On Thursday, November 10, the Daily Caller published a column by Andrew Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, in which he calls for the dramatic cost-saving reform of tuition tax credits in the wake of the defeat of Colorado’s tax-hiking Proposition 103. The commentary includes a gracious hat tip to the work of the Education Policy Center:

Both the savings of education tax credits and the costs of public schooling add up quickly. The Colorado Department of Education’s most recent budget document reveals spending of about $13,000 per pupil in 2009-10, notes Independence Institute scholar Ben DeGrow. So it now costs $169,000 to put a child through the K-12 system — far more than double the $77,000 price tag of the mid-1970s, adjusting for inflation.

DeGrow’s work similarly was cited by national conservative blogger Michelle Malkin and by local conservative commentator Mike Rosen in the public debate over Prop 103. More recently, his research was cited in a December 4 Pueblo Chieftain column by Jennifer Lorensen and Julian Vandyke of Liberty Action Group.