9,000 Children Don’t Show Up in Colorado School Data.

Are They Missing or in Private School?

By Erica Meltzer, Chalkbeat

An analysis found states like Colorado where kindergarten is voluntary have more children unaccounted-for in school enrollment data.

Allison Shelley for EDUimages

Kindergarten enrollment is down. Dropout rates are up. Public school enrollment still hasn’t rebounded to where it was in 2019, before COVID turned education upside down.

Where have the kids gone? A new analysis by The Associated Press and Stanford University’s Big Local News project found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states absent from publicly available data on public and private school enrollment and home schooling. That tally includes as many as 9,000 uncounted in Colorado, or about 1% of the state’s school-age children.

The uncounted likely include students learning in private school and at their kitchen tables who simply haven’t been reported, along with children who aren’t in school at all.

The findings further illustrate the pandemic’s profound impact on education, with some families rethinking their options and other students struggling to stay connected. They also demonstrate the difficulty of getting a full picture of where students have landed as a result of the upheaval.

States like Colorado where kindergarten is voluntary have many more unaccountedfor children than states where kindergarten is required, the analysis found. Birth rates have declined, meaning there are fewer 5-year-olds than even a few years ago, and thousands of families have moved out of state. But those changes don’t fully account for the decline in kindergarten enrollment.

More families could be keeping their 5-year-olds home even as Colorado prepares to launch a major expansion of public preschool.

“That’s important because kindergarten is the first experience kids have with a formal learning environment, and readiness to learn is really important as they move onto older grades,” said Thomas Dee, a Stanford University education professor who worked on the analysis.

At the other end of their school careers, more Colorado students are dropping out, state data shows, with 10,500 middle and high school students leaving the system in 2021-22, a 23% increase from 2019-20 and the highest dropout rate in four years.

Chronic absenteeism is up too, said Johann Liljengren, the state education department’s director of dropout prevention and student re-engagement.

“We definitely are seeing higher levels of disengagement across various measures, from attendance to dropouts,” Liljengren said. “What we’re trying to do is dig in and find out why and can we see some of those kids come back?”

The analysis used enrollment and U.S. Census data to look at changes from 201920 to 2021-22 and doesn’t include the current school year.

State data shows home school declining from its peak in 2020, and private school enrollment is nearly flat, raising questions about where other students who left the public system may have gone. But state education officials acknowledge their data on both student populations is “loose.”

Private schools don’t have to report enrollment, and more than 30% of 700 nonpublic schools in a state database report no information, potentially accounting for thousands of students. Home-school families are supposed to notify a school district every year of their intentions, but not all do.

Van Schoales, senior policy director at the Keystone Policy Center, said the gap is a symptom of Colorado’s lax approach to data collection. Without better information, it’s hard to know what’s happening or what to do about it, he said.

“We don’t know what the problem is,” Schoales said. “Is the problem that younger parents entering the school system during COVID had bad experiences and don’t trust the system? Or is the problem that high schools abandoned kids who were on the brink? Or maybe parents are making different choices.”

Kindergarten slide raises concerns

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis made improving early childhood education a centerpiece of his administration. He made full-day kindergarten free to parents in 2019 and enrollment surged, only to plummet the following year when many school districts started the year remotely.

Kindergarten enrollment rebounded somewhat in 2021-22 school year that was included in the Associated Press/Big Local News analysis — only to drop again this school year. But even in 2021-22, the share of 5-year-olds who weren’t in kindergarten was higher than before the pandemic. (Demographers caution that population estimates are imprecise.)

In 2019-20, fewer than 2% of Colorado 5-year-olds weren’t in public or private kindergarten. In 2021-22, roughly 4% were not enrolled.

The decline in participation is a concern, said Leslie Colwell of the Colorado Children’s Campaign. But without more information, it’s hard to know if vulnerable children are missing out on key early learning opportunities or if families with more resources are “red-shirting” or holding back their kindergarten-eligible children or enrolling them in private options, she said.

Complicating the kindergarten trends, enrollment in both preschool and first grade are up this year. The launch of universal preschool in August could bring thousands more children into the public school system with part-time free care.

Who’s not in school?

State data gives some insight into how public school enrollment is changing. The largest decrease is among white students. There are 30,000 fewer of them in Colorado public schools this year than in 2019-20. The largest percentage decrease is in Native American students.

Dropout rates increased among all student groups but increased most among Hispanic and Native American students. Hispanic students accounted for more than half of all Colorado students who left school last year without graduating. Some school districts have stepped up efforts to find and bring back students who left school to work or who just didn’t see the point.

