Introduction: School Choice on the Ballot, Amendment 80

Since Colorado’s law authorizing the creation of charter school was enacted in 1993, charters schools have been families’ only universally accessible outlet for exercising school choice outside of the existing, district-led system. As shown in Figures 2 & 4, charters have proved a wildly popular option, with the number of schools and the number of students enrolled increasing steadily. This is especially notable in the post-Covid years. While district school enrollment has decreased in five of the past six years, charter enrollment has continued to climb.

Despite many attempts, neither Colorado voters nor legislators have expanded publicly funded school choice beyond charters to include other models, like vouchers, education tax credits, and Education Savings Accounts, as some other states (most notably Arizona) have done.

On this year’s statewide November ballot, Amendment 80 would enshrine school choice in the state 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...” the initiative text reads. Choice as defined in the initiative language includes “neighborhood, charter, private and home schools, open enrollment options, and future innovations in education.”

As written, the ballot measure enshrines this new language into the state constitution, but full legal and financial implications are unknown. While this measure does not result in an immediate change to enrollment policies of local school districts, it could be a legal lever for families seeking more school options, including charter schools, in their districts. Based on data in this report showing improved academic and postsecondary outcomes for students in charter schools, this measure could provide a greater ecosystem of choice for Colorado students.

Analysis by the Colorado General Assembly’s nonpartisan Legislative Council Staff vaguely states: “To the extent the bill changes the educational offerings available to some children, educational and economic outcomes for those students may change.” The measure sets the conditions for change, but the real impact will be based on how the state legislature interprets the measure and gets further shaped by future litigation in the courts.

Given this statewide ballot effort to expand school choice, it seems timely to issue a report on the efficacy of charter schools. The charter sector overall has outperformed district-run schools, has produced higher college matriculation rates, and has narrowed gaps between more affluent, white students and low-income students and students of color. In addition, charter school students tend to fare better in their postsecondary achievement as well.

As Colorado citizens prepare to vote on such a substantive change to the state’s constitution concerning education, facts are more important than ever. This report uses Colorado Department of Education data to provide highlights of charter school performance in Colorado.

According to the Colorado Department of Education, a charter school is a public school that is tuition free and open to all students. It is a public school operated by a group of parents, teachers and/or community members. Charter schools operate under a charter (or contract) between the charter school and its authorizer, either a local school district or the Colorado Charter School Institute.

The Colorado Charter School Institute (CSI) is a state authorizer of charter schools. These charter schools are outside of the jurisdiction of local school districts but operate inside the geographic boundaries of local school districts.

This semi-autonomous public-school structure allows for specialization, experimentation, and importantly, community engagement in the educational process. A charter school generally has more flexibility than traditional public schools regarding curriculum, fiscal management, and overall school operations.

Charter schools receive state funding based on Per Pupil Operating Revenue (PPR), which is a formula for each student enrolled, just like traditional public schools. In Colorado there are 269 such schools serving 137,722 students of 15.6% of the state’s K-12 enrollment population.

Performance

In Colorado, district charter schools as a group consistently outperformed district operated schools on the state School Performance Framework. In 2022, 85% of students attending district charter schools earned a “performance” rating on the SPF, which is the highest of four proficiency levels. Only 66% of students attending district operated schools made that accomplishment.

Figure 1

Statewide in 2022, 37% of charter students met or exceeded grade level expectations in English Language Arts compared to 31% of third- through eighth graders in district-run schools, according to an analysis from the Keystone Policy Center. On the math test, 31% of students met or exceeded grade level expectations, compared to 27% in district-managed schools.

Accountability

Under Colorado law, public charter schools have no ability to exercise unfair selectivity in student admissions. While there are some allowable accommodations to help siblings attend school together, there is no mechanism for filtering students by academic performance, race, or income.

However, many charter schools are deliberate in their outreach and recruitment efforts to ensure broad diversity in the families that know about charter schools as an option and, consequently, the students who proactively enroll.

With the same accountability standards as all other public schools in Colorado, charter schools must meet state requirements regarding accreditation, adhere to content standards and graduation requirements, and participate in annual state testing for which results are made public.

