Author: Paula Noonan

Paula Noonan School finance, proposed constitutional amendments on school choice, and bad faith union contract negotiations headline today’s education world in Colorado. Colorado’s kids got the short school-funding straw for 15 years starting with the Great Recession in 2008, and school district employees did too. In 2022, Denver Public Schools’ union, Denver Classroom Teachers Association…

Paula Noonan The Trump administration and the Colorado legislature are moving in opposite directions. This trend will test the durability of the Democratic Party in the state as its policies are crosswise with the dismantling of the federal bureaucracy and President Donald Trump’s policies in Washington, D.C. The Trump administration is firing federal workers for…

Paula Noonan The administration in Washington, D.C. is running amok, or rather aMusk. Colorado is missing out on $570 million in federal government commitments. Our U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper have written a letter to the Office of Management and Budget to release the funds. The federal government is burning down. They wrote…

Paula Noonan Recent National Association of Educational Progress (NAEP) test results for Colorado confirm what has been obvious for years: our state’s students have tested about the same year after year, grade by grade, despite “reform” efforts in place since the first charter school legislation in 1993 and educator accountability in 2010. The Colorado Department…

Paula Noonan Gov. Jared Polis and Democratic legislators are debating whether it’s possible to get blood from a turnip. In this case, the blood is money, and the turnip is K-12 education. The governor is looking to scoop about $150 million from schools to bail out the state’s general fund. Democrats on the House and…

Paula Noonan Alpha bros won in November. Woke is done and bro is on. What’s most interesting in learning to live in bro nation is watching three of the richest men in the world take a knee and kiss the ring of the less rich man who is, nevertheless, the biggest bro in the biggest…

Paula Noonan Gov. Jared Polis has spoken. Coloradans always rise above. We’re a beacon of freedom and opportunity. We’re a home for innovation, ingenuity, honesty and integrity. Moreover, the governor and his team are “bold.” His speech spotlighted “our bold leadership in everything from innovative technology to the creative arts.” (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:11095963150525286,size:[0, 0],id:”ld-2426-4417″});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src=”//cdn2.lockerdomecdn.com/_js/ajs.js”;j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,”script”,”ld-ajs”); According to…

Paula Noonan The adage “don’t put the cart before the horse” needs to change related to Colorado’s public school finance. It should be “don’t put the 80-foot extendable double-drop trailer before the truck cab.” For 30 years, Colorado’s state legislators and various governors have insisted on setting “high academic standards” and imposing expensive student standardized…

Paula Noonan The 75th General Assembly will begin Jan. 8 with a load of bills. Don’t be surprised if some bills that failed in the 2024 General Assembly get a resurrection in 2025. As background, killed bills usually fail in first committee hearings with a “postponed indefinitely” status. In 2024, 75 bills were killed after…

Paula Noonan Donald J. Trump, called “Jumbo” behind his back by acquaintances and “Nudge” by his golfing partners, sat quietly at his Mar-a-Lago replica White House Resolute desk studying 2019 classified documents dug out of boxes in his nearby bathroom. He was weighing undone business from his first turn as president on Christmas Eve, late…