Colorado Court Strikes Down Vouchers

In Colorado, the state Supreme Court has ruled that a voucher program is unconstitutional because it deprives local school boards the necessary control over education. Colorado’s voucher program was the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that vouchers could be legal.

Court TV explains:

[T]he program requires school districts to turn over a portion of locally raised funds to private schools, over which local school boards have no control. That violates the local-control provisions of the Colorado Constitution, the court said. ... Ron Brady, president of the Colorado Education Association, the state's largest teachers' union, said it will likely be impossible to devise a voucher program that passes state constitutional muster because of strong prohibitions against giving taxpayer money to private or religious institutions.

These likely problems will not, however, stop voucher supporters from continuing to try. The above report also states that a new voucher program would probably be introduced to the state legislature in 2005 and we’ll just have to see what it looks like. Politicians’ support for voucher programs has always been rather curious. If they think that private schools have better methods of education, why not advocate for the introduction of those methods to public schools? If those methods can’t be introduced because they are unconstitutional, why funnel public money to support them?

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