Amendment 80 states that parents have the right to direct the education of their children.
Colorado voters heading to the polls on Election Day will vote on an amendment that would add a “right to school choice” for K-12 students to the state’s constitution.
Under Colorado’s
Public Schools of Choice law, students have been able to attend any public school in the state without having to pay tuition for the past three decades, regardless of where they reside in the state. Colorado also allows families to choose whether to educate their children at home or enroll them in private schools.
While school choice is currently guaranteed by that state law,
Amendment 80 seeks to enshrine school access in the state’s constitution and states that parents have a right to school choice that includes “neighborhood, charter, private, and home schools, open enrollment options, and future innovations in education.”
The measure states that parents have the right to direct the education of their children and that every child, from kindergarten through high school, has the freedom to choose their school.
An ACLU of Colorado spokesperson said in an email to The Epoch Times that the group “is strongly opposed to Amendment 80,” citing, among other concerns, possible “devastating and unintended consequences” for students, including the possible creation of a statewide voucher program that would pull funding from public schools.
The ACLU’s spokesperson said, “We fear that this language could be used by some to invite violations of civil rights, including book bans, censorship of classroom discussions about race and gender, and litigation challenging state non-discrimination laws.”
Nonprofit the Advance Colorado Institute supports the measure.
“Despite its popularity across the political spectrum, there are groups of ideologues who seek the destruction of school choice in Colorado by going after public charter schools,” Advance Colorado’s policy analyst Michael Tsogt wrote in a
policy brief in July. “The people of Colorado cannot afford to wait for anti-choice activists to take away educational options for children. Putting the right to school choice in the Colorado Constitution grants it legal advantages a normal statute does not have.”
The Christian Home Educators of Colorado (CHEC)
said in a statement, “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.”
CHEC said it fully supports school choice but was concerned about the term “quality education” used in the amendment. “The ballot measure opens the door for the government to define what a ‘quality education’ is.”
For the measure to secure approval on Nov. 5, it requires the backing of 55 percent of voters.
