In Colorado, voters will decide whether or not to change the constitution to create a host of ill-defined rights for parents, and a huge income stream for attorneys.
Colorado ballot measure that seeks to constitutionally protect parents’ right to send their child to any school, including a private school, also aims to create the right for parents to direct their child’s education — raising questions about the ways parents could influence what and how students learn.
The provision within Amendment 80 follows a national movement that has seen parents across the country demand school libraries ban books they deem inappropriate for students and voice concerns about how teachers approach topics like gender and race in the classroom.
Leaders from conservative political nonprofit Advance Colorado Action, the organization behind the ballot measure, declined to comment on why they want to establish a right for Colorado parents to direct their kid’s education and how it would impact schools and educators.
But introducing a right for parents to direct their child’s education in the state constitution opens up the possibility for parents to sue schools to challenge homework assignments or the use of particular books, or potentially attempt to remove their child from the classroom of a gay teacher, said Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado.
“It’s easy to foresee a lot of troubling demands,” said Welner, who also is a professor in the CU School of Education in Boulder. “At what point can the school tell the parent to stop directing their child’s education?”
Welner noted that it’s impossible to know right now how courts would interpret the right for parents to direct their child’s education in litigation and what consequences it would bear for schools.
“I think it does open up those lawsuits,” he said. “Whether courts later close the door to those lawsuits is an open question, but I certainly expect those sorts of lawsuits.”
Read more here, and hope that Colorado voters reject the amendment.