On November 5, 2024, Colorado voters will weigh in on a hot topic in education today: school choice. Amendment 80 would make the concept of “school choice” a guaranteed right in the Colorado constitution. The text of the amendment reads as follows:
(1) PURPOSE AND FINDINGS. THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF COLORADO HEREBY FIND AND DECLARE THAT ALL CHILDREN HAVE THE RIGHT TO EQUAL OPPORTUNITY TO ACCESS A QUALITY EDUCATION; THAT PARENTS HAVE THE RIGHT TO DIRECT THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN; AND THAT SCHOOL CHOICE INCLUDES NEIGHBORHOOD, CHARTER, PRIVATE, AND HOME SCHOOLS, OPEN ENROLLMENT OPTIONS, AND FUTURE INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION. (2) EACH K-12 CHILD HAS THE RIGHT TO SCHOOL CHOICE.
According to University of Southern California Professor Guilbert Hentschke, “school choice has become a catch-all label describing many different programs that offer students and their families alternatives to publicly provided schools.” Since school choice covers many options, it can be confusing, and it is often the “subject of fierce debate in various state legislatures across the United States.” The critical distinction to make regarding school choice is often whether it affects public or private schools.
School choice has been the mantra for voucher systems currently enacted in at least twenty states. School choice with voucher-type legislation entails using taxpayer dollars for education savings accounts, opportunity scholarships, tax credits, or actual vouchers so families can choose any type of schooling for their child — private, public or home schooling. This idea represents an emphasis on “funding students instead of funding school systems.”
The focus on school choice has resulted in increased enrollment in charter schools, private schools, and home schooling. At the same time, the school choice movement has also created instability, competition, ideological curricula, resource inequities, increased segregation, loss of community, and reduced funding for public neighborhood schools. In Colorado, of all eligible school-age children, about 76% attend public schools, 15% attend charter schools, 8 percent are in private schools, and 1% are homeschooled.
Advance Colorado is the conservative think tank organization that developed the language for Amendment 80, and they coordinated the expensive signature gathering to secure approval for the measure, originally titled Initiative 138. The backers acknowledge that parents already have the right in state statute to “send their kids to a neighborhood school, charter school, private school, home school, or across district lines.”
However, Kristi Burton Brown, executive vice president of Advance Colorado, believes that school choice needs to be in the state constitution to guarantee “that legislators in the future can’t attack our rights and take them away.” She acknowledged that Colorado would be the “first state in the nation to allow voters to put the right to school choice in our state constitution.”
Michael Fields, president of Advance Colorado, also highlighted the organization’s reason for this measure on X, stating that “out-of-touch legislators are just going to keep going after charter schools. That’s why we need to put school choice in our Colorado Constitution this November.”
Brown’s and Fields’ comments relate to efforts last April by three Colorado legislators to enact a charter school accountability act, a bill supported by the Colorado Education Association (CEA) and other pro-public education groups. In their report on why they initiated Amendment 80, Advance Colorado stated that the proposed charter bill would have “destroyed school choice for charters.”
Advance Colorado’s solution to the “problem” of legislators promoting charter accountability is to put “the right to school choice in the Colorado Constitution” which they assert will give school choice “legal advantages a normal statute does not have.” Over fifty highly paid lobbyists were assigned to kill the charter accountability bill which was publicly opposed by Governor Polis, and was defeated in the House committee.
Even though Advance Colorado states its goal is to protect the charter schools from future legislative interference, Amendment 80 encompasses “private and home schooling” options. Including “private schools as a guaranteed right” is a plan promulgated by Americans for Prosperity and other conservative think tanks in several red states where voucher bills have been passed or expanded. Fields said he thinks “parents should be in charge of education,” adding “I think it’s easier when they have resources to send their kid to the school that they want to.”
The largest lobbying group against the charter accountability bill worked for Americans for Prosperity. Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is an arch-conservative organization funded by the Koch network; one of its goals is to “destabilize and abolish public education.” Michael Fields worked with AFP prior to several other positions he held with conservative organizations.
AFP has been active in Colorado for years promoting vouchers and education savings accounts for families to use for any school of their choice. Last January, AFP joined with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the Heritage Foundation to form the Education Freedom Alliance, an organization that ALEC initiated to promote parents’ rights to have public money to attend a private, charter, home or public school of their choice. Funded with nearly $80 million primarily from the Koch Industries, the Americans for Prosperity political action group has also supported far-right candidates for decades.
Colorado State board of education members Lisa Escárcega and Kathy Plomer wrote in a September 11 op-ed that Amendment 80 is “not just about school choice.” They cautioned that “Amendment 80, brought by wealthy, in and out-of-state organizations, is part of a nationally coordinated master plan to go around voters in states where voucher proponents have been unsuccessful in passing state voucher laws.” They pointed out that in Colorado, “voters turned down three education voucher ballot initiatives in the 1990s. Voucher and private school proponents then tried the legislative route. The Colorado legislature has turned down any type of voucher or education savings account 18 times just since 2016.” While the amendment doesn’t mention vouchers, the state board members expressed their concern that “If parents have a right to send their children to private schools, then shouldn’t the state pay for it?”
Using public taxpayer dollars for children to attend private schools or for home schooling is not legal in Colorado, nor is it currently popular. (They can get some indirect support.) Kevin Welner of the National Education Policy Center stated that “it would be hard to persuade voters or politicians that Colorado should join the ranks of states that provide taxpayer subsidies for private schools or homeschooling.”
