New Democrat Update - September 2001
COLORADO'S CRUMBLING SCHOOLS
In the New Economy, knowledge is increasingly the key to both individual success and economic opportunity. Raising schools' performance and closing the achievement gap is one of our most urgent social tasks. Yet too many kids, especially the disadvantaged, are not prepared with the skills they need to be successful.
Setting standards and holding schools accountable for students achieving these goals is the best way to measure educational progress and redress failure. At the same time, accountability is meaningless without the basic resources that make it possible to achieve the desired results. Every public school must have adequate facilities to provide a safe and healthy learning environment.
Unfortunately, Colorado's public schools are crumbling - over 400,000 students attend schools in disrepair, requiring $3.8 billion to restore these buildings to good condition. A General Accounting Office report - School Facilities, Profiles of School Condition by State - reveals that 58 percent of the state's school districts have at least one building needing extensive repair or replacement.
With state enrollment expected to grow by 28,000 over the next few years, even more infrastructure investment will be needed to remedy overcrowding. "Split-shifts" and classes meeting in trailers are becoming common landmarks of suburban sprawl.
Most enrollment growth is suburban, requiring 150 new schools to built in the next five years. For example, Douglas County School District grew by 150 percent between 1985 and 1998. Northglenn and Thornton face the challenge of building 16 new schools as old neighborhoods are rejuvenated with a heavy influx of young families.
School building conditions matter. In 1996, Dr. Glen I. Earthman of Virginia Polytechnic Institute reviewed studies comparing test scores between students attending standard and substandard buildings. He found a positive difference for the students in the better buildings. It is hard to learn when your school is physically falling apart. Part of the gap between the educational haves and have-nots results from decaying buildings, which are more common in school districts serving disadvantaged and minority students.
Moreover, some of the most promising school reform ideas - public school choice and smaller schools - are hindered by inadequate facilities. Providing parents greater options for their children's education requires decreasing overcrowding and increasing the capacity of desirable schools. Adequate facilities will also be necessary to accommodate additional students from under-performing schools, especially those with consistently unsatisfactory ratings that will, by law, become independent charter schools.
Small schools have demonstrated the ability to offer a strong core curriculum and comparable levels of academically advanced courses. Students from smaller schools have better attendance - when kids move from large schools to smaller ones their attendance improves. Smaller schools also have lower dropout rates and fewer discipline problems.
Only in reaction to a lawsuit settled earlier this year, the legislature recently provided $10 million of construction funding for the state's poorest school districts (Separately, another $5.3 million was dedicated to charter school construction). However, the importance of educational quality, combined with the insufficient fiscal capacity of local school districts, requires the state to play a much stronger and more proactive role.
Thus far, ideological gridlock is preventing the legislature from doing more. Conservatives argue that school construction is solely a local function, and besides, resources are merely a secondary issue. The left counters that money is paramount while often supporting top-down, one-size-fits-all proposals that ignore local realities.
Colorado should move beyond this unproductive stalemate and provide start-up money for newly-created regional School Infrastructure Banks that respond to local needs in flexible ways, with low-interest loans, loan guarantees, credit enhancements to reduce interest costs, or other assistance. Local school districts, businesses and/or non-profit organizations would provide matching funds. U.S. Representative and national DLC Vice Chair Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) has introduced federal legislation that would provide additional resources.
As loans are repaid, these School Infrastructure Banks will become self-sufficient revolving loan funds without an ongoing need for assistance - limiting state costs to initial capitalization of the enterprise. Because of their capacity to leverage and recycle funds, the banks enable limited state funds to have an impact far greater than their size.
Instead of merely standing on the sidelines or directly financing school repairs, the legislature should empower local communities to provide safe, adequate school buildings for children. It is time for the state to become a catalyst that sparks local innovation and leverages local capacity.
The very education - and future - of Colorado's children are at stake.
SWING STATE
With the 2002 U.S. Senate and Governor races rapidly approaching, many in the media, along with political pundits and spinmeisters, will ceaselessly focus on the Republican's 160,000 voter registration margin over Democrats. In their view, that advantage makes statewide races electorally impossible for Democrats.
However, as reported by a recent Ciruli Associates poll, when voters are asked to name their usual party identity, it is a dead heat (40% Republican to 39% Democrat). Forty-seven percent have no or very weak partisan tendencies.
In 1996 exit polls, the state GOP had a 10-point advantage in voter party identification (40% Republican to 30% Democrat). By 2000, that edge shrank to a mere one percent (36% Republican to 35% Democrat).
Rather than focusing on raw party affiliation data, much more insight into the Colorado electorate is available elsewhere. For example, take a look at what has happened to family incomes and the gender gap.
The increasing affluence of the Colorado electorate means that middle-and upper-middle-class voters now dominate elections. Increasingly, this is the swing vote.
In 1992, 50 percent of the state's families made less than $30,000 a year and only eight percent made more than $75,000. By 2000, the first percentage dropped to 20 while the second rose to 25! The percentage of Colorado families making greater than $50,000 more than doubled between 1992 and 2000.
On another front, the conventional wisdom on the gender gap is just plain wrong. In fact, droves of women are not flocking to the Democratic Party - they simply have not been deserting as quickly as men. The nature and size of the gender gap is actually driven by men - the voters who have been "switching" more frequently and dramatically. As a result, when the gender gap grows larger, the GOP generally benefits.
Making additional inroads into the women's vote will get increasingly more difficult for Democrats. That's true because other differences - race, income, education, single, married - have greater influence on voting behavior and generate larger gaps than gender. For example, when minorities are subtracted out of the women vote, Democrats and Republicans roughly split the difference. Majorities of white women voted for the GOP in the 1990s. Nationally, Bush narrowly carried the vote of white women.
Democrats must realize that they are probably doing as well as realistically possible with women. Maintaining that advantage while boosting support among men will require Democrats embracing mainstream positions on cultural issues as well as pushing bold, commonsensical ideas on the "tough governing" issues like fiscal discipline, reforming the tax code, and making government do more with less.
Colorado Democrats can build this new progressive majority coalition by embracing the New Democrat philosophy of opportunity, responsibility and community. In addition to attracting significant numbers of unaffiliated voters, such a message will unify the middle class with those less fortunate.