Key Findings

• Charter schools are a popular and widely utilized educational option in Colorado. While serving high proportions of diverse students, charter schools, on average, have notably better academic outcomes than district-run schools.
• When measuring postsecondary attainment of high school graduates—though removing outliers like Alternative Education Campuses and Early College models to create a fairer comparison—charter school students obtained a postsecondary credential at a rate of 41.8% compared to non-charter’s 32.8% for the 2016 cohort.
•  A previous CSI report showed that in 2016, the DSST Public School network (Montview & Green Valley) graduated their FRL students at higher rates than DPS graduated non-FRL students for the 2016 cohort, and the share of students overall obtaining a credential was 2x for DSST as opposed to DPS for the 2016 grad base – 39% to 17% and 20% to 8% for non-FRL and FRL students respectively.[i]
•  Since the Covid-19 disruptions of 2020 and 2021, chronic absenteeism has been a widespread challenge for schools of all types. It is notable, however, that charters have significantly lower chronic absenteeism rates than district-run schools – 33% to 26.4% respectively in 2023.
•   The charter school sector in Colorado has grown every year—meaning more schools and serving more students—every year since the Charter School Act became law in 1993. Since 2011-12, 86 new charter schools have opened in Colorado, a 47% increase.
• Students of color have represented a larger share of charter enrollment than non-charter enrollment since 2015-16. Students of color comprise half of all charter school students. Over the past decade, the enrollment of students of color in charters has outpaced that growth in district-run schools.
•  Since 2011, charters have educated more multilingual students than their district-run counterparts, though that gap has narrowed slightly over time.
• The academic performance of charter school students—as measured by the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS), the state’s official K-12 assessment—were higher than those of non-charter school students at every grade level on both English Language Arts (ELA) and Math assessments in grades 3 through 8. This has generally been true in previous years as well.

Attendance & Demographic Overview

As charter schools continue to grow and capture an increasing share of the state's public-school students, they are becoming more diverse as well – socio-economically, racially, and linguistically.

Figure 2

Since 2011-12, 86 new charter schools have opened in Colorado, a 47% increase. Demand for charters has showed signs of plateauing, according to the Colorado Department of Education's State of Charter Schools Report. “This results from a combination of fewer new charter schools opening each year along with more charter schools closing or consolidating.”[ii] The reasons for the slowdown in charter school growth could be influenced by several factors, including the historically excessive costs of starting a charter school, difficulty in finding affordable facilities to house the school, and the political division that often frames public charter schools as a threat to district-run public schools.

Figure 3

Charter enrollment increased by more than 5,000 students during the pandemic-disrupted 2020-21 school year. At the same time, non-charter enrollment fell by over 35,000. While charter enrollment growth slowed in the two ensuing years, district-run schools have lost another 5,442 students, while charters have gained 5,506. Although it is difficult to pinpoint where these students have gone, it is likely that a growth in homeschooling and an exodus to private schools (which generally closed for less time than public schools during the pandemic) are major contributors to the trend.[iii]

Figure 4

Charter enrollment was at an all-time high of 137,722 in 2022-23, meaning charter students comprised 15.6 percent of all public-school students in Colorado that year. If all these charter schools were a single district, it would be the largest in the state, by far.

Figure 5

Twenty-two Colorado school districts have authorized three or more charter schools. Enrollment increased in 18 of those 22 districts between 2018-19 and 2022-23. Of the four districts that lost enrollment, only Denver Public Schools also saw a reduction in the number of schools. There were four fewer charters in DPS in 2022-23 than in 2018-19.

Authorizing new charter schools at the district level is the responsibility of the elected school board, and the launch of new charter schools relies on their respective votes. Although Denver authorizes the most charter schools (56), Byers 32J is the school district with the highest percentage of students enrolled in district-authorized charter schools – 91 percent.

Figure 6

Students of color have represented a larger share of charter enrollment than non-charter enrollment since 2015-16. Students of color comprise half of all charter school students. Over the past decade, the enrollment of students of color in charters has outpaced that growth in district-run schools.

