Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made this statement about an education union leader: “It’s not a close call. If you ask, ‘who’s the most likely to take this republic down?’ It would be the teachers’ unions, and the filth that they’re teaching our kids, and the fact that they don’t know math and reading or writing.” It’s unclear in his peroration whether it’s teachers or kids who don’t know math or reading or writing. Does he?

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio from Florida said: “Our schools are a cesspool of Marxist indoctrination. Dangerous academic constructs like critical race theory and radical gender theory are being forced on elementary school children.” Has he visited a neighborhood elementary school recently where he observed someone teaching critical race theory?

Perhaps it’s these attacks, vicious, vituperative and provocative, hurled at public school educators that caused some members of the Colorado Education Association to examine what’s driving this invective. One member offered a resolution on capitalism as a reference point for this examination.

Since 1983 with the report of a “Nation at Risk” presented during the Reagan Administration, public school educators have put up with an unrelenting barrage of disparagement as they do the hard work of educating the nation’s children. “No Child Left Behind” and “Race to the Top,” one initiated by George W. Bush and the other by Barrack Obama, added fuel to the metaphorical fires burning up public schools.

In 2010 Colorado proceeded to implement SB-191, authored by current Denver mayoral candidate and former state Sen. Michael Johnston, that stuck the state’s public education system with its current school accountability program based on tying student CMAS test scores to teacher evaluations and, ultimately, salaries. The basic concept is free-market, capitalist as its basis – teachers should be paid for performance and the performance is determined by their students’ standardized test scores. How simple and narrow-minded is that?

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Add to this context the incoming young, new teachers who must endeavor to educate their students based on this free market-based pay-for-performance system. Add to the young teachers’ problems the low starting-salaries of about $35,000-per-year in 2010 at a time when a middle-class standard of living in Colorado stretched into the $60,000s and today up to $150,000. Add also the cost of paying off student loans taken to educate themselves to graduate college and pass the certifications necessary to become a teacher.

Conservatives amped up their rage against public school education using the concept of “school choice” that is the basis of the so-called “reform” of Denver Public Schools and the rocket-booster to charter schools.

One goal of school choice under current U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet’s administration as superintendent of DPS was to stem the flight of students out of DPS to neighboring counties. As middle class and affluent families left, DPS test scores declined. It was a looming disaster for the man who had aspirations to become president of the United States someday. He had to do something, so he decided to close the so-called non-performing schools like Manual High School and Smiley Middle School and redirect the kids, mostly minorities, to attend newly devised charter schools. The private charter managers using public dollars assured Bennet and the district they would perform miracles by raising test scores.

Fortunately for Bennet, he was helicoptered out of his problems by Gov. Bill Ritter with the aspirant’s appointment to the U.S. Senate. But Tom Boasberg continued Bennet’s privately managed charter-school, school-choice, public-money strategy at a time when Denver benefited from expansion out of Poundstone city limits into Stapleton, now Central Park, Lowry and Green Valley Ranch. Fortuitously, Denver and DPS were growing again with lots of opportunity for white, middle-class families to join in the Denver school-choice culture.

But minority kids continued to “under-perform” based on the state’s testing system. Boasberg’s solution was not more investment in public school teachers and supports for students. No, his administration continued to shuffle the chess pieces, closing schools and opening charters, with the ultimate result of further segregating Denver’s schools while enriching housing developers who built up Stapleton, now Central Park, Lowry and Green Valley Ranch. New school buildings followed the new housing. Many of the schools ended up as charters.

Denver’s public school teachers, among many others in many other districts, observed every day in their classrooms the effects of re-segregation, income inequality, uncertain health care, uncertain food access and other life challenges that come with capitalism that acts as a creative wrecking ball.

Sam Gary, former oil and gas guy, was a key developer of Stapleton, now Central Park. He gained enough assets through his oil business, housing projects and their charter schools to set up the Gary Community Venture Fund that Mayoral candidate Michael Johnston recently managed and used to bring on even more charters rather than strengthen traditional schools.

This history review provides context to explain why teachers who attended the Colorado Education Association annual meeting considered this resolution: “Capitalism inherently exploits children, public schools, land, labor, and resources. Capitalism is in opposition to fully addressing racism… climate change, patriarchy… education inequality, and income inequality.” After discussing the resolution, with debate about modifying “capitalism” with words like “crony,” “unregulated,” or “unfettered,” the attendees voted the word should stand on its own.

The resolution is a sharp criticism of the forces that have undermined today’s public schools, especially in poor, under-served neighborhoods. But is it unfair?

Let’s get real: If capitalism was doing the work in Colorado of moving children out of poverty, reducing the pollution that kids breathe every day in large areas of the state, relieving the pressures of housing segregation, ensuring equal access to health care, reducing income inequality and providing enough resources for our public schools, teachers and everyone else would rejoice. That’s not how capitalism plays, which is what the resolution declares.

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