Colorado’s public schools are in the bull’s-eye of a nationwide push for taxpayer support of private and religious schools. In Amendment 80, voters are asked to approve a constitutional right to school choice. Do not be fooled by this Trojan horse: It is a vote to institute a school voucher program.
I know this from experience. In Indiana, I watched a fledgling school choice movement grow from a handful of public charter schools to a voucher entitlement program expected to cost state taxpayers $600 million this year.
The money diverted from public schools is not going to students who live in poverty. An investigation by the University of Notre Dame’s Gallivan Program for Journalism, Ethics and Democracy found the average Indiana voucher recipient is a white female who has never attended public school and comes from a family earning more than $99,000 a year. A family of four earning as much as $220,000 a year now qualifies for vouchers, in a state where the median household income is a paltry $66,800.
None of this comes as a surprise. Indiana’s near-universal voucher program was always the end game for former governors Mitch Daniels and Mike Pence, the legislature’s Republican super-majority and a nationwide network of wealthy donors that included Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s former secretary of education.
Emails obtained by The Associated Press under open records law revealed private meetings involving politicians and some of Indiana’s wealthiest powerbrokers — strategy sessions held over cocktails at high-end restaurants to plot out the voucher bill’s passage. A black-tie event at an Indianapolis hotel celebrated the misnamed “Indiana Choice Scholarship Program” — not a scholarship, but a handout to families already sending their children to private and parochial schools.
In the community where I lived, a Catholic priest urged parents currently paying tuition to enroll in the voucher program, explaining that it would “ease the financial burden on the parish” by supplanting parishioners’ offerings with tax dollars and freeing up funds to “fix the steeple, paint the roof and maybe grow the ministries we can do, you know, on the church side of things.” The simple shell game plays out at an ever-expanding number of religious schools each year. Ninety-eight percent of Indiana’s voucher schools are faith-based, with restrictive admissions policies that prove “school choice” is, in practice, the “school’s choice.”
Last year, 36% of new state tax funding for K-12 education flowed to voucher schools educating about 7% of Indiana students. Public schools, including charter schools, educated 93% of students but received only 64% of the new funding, according to legislative budget estimates at the time.
Think it couldn’t happen here? Think again. “School choice” is the rallying cry supporters have employed in each of the states where costly voucher or “education savings account” programs have been adopted. Their efforts are fueled by a powerful alliance of special interests: billionaires determined to crush unions and drive down taxes; wealthy families looking for a school tuition subsidy; Christian Nationalists intent on creating schools in their image.
Here, the conservative Advance Colorado is leading the charge for this shadowy group. In an interview with Chalkbeat, Executive Vice President Kristi Burton Brown said vouchers were the original aim with the ballot initiative. Its initial ballot initiative specifically stated: “Parents and guardians have the right to direct per pupil funding to the schooling of their choice.” Burton Brown acknowledged that would amount to a voucher program.
“Right now, the best battle to fight in Colorado is establishing a right to school choice,” she told Chalkbeat, echoing the aims of the right-wing groups making up the Education Freedom Alliance: the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Prosperity and more. (Burton Brown is the former head of the Colorado Republican Party and is running this year for the State Board of Education.)
If the constitutional amendment is approved, count on its supporters using the measure to push for vouchers, tax credits or education savings accounts — probably through the courts. Voucher proponents have the financial resources to pursue their goal all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the conservative majority has repeatedly favored public funding for private and religious education interests.
There is no need to amend our state constitution. School choice is alive and well in Colorado, with 264 charter schools operating here. It’s telling that the Colorado League of Charter Schools, the state’s primary charter advocacy group, chose not to take a position on Amendment 80. Public funding of private schools and home-schooling inevitably takes money from public schools, including charter schools.
Vote “no” on this unnecessary measure. Claims that “liberal interests” are pushing to eliminate school choice in Colorado are simply a scare tactic designed to advance a costly voucher scam. Trust me. I watched it happen in Indiana.
Karen Francisco of Littleton retired as editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette in Indiana.
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