Attendance advocates in the Greeley-Evans district go door to door in search of students who are missing school.

Ann Schimke / Chalkbeat

Liljengren said state education officials are also revamping how they do their work bringing together sections that once worked in isolation to better use data to identify students in trouble and to support high schools in revamping their programming to keep students engaged, including with more pathways tied to career options.

But enrollment isn’t down everywhere. Alan Smiley, who heads the Association of Colorado Independent Schools, said the 39 schools his association accredits have seen enrollment grow between 1% and 3% a year since 2019, including families who have moved to Colorado as well as those switching from public school.

Families are attracted to small class sizes, specialized programming, and school environments that reflect their values, he said. Many start in preschool with the intention of remaining in one school for years. His members watch demographic trends just as other school officials do but haven’t seen the declines public schools report.

Regardless of the choices families make, public school enrollment is not expected to rebound anytime soon. There are 79,000 18-year-olds in Colorado, but just 67,000 5-year-olds, according to U.S. Census data provided by state demographer Elizabeth Garner.

Colorado home-school trends are hard to track

Joanna Rosa-Saenz was among more than 15,000 Colorado families who reported home schooling in the 2020-21 school year. She started out running a learning pod from her Denver home and continued after schools opened. She worried about vaccine mandates and wanted to be more hands-on with her children’s education, especially after her middle son fell behind when his school didn’t address his special education needs.

Her children are back in Denver Public Schools this school year. As a single parent, she couldn’t educate her children and support them financially and get more than a few hours sleep a night, she said. And she couldn’t afford tuition at the private Christian schools that most appealed to her.

The state’s official count of home-school students has gone down each of the past two years perhaps reflecting parents like Rosa-Saenz who could not sustain it — but Stephen Craig, executive director of Christian Home Educators of Colorado, said his membership is holding steady after a notable increase in 2020.

Rosa-Saenz said she knows many home-schooling families that are still going strong. Some didn’t like what their kids were being taught or the political direction of their district. Others were frustrated by high teacher turnover and frequent leadership changes. Still others felt a public school education just wasn’t very good.

“Parents have a lack of trust and so they are pulling their kids out and seeing what 9,000 Children don’t show up in Colorado School Data. Are They Missing or in Private School? continued on page 13...

Colorado Democrats are Turning 2023 into the Year of Housing. But Should the State Wade into Local Land Decisions?

Lawmakers may limit local land-use directives to promote housing density. Also on the docket: rent control, eviction limitations and transit-oriented development.

by Elliott Wenzler, The Colorado Sun

After decades of tossing around the idea of the state stepping into local land use decisions as a way to combat rising home prices, the Colorado legislature is vowing to take meaningful action on the concept this year. But not without pushback from the people whose power they may overstep.

Cities and towns are grappling with ways to protect local control as some of their power to make zoning decisions seems to be on the chopping block.

“We do need help from the state, but not through changes to land use regulations,” Breckenridge Mayor Eric Mamula wrote in a letter to the governor. “What would help us create more units is funds.”

While few pieces of legislation have been introduced so far, Democrats are hinting they will bring bills that could reshape housing policy across the state by dangling incentives to encourage transit-oriented development, making it easier to build accessory dwelling units and removing other barriers imposed by local governments, such as minimum parking requirements.

“This is far beyond just a local problem,” Gov. Jared Polis said in his State of the State address last month in which he used the word “housing” more than three dozen times. “We have to break down government barriers, expand private property rights and reduce regulations to actually construct more housing to provide housing options at a lower cost so that all Coloradans can thrive.”

Whether a plot of land is developed into a few dozen single-family homes or hundreds of apartments can turn on how the land has been zoned by a local government. Those decisions by elected officials impact the number of homes and apartments available for generations and often, they face massive pressure from their constituents to block developments that would increase density.

Polis and Democratic leaders at the Capitol say now is the time to take a hard look at Colorado’s statewide land-use rules, which haven’t changed since about 1974 when Colorado’s population was 2.2 million. As of the 2022 census, there were about 5.8 million people living in the state.

“Pretty soon, if we don’t take this on with some sort of speed, we’re gonna wake up and it’s gonna be too late to make some of these changes,” said Senate President Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat.

But the Democratic governor may be at odds with Democrats in the legislature over how to ease the housing crisis. Polis has already said he’s “skeptical” about a proposal that would allow local governments to enact rent control policies, telegraphing that he’s likely to veto the measure if it makes it to his desk.

