and cultural sterilization programs meant to pacify the poor.

Several days ago, the Wall Street Journal carried a big story on the impending Colorado vote, with this clip:

Unlike previous fundraising attempts, the current Colorado initiative is tied to comprehensive school reform proposals, which has helped proponents build broad support. Stacy Rader, spokeswoman for the Colorado League of Charter Schools, said charter schools were part of the consultation process that culminated in the drafting of Amendment 66, and, while they didn't get everything they wanted, "there's some good things in this.''

Good things, indeed.  Any public education measure supported by these CorpEd losers is going to lose because the public is not nearly as stupid as our corporate royalty give them credit for being.  

Taxpaying parents have had enough "disruption" from the self-serving corporate troublemakers in our schools.  Colorado has just maybe decided to kick them out the classroom so that learning can continue.

From the NYTimes:

DENVER — They had $10 million in contributions, a barrage of advertising and support from the usually warring factions of the educational establishment. But Democratic leaders in this swing state were dealt a stinging defeat on Tuesday as voters resoundingly rejected an effort to raise taxes by $1 billion a year to pay for a sweeping school overhaul.

The outcome, a warning to Democrats nationally, was a drubbing for teachers unions as well as wealthy philanthropists like Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Bill and Melinda Gates, who pumped millions of dollars into the measure, and it offered a sharp rebuke to Gov. John W. Hickenlooper and the Democratically led legislature, who have recently tugged Colorado to the left with laws on gun control and clean energy.

Waves of newcomers and growth across Denver and its suburbs have made Colorado fertile ground for Democrats in local and national elections in recent years, burnishing its reputation as a liberal outpost flanked by more traditionally rural and conservative states, a place where craft beer abounds, marijuana is legal and same-sex couples can get civil unions. But analysts say those changes belie a bedrock of libertarian disdain for higher taxes and overarching government reforms. The Obama administration also lent its support. . . .

What the New York Times does not get is that there is nothing liberal in the corporate rape of public education and the segregated miseducation of minorities, whether or not it is performed by politicians labeled by (D) or (R). Colorado progressives and progressives everywhere know this—it’s too bad the Wall Street liberals east of the Hudson don’t.