Sometimes, what this country committed to 150 years ago merits continuation. In 2026, Colorado will be 150 years old. When our Centennial State was brought into the union in 1876, the federal government gave us 2.8 million acres of federal land and more than 4 million acres of mineral rights.

These lands and rights formed the state land trust that has funded our public schools ever since. It was a genius idea to support free, uniform, comprehensive public education as a foundation principle of the state and nationhood.

Our public schools have served millions of children who, as adults, have built the state’s unique vibrancy. Some believe today public schools are not the right model. They argue parents should use state tax dollars as vouchers for school choice or to underwrite charter schools.

These arguments about how our public tax dollars are allocated for K-12 education have reached a tipping point. We, as a state, can no longer afford to teeter between our commitment to the public in public schools or privatizing our children’s education.

Yet the conversation on public education’s future is shallow and callow.

Let’s deepen the conversation. Let’s take as our basis education philosopher John Dewey’s 1916 book “Democracy and Education”and Milton Friedman’s 1962 book “Capitalism and Freedom.” These men, both faculty at the University of Chicago at different times, established the competing premises of the arguments. Dewey, in accord with Thomas Jefferson and his Founding Father peers, saw K-12 education as essential to a functioning democracy. Friedman, along with Jeb Bush, Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump, asserted capitalism ensures freedom through individual choice, and school vouchers paid with public tax dollars apply that concept to education.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Dewey saw education not as preparation for life, but as “life itself.” Friedman saw education as a means to develop “human capital” that enhances a person’s productivity and economic contribution. These two ideas do not have to be mutually exclusive, but they set different primary values and priorities as the foundational principles underlying children’s education.

Both men precede our current economic contexts. Dewey made his impact during the most important years of the industrial revolution from post-Civil War America to Cold War America. Friedman made his impact at the beginning of the technology revolution. The elements of their arguments remain pertinent.

Dewey promoted the public in public education as the basis for the civic commons of democracy. He argued for education that supported the life well-lived, as articulated by Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius and our prominent American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson. Aristotle taught “virtue ethics” as a “good life” achieved through reason, character and moral habit.

Friedman argued “a stable and democratic society is impossible without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge on the part of most citizens.” That’s a low enough bar to meet our current standardized test results. Based on this notion, Friedman sees the public responsibility for education is to fund it but not deliver it, and in any case, it doesn’t need to be that good for most citizens. In other words, education is a minimal public interest but not a public service. Its principal function is to prepare children for work and production in the marketplace.

GOP state Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeen has put forward a resolution, SR-009, “School Choice.” His resolution states, “Families deserve a full range of educational options — including charter schools, online programs, private and parochial schools, homeschooling, and open enrollment…” He does not include “public schools,” “neighborhood schools,” “community schools,” or “comprehensive public schools” in his list.

The senator also avers, “The state of Colorado has both a moral and fiscal responsibility to support educational environments that foster excellence, elevate outcomes and expand opportunity for every child, regardless of background or income.” To his credit, Lundeen talks about excellence, but the state under Lundeen’s time in the legislature has failed its moral and fiscal responsibility to deliver excellence and opportunity for every child.   

Somehow, Lundeen and his fellow Republican legislators can’t get their heads around the reality supporting TABOR and properly funding public schools for excellence, or even okay, are not compatible ideas. Perhaps Lundeen and his fellow free market supporters could get behind properly funding K-12 education if all the money went to vouchers. But then they’d have to give up on TABOR.

On the other side, pro-public in public education supporters don’t have a strong voice in the legislature. For too long, Democrats have given in to the ideology of standardized tests as the primary metric for education quality rather than the primary barrier to education equality. We’re using these tests at a time when Artificial Intelligence can easily make perfect scores on either the ACT or SAT. The content standards tests of learning are now exceeded by Chat GPT.

An election is coming up in our 150th year. Let’s look for leaders who hearken back to the best of our past when America contributed millions of acres of federal land to the state to create publicly funded and governed schools that developed legions of thinkers and doers.

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