The debates around housing may prove to be a testing ground for how Colorado politics, now filled with more Democrats than ever, will proceed into the future.

Cities and towns react

The discussion regarding land use comes as the median single-family home price in Colorado has more than doubled to about $530,000 since 2010, according to a study released by the Colorado Association of Realtors in December. That’s led to workforce shortages in the high country and made homeownership unattainable for many in the Denver metro area.

Average monthly rent, meanwhile, is 6.5% higher in the metro area than a year ago and 23.4% higher than two years ago, according to the Apartment Association of Denver. Statewide, overall monthly rents are up 20.3% in the past two years, according to Apartment List.

“We really need to have this very important land-use discussion now, because after the fact is super late,” Polis told a group of business leaders at a luncheon last month. “It’s not something that fixes every problem we have tomorrow, but it fundamentally means in three years or five years, there will be more housing people can have close to where jobs are, which means less time commuting, less traffic on our roads.”

Democrats are debating several issues among themselves, including whether to give homeowners carte blanche to build accessory dwelling units, sometimes called ADUs or granny flats, with greater ease. In Denver, for instance, ADUs may be built only in certain zoning districts and the size of the structure is governed by lot size. The units must meet several other requirements related to things like appearance and accessibility.

There is also talk of changing parking requirements for developments and banning local growth caps, or restrictions on how much development can occur in a municipality or county over a certain time period.

Colorado has historically been a state where such land use and zoning decisions are determined at the local level, so city and county officials are nervous about what may be coming from the legislature.

“This is going to be major,” said Claire Levy, a Boulder County Commissioner. “It’s a major shift in policy for the state of Colorado.”

Levy, who also served seven years in the Colorado House, said she’s generally open to ideas from the legislature on how to address housing, but she’s concerned about the state mandating density without considering infrastructure and water needs. That’s a common refrain among local leaders and advocates opposed to the idea of the legislature interfering with zoning decisions.

Boulder’s city council Thursday voted 5 to 3 to support certain bills expected to be introduced by the legislature, including reducing the barriers for ADU’s, minimum housing density standards around transit, reduced parking requirements and conducting regional housing assessments.

When explaining why he recommended the change in policy, Carl Castillo, Boulder’s chief policy advisor, said the measures are likely to happen and by showing support, the city can help shape them.

“If the city wants to have influence in being able to affect the language of the bill, one of the best ways to do it is to communicate to the governor’s office, to the sponsors at the legislature that we are conceptually on board but we need to make sure our interests are protected,” he said.

Lakewood Mayor Adam Paul said he’s torn over some possible policies, such a ban on growth caps like the one approved in his city in 2019. That ordinance limits growth of residential units in the city to no more than 1% of the total housing stock per year.

“I was opposed to our antigrowth initiatives. I think they’re a disaster,” he said. “There’s potential legislation that looks at making (it) so that can’t happen in the future. In some ways, I think that’s good policy. But on the other side, that’s truly going against local control.”

Wheat Ridge Mayor Bud Starker said he agrees with the governor’s goal of addressing housing needs but is hoping there’s room for discussion around the methods. “I don’t think it’s necessary for the state to start dictating land use regulations in order to achieve a more affordable Colorado.”

But Fenberg said any forthcoming land use legislation won’t strip local governments of all of their control.

“The state’s not going to be involved in permitting,” he said. “The state’s not going to be involved in approving projects. That still is a local issue, and I don’t think (that) ever is going to change. It’s really about, ‘What does a property owner have the right to develop?’”

Local control over the years

The debate over the state’s role in land use isn’t a new one. As Sam Mamet, longtime executive director of the Colorado Municipal League, puts it: “It’s always been there.”

Mamet, now retired from the position, worked for the nonprofit that represents the interests of towns and cities across the state for 40 years with the final 14 years as its leader. While the debate was consistent throughout his time working at the Capitol, Mamet has seen few examples of the state actually taking such action to override local governments. Why?

“Because It’s complicated and complex,” he said. “And there’s never a guarantee that any amount of law that’s passed or put on the books is going to address a problem.”

It’s also because past leaders in the state have worked together with local governments on these issues, said Kevin Bommer, the current leader of the Colorado Municipal League. Bommer wants to ensure that the legislature understands that many of the initiatives being discussed have already been enacted in numerous cities and towns.