Even though Fields insists this amendment “is not paving the way for a voucher program in Colorado,” the far-right conservative groups providing the money to promote Amendment 80 have tried to enact vouchers in Colorado for years.
Vouchers are not necessarily an effective system to improve student learning and according to recent research, they can hinder state budgets significantly. Josh Cowen, senior fellow at the Education Law Center, pointed to decades of evidence showing private school vouchers have led to some of the steepest declines in student achievement on record. He added that measures similar to Amendment 80 passed in Arizona, Florida and Ohio have led to serious budget cuts.
Who is funding this effort to enshrine “school choice” in the state constitution?
In an op-ed about Advance Colorado last year, Colorado Newsline editor Quentin Young wrote that “Coloradans don’t know who’s supplying its money or their true motivations, because nonprofits don’t have to disclose their donors.” Advance Colorado is the same “dark money group” that gathered signatures for Initiative 108, which would have forced over $3 billion in cuts to services to citizens.
Advance Colorado started as “Unite for Colorado” in 2019, which bankrolled almost every major Republican effort in Colorado in 2020. Unite for Colorado spent over $17 million in 2020 on Republican candidates, and they have “become the most important fundraising entity for conservatives and for Republicans,” said Dick Wadhams, a former chairman of the Colorado GOP. Unite for Colorado changed its name to Advance Colorado Action in 2021 due to questionable conflicts over its spending practices, which are still in litigation.
As a “dark money group,” Advance Colorado receives grants from many sources, most of which are unknown, yet there is evidence that connects Advance Colorado to several conservative organizations. There are also reports that tie the group to Phillip Anschutz, Colorado’s richest billionaire. According to Cause IQ, between 2020-2023, over $28 million was funneled to Unite Colorado/Advance Colorado from the Colorado Stronger Alliance.
Michael Fields is also the principal director at the Colorado Opportunity Foundation, which received grants from High Hopes and the Bradley Impact Fund. High Hopes has received grants from the Walton Family Foundation. According to historian Nelson Lichtenstein, the Walton Family Foundation is considered “the single largest source of funding for the ‘school choice’ movement and a powerful advocate of charter schools and voucher initiatives.”
Using public taxpayer dollars for children to attend private schools or for home schooling is not legal in Colorado, nor is it currently popular.
Grants were also funneled between Advance Colorado and several other conservative organizations: Ready Colorado and Colorado Dawn. Ready Colorado supports Amendment 80 and has promoted vouchers in Colorado for years. A board member with Ready Colorado, Luke Ragland served as its President and worked to enact vouchers in Colorado for many years. He is also the Vice-President of the conservative Daniels Fund, which announced in 2023 their goal to fund more opportunities for students to attend “secular or religious private schools, publicly funded charter schools, or “micro-schools’ in Colorado.”
Colorado Dawn was formed in 2021 to “support organizations who further the efforts to educate the public about western values and economics,” and it has received over $3 million from Unite Colorado (Advance Colorado). Tax records from the Colorado Dawn’s 2022 990’s list state Board of Education member Steve Durham as chairman, Senator Paul Lundeen as Vice-chairman, and Michael Fields as Treasurer. Lundeen announced in 2022 his hopes that Colorado would enact a voucher program after the Supreme Court “cleared the way for public dollars in a Maine tuition assistance program to flow to private religious schools.” The Colorado Secretary of State’s office indicates that Colorado Dawn spent over $1.3 million to collect signatures for Amendment 80.
The following organizations have also announced their support of Amendment 80: the Common Sense Institute, which is tied to the libertarian State Policy Network and the American Legislative Council (ALEC), “the Colorado Catholic Conference, and the Colorado Association of Private Schools.” Given the vast resources of these conservative organizations, groups that oppose this amendment may have an uphill battle to communicate their side of this issue.
On Sept 13, 2024, the CEA announced its opposition to Amendment 80 at a press conference in Denver. A coalition of various representatives from across the state, the National Education Association, and the ACLU described their main reasons for opposing Amendment 80.
The speakers at the press conference emphasized that the amendment is unnecessary because school choice is already protected in law and has been for 30 years. In addition, they stated that the amendment opens the door to taking money from public schools to fund private schools. Speakers stressed that funding private schools would drain money away from rural public schools, private schools pose significant civil rights concerns, and they don’t belong in the Constitution.
In interviews with Chalkbeat, several education experts weighed in on the wording in Amendment 80, indicating it could create years of “litigation” order to interpret the amendment’s misleading language, which Kristi Burton Brown also acknowledged in her interview with KOA radio.
Opponents of Amendment 80 also expressed concerns about the cost effects of potential vouchers. CEA President Kevin Vick stated that “Arizona’s voucher program was projected to cost $64 million, and it ballooned to $550 million in year one. In 2024, it’s expected to reach $900 million.”
Currently, the following groups are opposing the measure: ACLU of Colorado, AFT Colorado, Colorado Fiscal Institute, CEA, The Colorado Association of School Executives (CASE), AFSCME, Advocates for Public Education Policy, Business and Professional Women of Colorado, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, League of Women Voters Colorado, Soul 2 Soul Sisters, Bell Policy Center, Colorado PTA, One Colorado, United for a New Economy, Colorado Democratic Party, American Association of University Women, Colorado WINS, Colorado AFL-CIO, Stand for Children, and New Era Colorado Action Fund.
Colorado voters will need to decide which rationale they support regarding this school choice amendment. Will they agree with Advance Colorado that a constitutional amendment is necessary to ensure that the legislature will not update current charter school laws? Or will they believe that Colorado does not need to go the route of other states and create a pathway to use public funding for private and home schools?
