Editor’s note: Colorado Politics presents “Which way to better Colorado schools?” We’re offering seven perspectives on improving education in the state.

They are hurtling forward as the speed accelerates. The road has unpredictable twists, hills and turns. Our children, the hope of society, are strapped tightly in this flying vehicle. Yet its driver’s eyes are locked on the few square inches of its rear view mirror- looking backward – as it races into the future.

Today more than 900,000 Colorado children are compelled into public education. The system is an echo of Prussian martial order. It is an artifact of John Dewey’s late 19th century design to sift and sort students for the long past Industrial Age. And it is all frozen into place by a finance model that constrains it like limestone ossified dinosaur bones.

To prepare our children and society for the future into which we are racing, we must think and act differently about how the money of public education is spent. Our perspective must shift from one that looks backward to antiquated patterns and programs, to a new paradigm that focuses forward on students and offers customizable opportunities.

This year Colorado public education (kindergarten through 12th grade) will consume $11.7 billion. That works out to about $271,000 per classroom and $13,000 per student. Not an insignificant amount of money, it places Colorado squarely in the middle of what states invest per student in public education.

Yet, the Colorado student graduation rate rests near 79 percent. Remediation rates – the percentage of students who retake high school classes after they get to college – run as high as 35 percent of students, including even those coming out of some of our most economically successful suburban neighborhoods. And the third-grade literacy rate hovers just above 70 percent.

The response to this suboptimal result from those most vested in protecting the status quo has been to ask for more money, beyond the increases provided by the legislature the last many years, all of which significantly outpaced economic and population growth.

The people of Colorado have not wavered in their answer to the idea of more money multiplied across the existing system. This past election, for the third time in seven years, the voters of Colorado said, “no” to the question, “Should more money be poured into the current system?”

Because so much money is at stake and the voters have rejected across-the-board funding increases, and education results remain disappointing, key questions about the glue that holds the old system together (the funding formula) loom large. Are we making the best use of our education dollars for the benefit of students? Are those dollars properly focused on the core mission of public education? Does the funding model promote or obstruct the ability to customize education to meet individual student needs?

The “wisdom of crowds” is apparent. The instinct of the voters is a call for change to move public education forward. Their perspective is based on their experience in 178 school districts that span the state and the kitchen table conversations in the homes of the 900,000 students and the communities in which those students live.

What does the next generation of public education look like and can the funding formula drive the changes that bring that paradigm shift to life? Can a forward-looking, student-centered model be coaxed to life? Can the billions of dollars that will flow through the system be made free and flexible to meet the needs of each individual student and her family as her needs and those of her family’s change throughout her educational career?

One thing is certain: Those of us responsible for driving the vehicle that propels students forward into the challenges and uncertainty of tomorrow must peel our eyes off of the rear-view mirror and look firmly forward. For it is there where today’s students must learn and thrive, and tomorrow’s society will flounder or flourish.

State Sen. Paul Lundeen, a Monument Republican, represents District 9 in the Colorado Senate. He is a member of the Senate Education Committee, a former member of House Education Committee, and a former member and chair of the Colorado State Board of Education.