When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last summer that states can use taxpayer money to send children to private or parochial schools, conservative lawmakers in dozens of states vowed to push through legislation setting up tuition vouchers.
Colorado has won the horse race.

A pilot voucher measure passed the state's House on Feb. 19 and narrowly cleared the Senate Thursday. Republican Gov. Bill Owens says he'll sign it, barring major changes, by mid-April.

The Colorado voucher plan would be the first approved since the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision declaring Cleveland's long-standing voucher program constitutional, despite its support for religious schools. Such programs had been in a kind of legal limbo for years because of concerns about church-state separation.

Though the vouchers will pay tuition for no more than 3% of Colorado's 736,000 public school students, supporters say the symbolic victory is enormous.

"This is such a long and hard-fought battle," Owens says.

Under the plan, 11 of the state's largest districts would have to offer vouchers this fall to low-income students. It's up to families whether to apply. Private and parochial schools don't have to participate.

An analysis of the measure by the Colorado Education Association, which represents 36,000 teachers, says school districts stand to lose up to $ 193 million in state funding, or about 2.4%, over the next four years if all eligible students participate.

But Republican state Rep. Nancy Spence, the bill's sponsor, says her measure pays schools to let struggling kids go, giving districts as much as 25% of each voucher student's state allotment. In a district like Denver, that's worth about $ 1,550 a student.

"Essentially the districts are making a profit on students they don't educate," she says.

Over the past 11 years, Colorado voters have soundly defeated two private-school ballot measures. In 1998, 60% of voters rejected a proposal that would have given tax credits to families who pay private-school tuition.

In 1992, state voters killed, by a nearly two-to-one margin, a voucher proposal that would have given state funds to any student who wanted to attend private school, regardless of family income.

Spence says the 1992 measure didn't focus on low-income children.

"I'd vote 'no' on that, too," she says.

Its Republican-controlled Legislature notwithstanding, Colorado seems an odd place for vouchers to take hold.

It already has a robust charter school system, with 93 public schools that operate under little state control. Colorado also has one of the nation's most liberal state transfer policies -- children can attend virtually any public school, even one outside their school district. The state is also improving basic skills, says Lynne Mason, a lobbyist with the teachers' union, which has opposed the measure.

"We've raised test scores in just about every single school," she says. "Right now I think it's bad policy to drain money from public schools when we're making such good progress."

But Spence says problems persist, especially for black students.

Michael Pons of the National Education Association says most studies show that vouchers don't improve public school performance or achievement for most voucher students. He also says the program won't help most of the needy kids in Colorado because it's so small.

Voucher students must take state tests, but private schools can't be compared because their scores are reported as a group.

"We'll never know whether this program is actually working," Democratic state Sen. Peter Groff says.

Owens says the proof that the program is working will be future demand.

"I think we have a workable plan that will provide a very good example of the power of choice," he says. "I'm hoping that in a year, two, three years from now, people will be saying, 'It worked in Colorado, let's try it here.' "