[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Education.]
By Max Eden & Tracey Schirra
Real Clear Education
The Biden administration is making a habit of asserting centralized authority over public schools by stretching longstanding federal laws beyond recognition. In Colorado, however, local education leaders have found new room for school choice well within the bounds of state law. Colorado’s trailblazing approach to school authorizing could open a new policy front in the battle for educational freedom – so long as pro-school choice state legislators choose not to surrender but to defend this innovation and encourage their colleagues in other states to imitate it.
The school choice strategy in America has traditionally been divided into two prongs: private school choice through vouchers, tax credits, or education savings accounts; and public school choice, mainly through charter schools. While private school choice may finally be making a breakthrough, the charter school sector has unfortunately stagnated. School districts have learned that authorizing a new charter school within their district can make the schools they manage directly look bad. And other charter school authorizing bodies have largely fallen under the sway of a pro-regulatory paradigm that stymies the creation of minority-led schools and favors charter schools that look and act just like traditional public schools.
But choice-friendly education leaders in Colorado have found something new under the sun: authorizing schools through a Board of Cooperative Education Services (BOCES). A BOCES is a formal administrative alliance of school districts, authorized under state law, that enables smaller school districts better to deliver specialized services to their students. While BOCES typically provide services like special education or transportation, leaders of Colorado’s Education Reenvisioned Board of Cooperative Educational Services (ERBOCES) realized that state law provided them the power to authorize new schools – without geographic restriction.
This flexibility has enabled ERBOCES to authorize quality schools when school district charter authorizers, which have a structural incentive to defend traditional public schools against the competition, refuse to sign off. For example, the ERBOCES-authorized school Merit Academy had initially applied to be a charter school, only to be rejected by its local school board, whose schools have gone all-in on computer-centered pedagogy. In contrast, as the Federalist’s Joy Pullman points out in her profile of the classical K-8 school, Merit “offers a low-screen, high-relationship environment and a focus on creative and critical thinking through careful attention to classic works and traditional approaches to math and science.” The result? The school attracted over 10% of the local district’s population in its inaugural year.
ERBOCES has also authorized Orton Academy, a specialized school for elementary students with dyslexia and other reading difficulties. Whereas traditional public schools frequently fail to diagnose, much less properly address, dyslexia, Orton students have access to a certified academic language therapist for an hour every day. For some, this may mean the difference between fluency and functional illiteracy.
Another unique school authorized by ERBOCES is Ascend College Prep, a STEM-literacy-focused high school for 11th and 12th graders that offers dual enrollment in postsecondary institutions and a work-study program. “It helps me with the big picture of what I want from my high school education,” said Ella Szucs, a junior at Ascend who is using her school’s work-study program to make progress on earning a pilot license. “[Ascend is] going to help me with aspects in life that I need that are not learned in a typical classroom,” she explained.
But Colorado’s public education establishment has taken notice and is striking back. Colorado Springs District 11 filed a lawsuit against ERBOCES for authorizing the Orton Academy inside of its boundaries. District 11 lost but has appealed the case, which will now be heard in the Colorado Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, the establishment has also fought back in the Colorado legislature, passing a temporary moratorium over BOCES’s ability to authorize brick-and-mortar schools in other districts without the permission of those districts. The law will sunset at the end of this school year, setting up another round of legislative deliberation.
But will choice-friendly state legislators fight to defend this innovative initiative? Few officials are prepared to mount a campaign to defend the prerogative of a governing body that few citizens have ever heard of.
But this is a cause worth fighting for. If legislators were to stand up and expend political capital to defend this innovation, they could end up having an impact far beyond the borders of Colorado. Forty-five states have laws establishing and governing educational service agencies, which work similarly to BOCES. And with just a small change in statute, they too could be empowered to authorize new, innovative, and dynamic schools.
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