Our View - Thursday

D-11 JUST WANTS MEAT IN THE SEAT
Lawsuit will only hurt kids in need

Leaders of District 11 need to stop trying to protect yesterday's monopoly and start worrying about the needs of students and families in Colorado Springs. The district filed a surprise lawsuit Tuesday in Denver against the Colorado State Board of Education and Hope Online Learning Academy Co-Op. It's demanding "clarification of the rights, roles and responsibilities of each of the parties under a new online learning law enacted by the Colorado Legislature in 2007."

The district fully understands the rights, roles and responsibilities, and is merely trying to obstruct progress. Hope Online, a hugely successful statewide online school, began operating in D-11 and dozens of other districts in 2005. The school is a modern and innovative answer to the problems facing children who haven't done well in the kind of monopolized, one-size-fits-all schools provided by D-11 and other giant districts. It's part of the school choice movement, which provides more options than ever for families of modest means to shop around for educational opportunities that meet the diverse needs of children.

District 11 administrators, who seem to have an absurd amount of control over the elected school board members who are supposed to be in charge, don't like school choice. They like the way things were, when public schools felt entitled to all children whose parents couldn't afford private schools. Public money is attached to each student, and the old guard doesn't like having to compete with charter schools from out of town. They want meat in the seat, and schools such as Hope Online pose a threat.

Unlike every other major school district in the state - Boulder, Denver, Aurora, Westminster, etc. - District 11 has done everything possible to obstruct the progress of Hope Online. The state board ordered D-11 to enter into an operating agreement with Hope Online, which is why the district is suing the board.

In a press release, D-11 officials explain that they're suing in part because of performance concerns involving Hope Online.

"Among the many weaknesses were extremely low CSAP test scores and severe financial accountability and solvency issues," the press release states.

Hog swill. The solvency and accountability issues have been resolved. Hope Online was originally chartered through a small, rural district that became overwhelmed with the program's immediate success. The charter has been moved to a much larger urban district, which has the appropriate resources to manage a growing charter school's books and administrative needs.

The charge that Hope Online's CSAP scores are "extremely low" represents a malicious and dishonest insult. The scores are low precisely because the school attracts underperforming students who have been let down by traditional schools. They typically begin at Hope Online several grade levels behind where they're supposed to be, and their progress has been impressive. In reading, for example, the percentage of Hope students scoring "advanced" or "proficient" in 2007 CSAPs grew by 6.06 percent from 2006. In D-11, it grew by only 0.14 percent. Hope Online clearly helps troubled students succeed.

Apparently, D-11 doesn't care about cooperating with a successful school that's creating promising futures for kids. It cares more about protecting that old, strong monopoly the teacher's union longs to revive. This lawsuit could hurt kids, and the families that care about them. It's a lawsuit that should be dropped.

CU's DIVERSITY CHANCELLOR

G.P. "Bud" Peterson, chancellor of the University of Colorado's flagship campus, seems devoted to diversity after all. And it seems that he cares about the most important diversity of all: intellectual diversity. It's his goal to establish a chair for a conservative professor in order to begin reversing institutionalized intellectual intolerance.

It's the role of a public university to establish a free marketplace of academic ideology and information. While it's never appropriate to hire, fire, admit or reject a person on a basis of skin color, it's entirely appropriate to hire and fire and select or reject on a basis of ideology. Imagine running a public policy institute, or an editorial page, or a public interest law firm without involving intellectual discrimination in hiring.

Students and faculty at the Boulder campus have long complained of intellectual intolerance that has become violent at times. Conservative students have been spat upon and verbally abused. Leftists have shouted at and heckled conservative speakers, including Ann Coulter and the late Charlton Heston. A liberal peace activist was caught on videotape assaulting a Second Amendment supporter who had been peacefully holding a sign.

The front page of the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday called CU-Boulder a "Lefty College" in its headline for a story about Peterson's desire to hire a visiting Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy. The story told how Peterson believes that creating a "diverse" campus should involve more than courses in homosexual literature, Chicano studies and feminist theory. Peterson plans to raise $9 million to endow the chair.

Liberals have already squawked, but they'd do themselves a favor to quiet down. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out, the liberal hierarchy at CU-Boulder has never been in doubt.

Peterson isn't the first academic leader to embark upon an affirmative-action-like move to enhance intellectual diversity. The Journal pointed out that Georgetown recently hired former CIA Director George Tenet to teach. More and more, conservative speakers are being invited to campuses, as customers of higher education grow weary of intellectual intolerance.

Peterson should be applauded for his brave commitment to bring a conservative intellectual into an environment best known for institutionalized intellectual bigotry. If the experiment works, it may help bring down the artificial barriers that have prevented conservatives from competing in the higher education marketplace of ideas. Peterson's ideological affirmative action move should set an example for academic leaders everywhere.