“It could get adversarial, but I hope it doesn’t,” he said. “I think there’s room here to work on and identify what the common goals are and then start navigating what’s the best way to achieve them working together.”

Though Republicans lack political influence at the Capitol, they, too, are concerned about the state getting involved in local decision-making around housing.

“Every time the government gets involved, it just increases the price of housing,” said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton. “If we’re trying to get to that American dream, that’s everybody’s dream that they want to own their own home, then we should be thinking of ways to make housing more attainable for people and increasing regulations based on what you think is best for everybody is not making it more attainable.”

Kirkmeyer said she’s concerned that if a certain level of density is required when developing land, some communities may choose not to build any additional housing.

Assistant House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese, a Colorado Springs Republican and former Mesa County commissioner, said she knows housing needs to be addressed.

“I just want to make sure that we are really focused on the issues that the state can affect and should affect, which are regulations and water, a whole myriad of issues,” she said. “But leave local government issues to the local government.”

Rent control and eviction limitations

Beyond those on local control, Democrats are planning to introduce dozens of bills related to housing. One of the few pieces of such legislation that has been introduced is a bill that would lift Colorado’s 1981 statewide ban on local governments enacting rent control policies.

If approved, counties and municipalities would be able to regulate how much rent in their community can increase in a given time period.

Rep. Javier Mabrey, a Denver Democrat, is a prime sponsor on the bill, along with Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, D-Glenwood Springs, and Sen. Robert Rodriguez, D-Denver.

“It is really important that people have a way to build intergenerational wealth through homeownership,” Mabrey said. “However, if you are not stable as a renter, you will never be able to buy a place.”

Fenberg believes communities should have the right to make their own decisions about rent control, but said he’s not sure if House Bill 1115 has the votes to pass both chambers.

“I genuinely don’t know if it’s a bill that’s going to pass this year,” he said. “I think some Democrats will support it and some will oppose it. And I’m not sure where it comes down yet.”

Even if the bill does pass the legislature, the governor appears unlikely to sign it into law. Polis has been vocal about his opposition to the concept in the past, going so far as to threaten to veto a bill that would have capped rent for mobile park residents last year. Economists have found that rent control can at times worsen affordability in cities.

“Gov. Polis is skeptical that rent control will create more housing stock, and locations with these policies often have the unintended consequences of higher rent,” Conor Cahill, a spokesman for the governor, said of House Bill 1115.

Mabrey also recently introduced House Bill 1171, which would limit when a landlord can evict a tenant. The legislation would restrict the reasons a landlord could evict a tenant to include failure to pay rent, illegal activity, violating a lease or creating a nuisance for other tenants.

The goal of the bill is to prevent tenants from being displaced from housing without specific cause, Mabrey said. One example of what the legislation is aimed at stopping is a landlord who chooses not to renew a lease and eventually evicts a tenant based on things such as race or gender or in retaliation for complaints.

“We believe that tenants in good standing, who aren’t breaking the rules, who are on time with their rent, shouldn’t be removed without cause,” he said.

Other housing bills that have been introduced include Senate Bill 1, which would dedicate about $13 million to develop workforce housing on vacant state land, including $2 million for a parcel near Vail. There’s also House Bill 1095, which would outlaw certain technical provisions in rental agreements, such as prohibiting tenants from joining class action lawsuits.

Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, D-Fort Collins, is also sponsoring a bill expected to be introduced shortly that would create a right of first refusal for local governments trying to add long-term affordable housing. Under the proposal, the government would have the right to match any acceptable offer for a multifamily housing unit and purchase the property. They would then be required to set rental payments based on area median income in a given region.

There are also ongoing discussions on a long-term solution to keeping property taxes — which impact housing affordability — from skyrocketing.

Transit-oriented development

Aproposal coming from Democrats that’s likely to have more support — including from the governor — is one that would encourage or require housing density development along transit corridors.

Colorado Democrats are turning 2023 into the year of housing. But should the state wade into local land decisions? continued on page 11...

Many 3-year-olds in Universal Preschool Will Likely End Up In School Districts. Will That Shutter Colorado’s Community Providers?

Colorado’s expanded preschool program will serve 3-year-olds who need more schooling before kindergarten. With districts managing state funding for those kids, community providers worry they will meet a financial cliff.

by Erica Breunlin, The Colorado Sun

“Three-year-olds are not part of the universal preschool program, per se,” Shuler added, “but are a carve-out population to ensure that these children enter kindergarten ready to learn.”

