Colorado Judge Overrules Parental Choice in Schooling
by Jim Brown
December 10, 2003
(AgapePress) - An education expert is criticizing a Colorado judge's decision to ban the state's school voucher program.Judge Joseph Meyer recently barred school districts from implementing Colorado's "Opportunity Scholarship Program" next year. The plan gives poor children in failing public schools $4,500 vouchers to attend a private school.
Marc Fey, an education analyst for Colorado-based Focus on the Family, says Judge Meyer's ruling is not surprising.
"What we're looking at here again is the struggle that we're seeing between parents and our court systems that base many of their decisions on what they think is best for kids -- or best for parents, in this case," Fey says, "but in the long run what we see the voucher legislation doing is actually putting that kind of control back into the hands of parents."
But Meyer's decision, he says, takes away a parent's right to choose the best education for their children. In Fey's opinion, it is another example of judicial activism.
"We're seeing this regarding a lot of issues on many fronts where judges are inserting their own political views and really superimposing on the law a way to view the world," he says. "This is another example of a judge thinking that he knows best for parents, instead of trusting parents who are really the voters."
Fey, who expects the ruling to be eventually overturned, says the voucher program is needed because it puts local control back in the hands of the parents.
