Photo: Students at Pagosa Valor Academy, a private Christian school for homeschooling families.
While writing yesterday in Part Three about John Taylor Gatto’s criticism of American education, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, published in 1992…
…I recalled that the 1990s were a period of educational turmoil. Here in Colorado, the legislature passed Senate Bill 56 in 1988, creating a legal foundation to allow families to homeschool their children without running afoul of truancy laws.
Several other laws affecting homeschooling were passed in the early 1990s, including a 1993 law that opened public school extracurricular activities to Colorado’s homeschool students. In 1994, Senate Bill 4 allowed homeschooling parents the option of having a portfolio of their children’s work evaluated by a “qualified person” rather than having their children evaluated by standardized testing.
In 1993, the Colorado legislature passed the Charter Schools Act, which states in part:
(c) Different pupils learn differently and public school programs should be designed to fit the needs of individual pupils and that there are educators, citizens, and parents in Colorado who are willing and able to offer innovative programs, educational techniques, and environments but who lack a channel through which they can direct their innovative efforts…
But parents of young children in Pagosa Springs didn’t take advantage of this political change — allowing the creation of semi-autonomous, innovative public schools — until 2017, when Pagosa Peak Open School (PPOS) opened its doors in the former Parelli Natural Horsemanship office building near Walmart.
Although John Taylor Gatto’s specific complaints about the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling did not get mentioned in the 400-page PPOS application to the Archuleta School District, it could be argued that the educational model chosen to guide instruction at PPOS — Project-Based Learning — was designed to address some of Mr. Gatto’s concerns.
Disclosure: I currently serve as a volunteer board member at Pagosa Peak Open School, but this editorial reflects only my own personal opinions, and not necessarily the opinions of the PPOS board or staff.
During the seven years that PPOS has been operating, the students have annually been tested on the English Language Arts (ELA) and mathematics standards established by the Colorado Department of Education (CDE) — which are, in turn, based on the Common Core State Standards developed by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the National Governor’s Association, both of which claim to be either “non-partisan” or “bi-partisan”.
As noted previously, only about 1 out of 3 Colorado students ‘met or exceeded expectations’ in mathematics in the 2024 Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) test. Students in the state did somewhat better in ELA, with about 42% ‘meeting or exceeding expectations’.
The CDE also administers standardized science tests to 5th, 8th and 11th graders. Among 11th graders less than 25% of student ‘met or exceeded expectations’ in science last spring.
We might wonder how may students would ‘meet or exceed expectations’ in Physical Education? But no such test is administered in Colorado.
Ditto, history and civics. Students are not tested on their knowledge of American or world history, nor on their understanding of federal, state and local government.
From a story in The Federalist by John Dill, one of the founders of the Merit Academy charter school in Woodland Park:
Merit Academy is a classical, Core Knowledge school that opened on August 23, 2021, to 184 full-time students and more than 80 part-time homeschool students. The parents and community members who built Merit sought an education that would challenge children and build lasting friendships, without the controversial politics often found in public schools.
A significant number of people in America are uncomfortable with certain political discussions, and would classify those political discussions as “controversial”. I’m referring to conversations around racial discrimination, for example. Conversations around sexuality, sexual orientation, and reproductive health. Conversations around gun violence. Conversations about public health policy. Conversations about poverty and inequality. Conversations about mass incarceration.
A significant number of people in America would prefer that children be ‘protected’ from exposure to these controversial subjects — that children be kept ignorant of the conflicting ideas raging in the adult world. To have their innocence preserved, so to speak.
Obviously, a typical student in kindergarten does not have the life experiences that would allow them to understand Jim Crow politics or the civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.
How about a 9th grader? My granddaughter entered ninth grade this year at Pagosa Springs High School. Her friends are defining themselves in terms of sexual orientation. They have concerns about climate change, and racism, and vaccinations, and abortion rights, and gun violence, and war.
Do I want her to attend a school that acts as if these controversies do not exist? Perhaps that’s exactly what some parents want, and apparently Merit Academy provides a charter school environment where students can be protected from exposure to the range of opinions about America’s current cultural landscape and its future.
Speaking for myself, I studied algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus in school, and passed the courses with good grades. I’ve not used any of those advanced math skills, to speak of, since I left high school in 1970. Maybe a little geometry, when doing carpentry work. But, really… will I ever use calculus?
The decision to compel Colorado students to spend several years of their young lives learning math skill they have no interest in and will never use, is a political issue. The fact that in spite of that effort, the majority graduate without ‘meeting or exceeding expectations’ in math is a political issue.
The decision that Colorado students are not tested on their understanding of America’s political system by the time they graduate, is another political issue.