The expanded preschool program is expected to serve about the same number of 3-year-olds in its first year, as are typically enrolled in the Colorado Preschool Program, Shuler said. There are 6,001 kids age 3 and younger in the program this school year, the Colorado Department of Education said.

If some of those children are cared for by a community preschool, state funding will follow them, she said.

Communities across the state rely on a blend of school district programs and community providers to accommodate preschool demand among local families, said Melissa Mares, director of early childhood initiatives at the Colorado Children’s Campaign.

An “exodus” of 3-year-olds from community care settings isn’t likely, Mares said, “because this pot of money is so fixed.”

Still, she said she understands community providers’ anxiety.

“The first year of anything this big and transformative, we know there will be messy moments,” Mares said, “and part of why we’re here as advocates is to help demystify things or help get answers (and) as a support so that this can be successful.”

Denver Public Schools — which educates about 5,000 3- and 4-year-olds, including about 1,800 3-year-olds — contracts with close to 40 community sites, which serve another 1,800 kids, including infants, toddlers and 3- and 4-year olds, said Priscilla Hopkins, executive director of early education for DPS.

She anticipates that DPS will continue contracting with community providers, though she is not certain if the district will continue working with all of the sites.

“We’re still figuring out how that’s going to look,” Hopkins said, adding, “the first thing will be, what are the needs out there?”

(Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun

Colorado’s rollout of expanded preschool has community-based providers across the state fearful they will lose critical revenue and struggle to keep their doors open as more children shift to free school-based programs.

Operators of community-based preschools worry that 3-year-olds who leave their centers to attend a school district program won’t come back once they turn 4 to continue preschool before they enter kindergarten. Colorado currently has 3,405 providers licensed to educate preschoolers, and they need those students to stay afloat and continue providing care to infants and toddlers.

The state has strict rules governing the ratio of teachers to infants and toddlers in classrooms. Without as many 3-year-olds under their watch, many community providers question whether they will have the funds to care for kids, including infants and toddlers.

“I am very concerned that this is an existential crisis for small community programs,” said Eva Nisttahuz-Hathaway, assistant director and a lead teacher at New Horizons Co-Op Preschool in Boulder. The nonprofit preschool teaches a diversity of students, including kids from low-income families and children learning English.

“And to me, this is creating more inequity because it’s limiting choice and access to the students who really need it most,” Nisttahuz-Hathaway said.

The state is making its expanded preschool program — known as universal preschool — available to a group of 3-year-olds who need extra time in the classroom before entering kindergarten, offering them 10 hours of preschool per week. That group includes kids from low-income households, those who are learning English, those with special needs as well as children who are homeless or in foster care.

Although the state increased funding to offer the preschool program to all children the year before they enter kindergarten, funding did not increase beyond the amount set aside for 3-year-olds in the funding available to school districts in the Colorado Preschool Program this school year. The state invested an estimated $37.7 million for 3-year-olds in the Colorado Preschool Program and a separate $16.5 million for 3-year-old preschoolers with special learning needs who are not enrolled in the Colorado Preschool Program, according to the Colorado Department of Education.

The Colorado Preschool Program, which began in 1988, will wrap up at the end of the school year. The program’s funding will merge with funding from Proposition EE, which taxpayers passed in 2020. The measure increased taxes on tobacco and nicotine products to pay for an expansion of the state’s preschool program to all children in the year before kindergarten.

Through legislation passed into law that created what the state calls universal preschool, House Bill 1295, the state will direct funding for eligible 3-year-olds to school districts and give them control over managing services for those children, which could include contracting with community preschools.

“This was determined, in part, because it will help school districts meet their obligations under special education law to provide inclusive classrooms for 3-yearolds with (Individualized Education Program plans) that have historically been served by school districts,” Colorado Department of Early Childhood spokesperson Hope Shuler wrote in an email.

Greeley-Evans School District 6 also plans to continue contracting with community providers to care for 3-year-olds, though the district will serve those who have IEPs, spokeswoman Theresa Myers said in a text message.

(Olivia

IEP plans are used to help schools and teachers meet the learning needs of students with disabilities.

Toddlers watch as director Isolde Stewart distributes Valentine’s cards on Feb. 13, 2023, at New Horizons Co-Op Preschool in Boulder. New Horizons, founded in 1968, utilizes a bilingual preschool program for up to 16 children at a time. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun via Report for America)

Boulder Valley School District, for now, plans to keep all 3-year-olds in the expanded preschool program in the district.

