Parents, teachers, and citizens of Douglas County, Colorado, one of the wealthiest districts in the nation, shocked voucher advocates by voting to oust their choice-loving school board.

Here are two different perspectives.

Writing in the conservative journal Education Next, Max Eden of the rightwing Manhattan Institute tries to find a silver lining in the defeat of vouchers and choice.

Eden takes comfort in the fact that the new board is not anti-charter.

He writes:

“Taken together, these races should scramble the conventional political narrative about charter schooling. That narrative says that charters are really supposed to be for failing urban districts, that suburban parents don’t want or need them, and rather than expand charters to the suburbs to bolster Republican support, advocates should rather work on their rhetoric. But choice creates constituents who will defend their interests, and who will have a far easier time doing so when their neighbors are ideologically sympathetic. If the Douglas County school board moves to harm charters, there will be a significant political cost.

“The headlines suggest that the election was all about vouchers. But the deeper story here is that Douglas County is a compelling case study in the collapse of the traditional education reform agenda. That agenda was a philosophically uneasy fusion of bureaucrat-driven reform and parent-driven choice. Bureaucrat-driven reform wasn’t truly designed for places like Douglas County, but advocates push it there (and everywhere else) anyway. Parent-driven choice could take root anywhere, but advocates tended to view it as not really for a place like Douglas County. While district reform collapsed, and claimed the court case on the never-implemented voucher program as collateral, charter parents will ensure that school choice carries on in this Colorado suburban county.”

Edwin Rios, writing in left-leaning Mother Jones, says that the sweep of every seat on the board sends a clear message to Betsy DeVos. Not that she will care or listen.

“On Tuesday night, the longstanding fight over a controversial voucher program in Douglas County, Colorado, appeared to have come to an end. In a local school board election that has found its way into the national debate over voucher programs, four anti-voucher candidates—Chris Schor, Kevin Leung, Anthony Graziano, and Krista Holtzmann—defeated reform-supporting candidates in a landslide.

“The election was the culmination of a battle that goes back to 2009, when a group of conservative reform-minded candidates took full control of the school board in Douglas County—one of the wealthiest counties in the country, with a school district made up of 67,000 students. As Politico has put it, the county “has gone further than any district in the nation to reshape public education into a competitive, free-market enterprise.” Since 2009, the board has successfully ended a collective bargaining agreement with the local teachers union and enacted a “pay for performance” salary system for teachers.

“Its most controversial move, though, came in 2011, when it approved a sweeping school voucher program that aimed to give up to 500 students publicly-funded scholarships to attend participating private schools. The county’s voucher program was the first district-created program in the country. Ninety-three percent of the pilot class of scholarship recipients enrolled in religious schools, according to court documents. It sparked outcry from those who argued that it was a diversion of public money away from public schools. Over the next few years, the suburban district in many ways become a model for conservatives looking to reform education nationwide and the group of reform-minded board members received support from national right-wing groups like the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity.

“This backing helped those board members secure all seven seats for six years. But in 2015, frustrated by the board’s direction, challengers running against the reforms of then-superintendent Elizabeth Celania-Fagen convincingly defeated three incumbents, resulting in a 4-3 split on the board. While conservative members remained in charge, their power over the board was significantly weakened.”

Then on election night, the pro-public school slate captured four seats, adding to the three pro-public school incumbents, to make a clean sweep of all seven seats.