Colorado’s public K-12 education system went broke in 2008-2009. The brokenness was so bad the Legislature created the “negative factor,” the difference between the state dollars per student schools receive and the dollars they should receive.

The negative factor reached a $1,278 per student deficit in 2012-13. It’s now down to $1,000 per student. Children in public schools since 2009 have lost out on $6,006 per student, or $180,180 for a classroom of 30 kids. During the same period, education foundations poured money into the state.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the star money pusher at $121,084,495 since 2010. The Colorado Education Initiative, the Colorado Department of Education’s foundation, scored $22,220,340 from Gates. Denver Public Schools took in $25,532,007, with an additional $759,938 sent to two charters, Denver School of Science and Technology and STRIVE Prep.

Charter schools received a huge boost from the Gates’ donation to Charter School Inc., dba Charter School Growth Fund, at $33,716,724. The Fund invested in DPS’s DSST, STRIVE Prep, and Rocky Mountain Prep charters. Education reformer Stand for Children took in $12,110,821. The Gates Foundation pitched $400,000 to Colorado Succeeds, run by Scott Laband, a former staffer of state Senator Michael Johnston, who sponsored SB10-191, the Great Teachers and Leaders Act.

The money creates winners and losers. Clear winners are education reformers such as CEI, Stand for Children, and Johnston and Laband, who managed to get a $300,000 fiscal note price tag on SB10-191 when the teacher evaluation program costs districts millions of dollars.

Testers also won, reaping profits from student assessments used for teacher evaluation. Employees at CEI won. CEI even paid several of its staffers as they worked for CDE on implementing SB10-191, creative accounting that kept their salaries off CDE’s books.

Losers include transparency aficionados who want to track spending that affects state policy. CEI’s mission is to support CDE, which supports the whole state. CEI’s programs show great concern with college readiness, and not much, if any, concern for career readiness.

It’s impossible to tell how broadly or fairly CEI distributes its grants to various programs. CEI will be under scrutiny if it’s the funder of alternative assessment pilots under HB15-1323, the revised assessment bill. CEI’s latest Annual Report, published in 2013, only lists gross assets and liabilities.

Losers also include many neighborhood schools across the state, particularly in Denver, when compared to the richly funded DSST and STRIVE Prep. While most schools have lost funding since 2009, these two charters are swimming in it.

Green Valley Elementary School, a neighborhood school in the 80249 ZIP Code, scored 56.95 on reading in 2014. DSST Green Valley middle and high schools, in the same ZIP Code, scored 71.4 and 72.95. The math gap is lower: 56.62 at GV Elementary, 63.11 at DSST GV Middle, and 61.71 at DSST GV High School.

All that money bought 14.45 more points in reading scores and about 5.5 points higher in math. Anyone want to fund a Colorado Neighborhood School Growth Fund?

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.

CORRECTION: It was Charter School Inc., dba Charter School Growth Fund, that received $33,716,724 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, not, as stated in an earlier version of this article, the Colorado League of Charter Schools. We regret the error.