Koch Brothers' Foundation Launches School Choice Campaign in Colorado

The Colorado faction of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation announced this week that it will spend $200,000 on a school choice “issue education effort” in June and July. The It’s Working campaign will use mailers, digital ads and “grassroots advocacy” to highlight charter schools.

The campaign is intended to show Coloradans how charter schools work and their benefits, says Michael Fields, senior director of issue education for the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, whose parent company, Americans for Prosperity, is the right-wing political advocacy group funded by billionaire industrialists David and Charles Koch. “We are a state that has been a little bit more progressive in terms of school choice, but there’s more we can do,” Fields says of Colorado. “I think that people aren’t fully educated about it.”

Charter schools, which are a top education issue for Americans for Prosperity Foundation Colorado (AFPFC), are publicly funded schools that can waive some state and school-board requirements. Colorado has 238 charter schools, and in 2014 the state ranked third for most students enrolled at charters.

AFPFC is announcing the move just days after Governor John Hickenlooper signed a bill requiring school districts to fund charter schools equitably with local property-tax funds, a major source of public-school funding.

Read more: http://www.westword.com/news/americans-for-prosperity-launches-school-choice-campaign-9140161