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Why is Denver trying to buy Western Slope school boards?
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

Why is Denver trying to buy Western Slope school boards?

By Christy Anderson | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice In the Grand Junction area you may have seen flyers in your mailbox accusing our current school board members, Andrea Haitz, Angela Lema and “Willie” (Will) Jones of being “enemies” who “cannot be trusted.” These false attack ads come from Denver’s “Students Deserve Better” campaign. After digging into the financials, Students Deserve Better is also majorly funded by none other than the Colorado Education Association.  The teachers union has a long history that started in the 1970s of using money to influence local elections, but this year’s spending is unprecedented. The Colorado Education Association (CEA) is pouring tens of thousands of dollars into our local school board race to regain control and push their highly...
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Power first, children last: The true legacy of Randi Weingarten’s teachers union
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TownHall.com, Approved, Commentary, National

Power first, children last: The true legacy of Randi Weingarten’s teachers union

By Natalya Murakhver | Commentary, Townhall When America looks back at the COVID era, history will not be kind to Randi Weingarten and the American Federation of Teachers. At a time when our nation’s children needed leadership, compassion, and courage, Weingarten delivered none of it. Instead, she manipulated the crisis of school closures to expand her own political influence, sacrificing the futures of millions of kids and betraying the trust of parents across this country. Let’s be clear: school closures were not primarily about health or science. They were about power. From the very beginning, teachers’ unions lobbied aggressively to keep schools closed far longer than necessary. They pressured public health officials and the CDC to rewrite guidelines in ways that served union int...
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The Union vs. Students: Why I Walked Away
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, National, Top Stories

The Union vs. Students: Why I Walked Away

By Priscilla Rahn, M.Ed, NBCT | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice For 32 years I poured my life into teaching, believing the teachers’ union stood for students and educators like me. But somewhere along the way, the mission shifted—from strengthening classrooms to fueling politics. That’s when I knew I had to walk away. I look back on a career that began in Texas in the early 1990s, where my starting salary was a meager $18,000 a year—barely enough to cover student loans, a car payment, gas, rent, food, and utilities after dividing it into 24 paychecks, leaving me with about $700 every two weeks. I was immediately pressured to join the teachers' union, but with no extra money for dues, I declined. It wasn't until I moved to Colorado that I joined, convinced I needed liabilit...
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Schools tell students not to cheat—yet cheat by rebranding DEI to keep race-based ideology alive
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The Daily Signal, Approved, National

Schools tell students not to cheat—yet cheat by rebranding DEI to keep race-based ideology alive

By Jonathan Butcher, Mike Gonzalez | Commentary, The Daily Signal It’s back-to-school season, and some teachers have promised that the racist ideas from diversity, equity, and inclusion would not be in their classrooms this year. That’s the good news. The bad news is that many of these teachers and administrators are clearly telling whoppers. In fact, K-12 schools and colleges around the country are disguising their DEI offices and their racial preferences. Take Maryland, across the border from the nation’s capital and where many federal bureaucrats sleep and send their children to school. State education officials said schools would comply with President Donald Trump’s executive orders calling on schools to reject DEI, citing the ways in which DEI...
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“Devastating trend”: High school seniors hit record-low reading levels
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Daily Wire, Approved, National

“Devastating trend”: High school seniors hit record-low reading levels

By Leif Le Mahieu | Daily Wire "The achievement gap between students is widening, not shrinking." The Trump administration renewed its push to return control of education to the states after new data revealed continued declines in the reading, math, and science scores of high school seniors nationwide. The National Center for Education Statistics released the “Nation’s Report Card” for 12th-grade students on Tuesday, finding that reading levels had reached new lows and math scores were the worst in 20 years. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said that the numbers confirmed a “devastating trend” of American students testing at “historic lows.” “Despite billions in federal spending and countless well-intentioned programs, the achievement gap between students is widen...
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State Report Highlights Progress and Ongoing Challenges in Colorado Schools
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kdvr.com, Approved, State