“At this time, BVSD’s position is that they have to come through BVSD at this time until we have a better understanding of the funding mechanisms to support special education students,” Kimberly Bloemen, the district’s executive director of early childhood education, said during a Feb. 14 school board meeting.

“Many school districts, it’s not that they’re not wanting to commit to private providers,” Bloemen said. “There’s so many unknowns coming through (the Department of Early Childhood) right now, and there isn’t a lot of written guidance, and we really haven’t seen how the dollars are all adding up. And so school districts are saying, ‘We’re kind of in a hold pattern right now. We’re in a wait and see. We need to better understand how the dollars are flowing through the school district.’”

Disrupting care for infants and toddlers — and the state economy

A minimal number of 3-year-olds will be ineligible for universal preschool at community centers, according to the Department of Early Childhood and some state lawmakers.

Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat and prime sponsor of the legislation that created the expanded preschool program, supports sending state funding for 3-yearolds to school districts to keep classrooms diverse for students who have disabilities.

“And for this small number of 3-year-olds, they will continue to be served in the districts because they are children who have a disability and children with risk factors, but in order to ensure a diverse classroom so that you don’t end up only having children with disabilities in the public classrooms, that was a priority for us to ensure that those classrooms are a diverse mix of students,” Sirota said.

But with more than 3,250 universal preschool applications for 3-year-olds submitted to the Department of Early Childhood — according to data provided by the department in a recent subcommittee meeting focused on the educator workforce — early childhood advocates and providers worry that the number of 3-year-olds routed to school districts could be significant enough to have lasting impacts on community providers.

Community providers also are concerned that Colorado could be teeing up a system that in the future will direct more state funding for young kids to districts.

“The state has told us that there’s a cap on current 3-year-old funding but has also told us that there may be more money available to expand 3-year-old funding down the road,” said Scott Bright, owner of ABC Child Development Centers, which has 25 sites across Weld County and partners with two school districts.

“They surprised us by pushing 3-year-olds through the school districts,” Bright added. “And it’s only right for us to raise our hand and ask the question, ‘Why and where are you headed with this?’”

Many providers rely on 3- and 4-year olds to stay financially whole since they can care for more of them, said Dawn Alexander, executive director of the Early Childhood

Many 3-year-olds in Universal Preschool Will Likely End Up In School Districts. Will That Shutter Colorado’s Community Providers? continued on page 12...

Polis, Fenberg and Senate Majority Leader Dominick Moreno, D-Commerce City, have all expressed support for the concept, though the details remain in flux.

Paul, Lakewood’s mayor, said the idea makes sense but voiced concerns about how it would play out.

“You also need a functioning transit agency, right?” Paul said “I don’t think you can really start getting rid of cars in some areas, without having a bona fide alternative.”

While many specific policies haven’t yet solidified, conversations are ongoing, Fenberg said.

“There’s been a lot of work behind the scenes and a lot of conversations with cities, counties, the governor’s office, environmental groups,” Fenberg said. “I think we fully suspect some big policies still to be introduced.”

Colorado Sun staff writers Jesse Paul and Tamara Chuang contributed to this report.

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported news organization that covers Colorado people, places and issues. To sign up for free newsletters, subscribe or learn more, visit ColoradoSun.com

Rosen: Liberal Media Bias Tanks Public Trust In Journalism

by Mike Rosen, , Complete Colorado Page 2

Freedom of the press is an essential mainstay of our republic, specifically cited in the First Amendment prohibiting Congress from making any law that would abridge it. The “press” originally referred to the earliest newspapers, magazines or even pamphleteers. Nowadays, it would fall under the general category of “media,” including 24-7 cable-TV and Internet streaming.

This confounds or at least dilutes the definition of a “journalist.”Reporters at the New York Times certainly regard themselves as journalists, a term that used to carry a measure of prestige. Broadcast news people are a kind of journalist. Editors of newspaper opinion pages are considered to be journalists as are their local and syndicated columnists. Does the term apply to TV talking heads or radio talk personalities? How about freelance podcasters?

There’s nothing wrong with journalists expressing their opinions, biased or not, on an editorial page or in a broadcast commentary. But there’s a vital distinction between reporters and opinion columnists. Under the theoretical canons of the profession, reporters are obliged to be objective and fair, dealing in facts not their personal opinions. Undoubtedly some are, I’ve even known some, but far too many aren’t. When they disguise an editorial as an unvarnished story on the news pages, they become dishonest, unethical, and untrustworthy journalists.

