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Colorado Amendment 80, formally called the Constitutional Right to School Choice Initiative, promises to bake school choice into the state’s most powerful set of laws. Exactly what that means and how it could impact public education is disputed by supporters and opponents of the ballot question.

While the ballot language itself makes no mention of funding or voucher programs, groups opposing the amendment argue that adding school choice to the state’s Constitution could clear the way for future voucher program proposals. Naysayers also criticize that the vague language leaves too much room for interpretation by the government. Supporters say the enshrinement of the right into the state’s Constitution simply protects it from future legislation and ensures families will always have school choice.

A legislative analysis concluded the amendment would have no immediate impact on education, though opponents argue the new constitutional right could open the door to changes in state law and local school district policy depending on the interpretation of the courts and future lawmakers.

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School choice in Colorado

The state’s current system of school choice, passed by the legislature in 1994, allows students to attend any public school for free regardless of their district of residence as well as to choose a nonpublic education option, such as private or home schools. School choice in Colorado is also supported by several individual laws passed as early as the 1980s, such as the , and open enrollment laws.

Approximately in their education by attending a school outside of their residential assignment, according to data from the Colorado Department of Education.

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During the 2023-24 academic year, roughly 80% of students enrolled in prekindergarten to 12th grade attended a non-charter public school. The second-highest enrollment went to charter schools at around 12%, private schools at 6%, and online schools at nearly 3%. Less than 1% of students were homeschooled full time during the same academic year, according to . Today, homeschooling is the , with an 8.44% increase in Colorado, bringing the total number of homeschoolers to 9,406.

What is Amendment 80?

A passing vote on Amendment 80 would take everything one step further by cementing “the right to school choice” and “the right to equal opportunity to access a quality education” for K-12 students into the Colorado Constitution.

Conservative advocacy organization Advance Colorado first submitted the proposal to the Colorado General Assembly’s Title Board in 2023. The initiative collected roughly 200,000 signatures — 75,000 over the required limit — to be approved for the state’s 2024 ballot.

Amendment 80 is the first education measure the organization has ever run on a ballot, but Advance Colorado has previously proposed language for voucher programs to the state’s title board, which did not make the cut.

The amendment language would add the following to the Constitution: “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,” and “Each K-12 child has the right to school choice.”

If approved by voters, the amendment would be added to the Constitution before the end of 2024. Because it adds language to the Constitution, the amendment requires 55% approval to pass.

What do both sides say?

As soon as Amendment 80 entered the political conversation, it became a focal point for several organizations and leaders in education.

, a campaign led by Colorado educators, parents and general supporters of public schools, was launched on Sept. 13 in response to fears that the measure would “devastate funding for already vulnerable public schools — particularly those in rural areas — by opening the door to funding private schools with taxpayer dollars.” Supporters of the campaign include the Colorado Education Association, ACLU of Colorado, Colorado Rural Schools Alliance, Colorado PTA and the Colorado Democrats.

, funded by super PAC Colorado Dawn, has been conducting most of the virtual and mail outreach in support of Amendment 80. Groups backing the ballot question include Ready Colorado, the Colorado Association of Private Schools and the Colorado Catholic Conference. Supporters of the amendment argue that the ballot language makes no connection to education vouchers, and that the opposing side’s focus on funding is a scare tactic to move voters away from school choice.

Concern over future voucher programs

One of the biggest arguments in opposition of the amendment is that Colorado parents and students already benefit from school choice laws and that altering the Constitution will only open doors for future legislation that some argue is harmful to public schools, such as voucher programs.

In 2015, the Colorado Supreme Court . Colorado Education Association President Kevin Vick said he sees Amendment 80 as a way for Advance Colorado to make future voucher programs constitutional in the state.

“A natural first hurdle you would need to cross is to put something in the Constitution that would then (interpret) private schools as constitutional in our education system,” Vick said. “This is really a ploy by the proponents of this measure to use something that’s popular … and make (it seem) like it’s under threat somehow, which really doesn’t hold water because it’s been in our system for 30 years.”

Education voucher programs — which have already been implemented in states like Arizona, Ohio and Wisconsin — allow parents to use allocated public funds to pay for their children’s private school tuition or home school education.

Arizona, two years after approving the biggest school voucher program expansion in the country in 2022, in vouchers in 2024. The state’s $400 million shortfall in the 2023-24 budget year is partially due to the skyrocketing costs of the voucher program expansion, according to reporting by the Associated Press.

The majority of families requesting vouchers in these states are those with children in an effort to subsidize their tuition, according to the National Education Association.

“These programs are always billed as an opportunity for those in poverty or those who are struggling financially to have an opportunity to get into these schools. Well, the way this plays out is that private school tuition is still unaffordable for those groups,” Vick said. 

Kristi Burton Brown, executive vice president for Advance Colorado and former chairwoman of the Colorado Republican Party, said the conversation of school vouchers isn’t relevant to Amendment 80 and instead distracts from what the ballot question actually asks. Brenda Dickhoner, president and CEO for conservative education advocacy organization Ready Colorado, labeled it as a “misleading scare tactic.”

“The fiscal amount associated with Amendment 80 is zero dollars,” Brown said, referring to the measure’s fiscal impact statement as found in The Blue Book. “There is no funding at all in this measure, and voters shouldn’t be misled.”

“I think it’s always unfair to voters when a special interest group tries to talk to them about a law that’s not being proposed,” she added. “If the teachers union wants to fight a voucher one day, if the legislature ever tries to pass that, or other citizens ever put that on the ballot, they have the right to fight that if that’s what’s on the ballot. 

Interpreting the government’s role in education

Another criticism is that the amendment language is , leading to endless litigation from trial lawyers. Groups like the Christian Home Educators of Colorado are especially worried that creating a child’s right to a “quality education” opens the door for the government to define what quality education is.

