If “opportunity gaps” are all that matter in education, then if the worst-performing students do 20% better and the best-performing students do 30% better, then that is a bad outcome, because the “opportunity gap” has gotten larger. And if the worst-performing students do 5% worse but the best-performing students do 10% worse, then the “opportunity gap” has improved.
Its obsession with such gaps is the first reason why I’m skeptical of Senate Bill 170, which creates a privately funded task force “to study and report on how to expand access to effective public schools to address opportunity gaps” (here referring to the April 30 version of the bill).
If gaps happen to close because of more effective approaches, great. But insofar as effectiveness is defined by what reduces outcome gaps, that’s the wrong target. The right target is ensuring that every student becomes literate and numerate.
To be sure, Colorado schools have largely failed to educate disadvantaged students. So, far from ignoring gaps, I have frequently sounded the alarm.
If you look at the 2025 results from the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, you will find that, while 62.2% of Asian students and 56.1% of white students met or exceeded expectations in eighth-grade language arts, only 30.7% of black and 26.5% of Hispanic students did. Turning to eighth grade math, while 57.1% of Asian and 47.6% of white students met or exceeded expectations, only 20.2% of black and 16.6% of Hispanic students did.
The blunt fact is that substantial numbers of students are coming out of Colorado schools unable to read well or do basic math. And that is absolutely shameful. So I’m definitely on board with the intent of the bill’s sponsors to improve the quality of education. I just don’t think the proposed task force is likely to fulfill that intent.
Incentives problems
I’ve also written about the inherent incentives problems with coercively financed schools. The basic problem is that parents are forced to finance the public schools, whether they use them or not, and whether the schools perform well or not.
Moreover, the most powerful lobbying groups in education are the teachers’ unions, which on the whole are motivated to maximize tax funding and minimize accountability. And those without children nevertheless forced to help finance the schools have little incentive to seek better outcomes.
What the public schools need, then, assuming we must work within that framework, is a dramatic shake-up from the outside. What the SB 170 task force instead promises is yet another report mostly by the same institutional insiders responsible for producing today’s educational failures.
According to the bill, the task force will consist of the following nineteen political appointees:
* A representative of the state board.
* A representative of a community organization with a focus on closing opportunity gaps.
* A Metro Denver school leader at a Colorado public school with a demonstrated track record of meaningfully narrowing opportunity gaps.
* A representative of a statewide organization that represents educators.
* A school leader at a rural public school.
* A representative of a statewide organization that represents teachers.
* A representative of a statewide parent organization that focuses on education policy and closing opportunity gaps.
* A representative of an organization that works with or at a facility [high-needs] school.
* A school leader at a public school in Southern Colorado with a demonstrated track record of meaningfully narrowing opportunity gaps.
* A representative of a statewide organization that represents superintendents.
* A school teacher in a Colorado public school classroom with a demonstrated track record of meaningfully narrowing opportunity gaps.
* A representative of a statewide organization that focuses on education policy and closing opportunity gaps.
* A representative of a statewide organization that represents educators with a particular focus on education policy and closing opportunity gaps.
* A school leader at a Colorado public school that is a community school . . . and that has a demonstrated track record of meaningfully narrowing opportunity gaps.
* A representative of the governor’s office.
* A representative of a statewide organization that represents charter schools.
* A school leader at a public school in northern Colorado with a demonstrated track record of meaningfully narrowing opportunity gaps.
* A recent graduate of a Colorado public high school with a demonstrated track record of meaningfully narrowing opportunity gaps.
* One representative of the department [of education] who focuses on addressing opportunity gaps.
Call me crazy, but it seems to me that a task force for improving education should include people who are experts at teaching kids how to read and do math.
To summarize: The task force has the wrong aims, insofar as it obsesses with closing gaps rather than improving achievement for all, and members for the most part probably will be more inclined to reinforce the status quo than to advocate substantive meaningful changes.
Another look at Mississippi
GDP per capita in Colorado is $97,184 (for 2025). In Mississippi it is $55,877, the lowest of U.S. states. In Colorado 44% percent of the population has Bachelor’s degree or higher. In Mississippi the figure is 25%.
Out of the gate, then, you’d expect Colorado students on average to radically outperform Mississippi students. But that is not what we find. Instead, if we look at the National Assessment of Educational Progress, we find that Colorado students are barely ahead of their Mississippi counterparts in reading and math (and tied in fourth grade math).
Rachel Canter writes for the Atlantic, “When adjusting for demographic factors such as poverty,” Mississippi ranks first in “fourth-grade reading and math scores.” So what’s going on there, and what can Colorado learn from those efforts?
In a report for the Progressive Policy Institute, Canter summarizes what led to the “Mississippi Miracle” (something I’ve also discussed before). Canter focuses on four main strategies:
1. “States must set high learning standards, accurately assess students against those standards,
and hold schools accountable for the results.”
2. States should use “rating systems to honestly gauge how well schools are succeeding and
enforcing consequences for poor outcomes.”
3. Schools need to avoid fads and focus on methods that actually work, such as phonics-based reading rather than “look-say” approaches.
4. States need to enact “tight quality control across state-funded programs.”
In her Atlantic piece, Canter summarizes various problems other states have fallen into in trying to reproduce the Mississippi Miracle. Michigan failed to uphold high standards, “allowing parents to opt their children out of being held back” if needed. Georgia in practice has been slow to push reading instruction that works. California substantially fails to enforce standards.
What I get from Canter’s review is that entrenched interests resist implementing meaningful reforms. The Colorado task force is set up to reproduce those pathologies.
Meanwhile, my homeschooled ten-year-old, who has never in his life spent a day in a standard public school (he does attend a one-day-per-week enrichment program), scores in the top one percent in literacy and math on the California Achievement Test, and he’s doing well in science and history.
The basic problem is not that we don’t know how to effectively teach students. The problem is that the public schools lack the institutional incentives to do so effectively, the occasional “miracle” aside. Don’t hold your breath waiting for the new task force to change that.
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