That’s not just my view, most of the public agrees. A recent Gallup poll found that only 7% of Americans have “a great deal” of trust and confidence in mass media television, radio, and newspaper reporters to convey the news fully, accurately, and fairly. 27% have “a fair amount,” 28% say they “don’t have very much,” and 38% have “no trust and confidence.”

The breakdown among partisan groups is especially revealing. 60% of Democrats have a great deal or fair amount of trust in journalists while 86% of Republicans have not very much or none. 71% of liberal Democrats have a great deal or fair amount of trust. Only 9% of conservative Republicans say that. The conclusion is obvious. Democrats, especially liberals, trust partisan, liberal journalists who echo their own bias.

The journalistic profession has long been dominated by those on the political left who favor Democrats and spin the news accordingly. The New York Times could just as well be the public relations agency of the Democratic Party, along with the Washington Post, L.A. Times, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, PBS, NPR, MSNBC, and, locally, the Denver Post and Boulder Daily Camera.

Even reporters and editors who imagine themselves to be fair, see the world through their subjective lens. Perfect objectivity may be a goal but it is unobtainable. In practice, objectivity is subjective. We are all the product of our beliefs, perceptions, experiences, and biases that ultimately filter through. And a newsroom with like-minded liberal colleagues reinforces that mentality. Such journalists lack the self-awareness to recognize their bias. You might say the same thing of a conservative newsroom but there are very few of those in the elite, major media.

Other journalists are purposefully biased. Carole Simpson was a Black weekend anchor on ABC News’s World News Tonight with an obvious liberal bias. She spilled the beans one day at a Washington Forum covered by C-SPAN when she proudly exclaimed she was “someone who got into journalism in the 1960s because we wanted to change America.” In later years, she went on to teach journalism at Emerson College in Boston. Likely as a role model for the next generation of liberal journalists.

An oft-repeated maxim of liberal journalists and college journalism instructors goes something like this: “The job of journalists is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I doubt many of them know the source of that quote, much less its original intent. It was coined in 1902 by Finley Peter Dunn, a political satirist who actually believed that journalists should do no such thing. He put those words in the mouth of a fictional, curmudgeonly Irishman he created, “Mr. Dooley,” whose sarcastic rant (translated from the original Irish brogue) proclaimed: “The newspaper does everything for us. It runs the police force and the banks, commands the militia, controls the legislature, baptizes the young, marries the foolish, comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable, buries the dead, and roasts them afterwards.”

(An obvious irony oblivious to liberals is that the income taxes imposed inordinately on the comfortable by our welfare state are the source of revenues for myriad government programs that comfort the afflicted. Successful people who become financially comfortable through talent, skill, and hard work are worthy of praise not “affliction” for that.)

Through Mr. Dooley, Dunne was, in fact, damning the journalists of his day for their bias and presumptuous sanctimony in picking winners and losers, advancing their political agenda and editorializing in the guise of reporting. Like today’s liberal journalists who redefine millions of aliens that cross our border illegally merely as “migrants” and fail to fact-check Biden when he absurdly claims our border is secure.

The term “noble journalist” is an honorific exclusively reserved for colleagues on the left. If I had to pick a noble journalist it’d be Ernie Pyle, a patriotic battlefield war correspondent who sent home moving accounts of “dogface” infantry soldiers during World War II. Pyle was killed in action by enemy fire during the Battle of Okinawa. By contrast, “noble journalists,” so anointed by their peers, were those who publicly opposed the Vietnam Nam War and advocated for a U.S. withdrawal, like CBS anchor Walter Cronkite.

Ethical journalism, however you define it, is an indispensable element of a free society. But journalists aren’t philosopher kings with superior knowledge and credentials to judge morality, justice and public policy. And they’re seldom experts about the topics they cover. They’re just people with a public platform and an opinion, mostly a liberal one, in an industry competing with other media businesses for circulation numbers, Nielsen ratings, Internet hits, and advertising revenues. They’re also careerists seeking acclaim and advancement by chalking up scoops, exclusive interviews, and awards like Pulitzer Prizes.

In the late 19th century, “yellow journalism” was rampant, resorting to sensationalism, exaggeration, one-sided advocacy, and disregard for the facts to gather attention and readers. The inherent liberal bias of most journalists was bad enough in the 1960s, and it’s only gotten worse, accelerating during the Reagan era, and rising to stratospheric levels in their treatment of Donald Trump. When he dubbed their biased reporting as “fake news” that was the last straw and the fraternity of liberal journalists went completely bonkers.