State Report Highlights Progress and Ongoing Challenges in Colorado Schools

By KDVR Staff | KDVR Fox 31 DENVER (KDVR) — A total of 55% of Colorado school districts received an accredited or higher rating for the 2025-2026 school year in the preliminary school and district accountability frameworks released Wednesday by the Colorado Department of Education. The frameworks are used to accredit school districts and assign school ratings by measures such as graduation rates, academic achievement and growth, according to the CDE, which said this year’s preliminary frameworks were based on data from 2024-2025. “The steady progress in the school and district frameworks is a testament to the dedication and hard work of our students, staff, and communities over the past few years,” said Colorado Education Commissioner Susan Córdova, in a statement. The 55% acc...
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Are you racist? The Durango School Board thinks so.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Approved, Commentary, Local, Top Stories

Are you racist? The Durango School Board thinks so.

By Protect La Plata Kids | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Durango School District 9-R has spent heavily on a quiet plan to bring diversity, equity and inclusion policies into local classrooms. Attached to this commentary are invoices obtained through CORA requests to the district. They show the board paid Make It Plain Consulting more than $209,000 between 2021 and 2025. A combined file of the invoices can be viewed here. What the community didn’t realize is that the board’s long-term goal was to introduce Critical Race Theory under the banner of DEI. School board directors Kristen Smith, Erika Brown and Andrea Parmenter started by pushing a new resolution for the Durango 9-R Board of Education. As of July 2025, three Federal Civil Rights Complaints were filed against D...
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Veteran Colorado Teacher Opts Out Unions, Champions Educator Choice
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State, Approved, IW Features

Veteran Colorado Teacher Opts Out Unions, Champions Educator Choice

By Jordan Jantz | IW Features When she started taking education courses in college, Jill Cullis thought teaching was just her backup career plan. She never imagined she’d be an educator, let alone spend more than three decades working in Colorado’s public schools, teaching students while helping colleagues find freedom from the teachers union. And she never imagined her workplace would become so politically hostile that she would be forced to retire. “I remember my mom saying, I just kind of came alive when I would talk about teaching,” Cullis told IW Features. “It was sort of a plan B, but in reality, it was God’s plan A for me.” Cullis was raised in a conservative household, and in high school, she read Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose, which cemented the freedom-focused values ...
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Colorado parents shaken as former school counselor faces assault charges
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Fox31, Approved, Local

Colorado parents shaken as former school counselor faces assault charges

By Parker Gordon | Fox31 DENVER (KDVR) — A former Poudre School District counselor has been arrested after allegedly having an “inappropriate relationship with a student for several years”, said the city of Fort Collins. On Tuesday, the city of Fort Collins said in a press release that Cassandra Poncelow, 40, has been arrested on multiple charges, including sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust, following an investigation into Poncelow’s employment at the school district. The city of Fort Collins said that a report was made to Fort Collins Police Services in July that a former counselor at the school district had an inappropriate relationship with a student while employed. Detectives, following the report, initiated an investigation into Poncelo...
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Gimelshteyn: Don’t blame Trump—Colorado’s education crisis was created by failed state and local leadership
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Colorado Politics, Approved, Commentary, State

Gimelshteyn: Don’t blame Trump—Colorado’s education crisis was created by failed state and local leadership

By Lori A. Gimelshteyn | Commentary, Colorado Politics According to the 2024 Colorado Measures of Academic Standards (CMAS) results, an alarming seven in 10 students in Denver Public Schools (DPS) are not meeting grade-level expectations in math and nearly 60% of students are not proficient in English. That is not a small gap; it is a catastrophic failure. But instead of taking responsibility, DPS and progressive politicians are pointing fingers at the federal government, pretending they had no warning of federal funding requirements, all while defending classrooms increasingly focused on ideology instead of academics. On July 2, CBS Colorado reported the Trump administration froze nearly $7 billion in federal education funding nationwide, including $70 million earmarked for Colo...
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