The Gazette’s lead headline on the top of the front-page on August 21 was, “Students Continue Learning Recovery”. Recovery? Returning to pre-Covid statewide failure rates of 60% to 70% is no reason to celebrate.

Only 30 percent of Colorado’s students could read, write, add, and subtract at grade level before Covid and now we consider it a recovery to have “returned “ to those same dismal levels. Give me a break!

Whether pre Covid or post Covid, where is the outrage? When, just when, will we expect and demand better results? There are no activities in our society, absolute none, that would tolerate this degree of failure. Shame on us! All kids, but especially those trapped in underperforming, failing schools, deserve better.

Covid did provide one redeeming benefit. It peeled back the onion and revealed the inexcusable, serious damage inflicted on past, current, and future generations by teachers’ unions and those boards of education that colluded with them . They are all guilty of malfeasance, or worse.

They are enablers who share the blame for decades of academic failure, especially among black, brown, and economically disadvantaged students imprisoned in our worst performing schools. Parents of those young, innocent victims have been kept under mushrooms, hidden from what has actually been happening to their children in their classrooms. Now that the sun is finally shinning its light on reality, there is no excuse, none whatsoever, to not hold those responsible for this disaster accountable for the harm they continue to cause. It should be evident to everyone that the system, the “blob”, is an employment center for adults, not a learning center for students.

Were it not for the higher scores generated by charter schools, most of which remained open and continued to educate kids during Covid, the headline would not have been so cheery. Charters juiced up the scores, yet the unions still attack them. Has the “blob” never heard of the practice of identifying and emulating best practices? Why doesn’t the public school monopoly study charters and replicate what charters are doing so well? In a free competitive market, they would either do so or die. Either way kids would benefit.

It is time to break the monopoly. It is time to transfer control of education dollars to parents, empowering them to choose the schools they think are best for their children, be they traditional public, charter public, private, or even home. When parents can choose what is best for their children, providers will have no alternative but to compete for their dollars. When that happy day arrives, competition will do its magic. For too long, teachers’ unions have maintained a strangle hold on the system, able to reject creativity and innovation while escaping accountability, all to the determent of students.

How long will Coloradans continue to tolerate 70% of our 7th graders being unable to add and subtract at grade level while 55% of our 4th graders are unable to read and write at grade level? How bad must it get before public schools are again controlled by the public, emancipating them from the toxic, private, self-serving, destructive control of teacher unions?

It doesn’t have to be this way. Teachers know how to teach. Charter schools, magnet schools, innovative schools and even some traditional public schools have demonstrated that all kids — yes, including those of color and those coming from disadvantaged circumstances — can learn.

It is time for dollars to chase success, not failure! Pay high performing teachers more and poorer performers less (or nothing). Pay bonuses to principals leading schools that produce improvement. Open ourselves up to a new way of thinking.

Empower parents, elevate expectations, accept no excuses, unleash teachers, and reward the success that will be certain to follow.

It ain’t rocket science — it is just common sense!

Steve Schuck is a Colorado Springs businessman and the co-founder of Parents Challenge with his wife, Joyce.