Journalists who regard Trump as the personification of evil threw even their pretense of fairness out the window. They rationalized that his counterattack on the Democrats’ progressive order and agenda — that mirrors their own — made it their duty to take him down. Reasoning that the ends justify the means; lying, exaggerating, sensationalizing, and distorting the facts about Trump and others on their hit list became standard operating procedure. To be sure, there were enough valid criticisms of Trump to make resorting to these unethical tactics unnecessary. These same journalists who claim their profession is “noble,” are simply practicing today’s form of ignoble yellow journalism, which may explain their loss of public trust.

Longtime KOA radio talk host and columnist for the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News Mike Rosen now writes for CompleteColorado.com.

Overbeck: HB 1160 Brings Needed Due Process To Child Abuse Accusations

By Joy Overbeck, Complete Colorado Page 2

Nobody really knew the enormous power of county child welfare agencies to take kids away from their parents until an Arapahoe County Department of Human Services (DHS) case worker named Robin Niceta fraudulently accused Aurora City Council member Danielle Jurinsky of sexual abuse of her two-year-old son. This vicious move, which was proven to be a personal vendetta by Niceta because of a negative remark Jurinsky made about Niceta’s lover (then-Aurora Police Chief Vanessa Wilson) has thus far resulted in $3 million in civil damages and a pending criminal trial against the disgraced social worker

But that’s not usually the case. Too often, parents lose their kids over unfounded charges, and are placed in Colorado’s automated child welfare (TRAILS) system as a suspected abuser. This label can haunt them for the rest of their lives, according to Colorado State Rep. Gabe Evans, a Republican from Weld County who has introduced House Bill 231160 to give parents a fighting chance to challenge the process. “People can be labeled a child abuser even if there was never a trial or a criminal charge,” says Evans. “This means they can be excluded from employment as a teacher or childcare worker, from coaching their child’s sports team, and even from placement of their own grandkids in their home because that terrible label sticks with them for decades.”

According to a study by the Parental Rights Foundation, a disproportionate number of parents/caregivers of minority children are targeted by social workers with abuse allegations. In Colorado, this amounts to over twice as many black children as their proportion in the child population. “This could really be illegal discrimination and racial bias, which is a Constitutional issue,” Evans points out.

When Evans was a sergeant with the Arvada police department, one of his officers got a call from a social worker who wanted him to arrest a father for making his child do jumping jacks. “My officer just laughed,” recalls Evans. “This dad’s 14-year-old daughter had been cutting school, so he had her do 10 minutes of jumping jacks. Unbelievably, the social worker called this ‘mistreating a child’ and said it was ‘forced labor and physical abuse.’”

The officer laughed, but the social services case worker was perfectly serious. And that’s the problem. “There are similar cases in which a case worker goes way beyond common sense in what amounts to persecution of parents,” Evans charges. “If parents try to fight them in court, it can take years and is very expensive, eating up money they don’t have especially if they are low-income and financially strapped as so many are now.”

Currently, social services must obtain a court order to remove a child from the family, but Evans says the deck is stacked since social services is the investigating agency that presents “evidence” to the judge.

Representative Evans’ bill would require the department of human services to provide a written notice of the opportunity for a hearing before adding a person suspected of child abuse or neglect to the publicly available child abuse registry. When a hearing is requested, the bill requires an administrative law judge (ALJ) to contact the parties to schedule the hearing no later than 120 days after it is requested.

The Niceta case, though bizarre, is not unusual, according to a $50 million class action lawsuit filed against the Arapahoe County Department of Human Services and others on behalf of over 40 families with personal horror stories. They claim their families were torn apart by child-protective workers they say fabricated evidence and provided false sworn testimony. According to an article in the Gazette, “the lawsuit alleges the Arapahoe County social workers regularly removed children from homes that posed no risks and put them in peril by placing them in unsafe environments.”

In one of the most disturbing cases, an infant was removed from a mother who the social worker believed used drugs, although her drug tests were negative. Nevertheless, her infant son was taken to a foster home and later suffered serious bruises and sores from caregivers there.

“I hope to get Democrats on board to help right some of these wrongs against innocent parents, especially minorities,” Evans says.

Joy Overbeck is a Colorado-based journalist who has been published at Complete Colorado, Townhall, American Thinker, The Federalist, The Washington Times, and elsewhere. Follow her on Facebook or Twitter @joyoverbeck1