“The proponents say that this is a very simple measure, but it is written in such a vague way that it opens the door for so many implications,” Vick said. “Because it (gives) a right to what, exactly? Does it mean you have a right to pick your teacher? Does it mean you have a right to ban books? Does it mean you have a right to not be with certain children?”

Advance Colorado’s main supporting argument for the measure is that it simply helps to strengthen the school choice opportunities that families in Colorado already enjoy, without adding government interference.

While opposers argue that the terms “equal opportunity” and “quality education” found in the ballot language could open the doors for the legislature to define quality education through funding, curriculum changes or other methods, Brown said putting school choice rights in the Constitution will only further limit the ability politicians have to restrict those rights in the future.

The part of the amendment language defining school choice as “neighborhood, charter, private, and home schools, open enrollment options and future innovations in education” serves to differentiate it from interpretations that might try to place book bans or curriculum changes in the school choice umbrella, Brown said.

She said one of the most common arguments she hears from opposers of Amendment 80 is that “it’s unnecessary,” mainly because school choice has been in statute since 1994. 

“I think that argument really misses the big picture,” she said, adding that rights aren’t guaranteed while they’re in statute. “The reason you’d want to take school choice rights and put them in the Constitution is because you want to stop being at the mercy of politicians. Whenever you have laws that are in statute … politicians can also pass laws to take those rights away or restrict them (or) take away choices from families.”

Dickhoner said she’s seen an increasing number of initiatives threatening to restrict school choice in the state — namely , or the Charter Schools Accountability bill. The bill would have set requirements for who can serve on school boards, prohibited waiving educator personnel performance evaluations and required that charter schools publicly report unredacted federal forms relating to revenue and expenses, among other things. Although the bill was killed in the first committee, she said the vote came too close for comfort.

“We have unfortunately seen an increase in attacks, particularly on charter schools, but also homeschooling over the past couple years,” she said. “They’ve been trending to be really hostile toward these school choice options, despite the fact that there’s broad support for it within the voters. … That’s why we’re giving a vote to the voters to say, ‘Hey, if this is really important to you, then let’s put it in the Constitution.'”

The strengthening, or weakening, of parental rights

The topic of parental rights when it comes to education — despite receiving increased national attention around the pandemic — is not a new one. 

One of Advance Colorado’s goals behind Amendment 80 is to protect the voice of parents over what and where their children are learning. The nonprofit Christian Home Educators of Colorado, however, argues that this amendment will only further separate the rights of the students from the rights of the parents.

“A simple reading of the School Choice Ballot Measure (Amendment 80) text implies that the child holds the right to school choice, while parents can only “direct” the child’s education. This separation of a child’s right to school choice from the parent’s right to direct the education of their children could and increase government interference in the exercise of school choice,” the group’s website states.

“I think it should be the parents that are declaring what is a quality education for their child,” Carolyn Martin, director of government relations for the Christian Home Educators of Colorado, said.

Despite being an organization in strong support of school choice, Martin said she would not want any public money to go toward home schools.

“Creating a positive right to quality education has kind of opened the door to the government providing for it,” she said. “That is a secondary issue to me, but it is still something that we are concerned about. We do not support government funding for home education … because we believe with money comes control.”

Brown said the argument that Amendment 80 would weaken the rights of parents comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutional rights are and their impact on private individuals as opposed to the government.

“Amendment 80 would say that the government may not interfere with the right to school choice. It is absolutely not pitting parents against children,” she said. She used the example of free speech rights protected in the U.S. Constitution, which don’t impact parental authority.

“If a child, teenager, wants to go to school with a political slogan on their T-shirt and the school sends them home and says, ‘You can’t wear that here, and it’s a public school,’ you see parents suing the school on behalf of their child and saying, ‘You’re violating my child’s free speech rights.’ And often they win,” she said. “But if that same child, if the parent won’t let them walk out of the house with that T-shirt on, the child can’t go to court and sue their parent.”

Impacts of school choice on rural mountain districts

Groups opposed to Amendment 80 claim that the measure could disproportionately impact rural mountain districts on the Western Slope, and shortfalls in funding.

The majority of private schools in Colorado are located in metro areas, meaning if the measure did eventually precipitate a shift in the state’s education budget for a school voucher program, some groups worry more of that funding could be distributed to urban districts. Despite benefiting from the same school choice freedoms, students in rural districts have less options when it comes to switching schools, and they would likely see the biggest impacts if school funding dropped due to vouchers.

“This gets taken out of the education budget of the entire state and then gets distributed based on people’s requests,” Vick said. 

Under Advance Colorado’s interpretation of Amendment 80, which wouldn’t change the state’s current system for funding schools, the measure’s impact on rural districts would be virtually the same as the state’s existing school choice policies: fewer schools to choose from compared with urban districts.

Opposition raises over $3 million in campaign funding

Public Schools Strong, a registered political action committee opposing Amendment 80, has raised almost $3.79 million in contributions from five unique donors and spent over $1.6 million as of Oct. 15. Of the contributions, exactly $3,037,500 million came from the National Education Association between Sept. 30 and Oct. 1.

Other donors that oppose the measure include teachers union Colorado Education Association, Educators for Equity, Stand for Children and the Colorado Fund for Children & Public Education — the political wing of the Colorado Education Association. Between the Colorado Education Association and its political wing, the organizations have contributed a combined total of $425,000.

The supporting political action committee for Amendment 80, School Choice for Every Child, has reported zero funding and zero spending as of Oct. 14. The site VotesYesOn80.com, which has been conducting outreach in support of Amendment 80 to residents through text messaging, is paid for by that does not disclose its donors. The PAC has raised $50,000 and spent over $72,500 as of its .