Figure 7

Since 2013, charters have educated more multilingual students than their district-run counterparts, though, as the graph above shows, that gap has narrowed slightly over time.

Figure 8

While district-run schools have consistently served more students eligible for free or reduced-cost meals than have charters, the gap has narrowed from 9.3 percentage points in 2011-12 to 5.6 percentage points in 2022-23. Since 2011-12, the percentage of charter school students eligible for free or reduced priced lunch has increased by 2.9 percentage points, while the percentage of such students in district-run schools has dropped by 0.8 percentage points.

Academic Outcomes

Figure 9

CDE found that “a clear trend does show charter schools’ scores are almost always higher than non-charter schools’ year after year across the grade levels assessed English Language Arts (ELA)/Evidence-Based Reading and Writing (EBRW) and Math.”[iv] In 2022-23, the average Mean Scale Scores of charter school students on the Colorado Measures of Academic Success (CMAS) were higher than those of non-charter school students at every grade level on both English Language Arts (ELA) and Math assessments in grades 3 through 8. This has generally been true in previous years as well.

Figure 10

Since the Covid-19 disruptions of 2020 and 2021, chronic absenteeism has been a widespread challenge for schools of all types. It is notable, however, that charters have significantly lower chronic absenteeism rates than district-run schools. 

Despite absenteeism rates dropping from 2022 to 2023, a third of non-charter students were chronically absent in the most recent school year compared to just over a quarter of charter students. Schools looking to boost student outcomes will need to grapple with these elevated absenteeism rates.

Figure 11

Charter schools have lower cumulative graduation rates than non-charters. One possible explanation for this is that some charter high schools employ the early-college model, under which students earn post-secondary credentials by staying in high school for at least five years instead of the standard four. As Figure 12 shows, non-Alternative Education Campus (AEC) charter school five-, six- and seven-year graduation rates exceed those of district-run high schools.

Figure 12

Figure 13

Charter schools have a significantly higher percentage of high school students enrolled in Alternative Education campuses (AECs) -- 5.8 percent compared to 1.7 percent of students in district-run schools. This is significant because AECs as defined by CDE, “are those who have nontraditional methods of instruction delivery, who serve students with severe limitations, and whose student population is comprised of at least 90% “high-risk” students.” This could partially explain the higher cumulative graduation rates for district-run high schools/

Postsecondary Outcomes

Non-AEC charter high schools have consistently outperformed district run high schools on matriculation rates. In 2022-23 the gap between charters and non-charters was 7.4 percentage points, not a trivial number. The matriculation rate is the percentage of high school graduates who enroll in a career and technical education program, community college, four-year institution of higher education or the military during the summer or fall term immediately following graduation.”[v] This is an important finding, because while a high school diploma is an essential credential to earn for future success, it alone is insufficient. It is hard to overstate the importance of acquiring a post-secondary credential.

Figure 14

Figure 15

The graph above shows the statewide share of charter schools and non-charter schools’ 2016 final graduate base who obtained a post-secondary credential within six years of exiting high school. The rates are calculated by taking the number of students who obtained a credential within six years and dividing this number by the final graduate base, which consists of students who are eligible to graduate, including those who did not, rather than just students who do graduate.

The results are statewide, and compare charters (minus AEC, online, and early college charters) against district-run schools (minus non-AEC, online, and early college).

The results show that when removing those outliers, charter students obtain a postsecondary credential at a noticeably higher rate than their non-charter peers.

Figure 16

In the three most populous regions of Colorado, the same holds true: A significantly higher percentage of charter high school students obtain a credential after six years than do students in district-run high schools. CDE defines a credential as a certificate, associate degree or bachelor’s degree.

A previous Common Sense Institute report examined the outcomes of the DSST charter network, and the Denver Public School district at large for both free and reduced lunch eligible students and non-FRL students.[vii] Figure 17 shows the outcomes for the 2016 final grad base and the DSST average which is representative of DSST: Montview and DSST: Green Valley, the only two DSST network schools with 6-year data in 2016.

The results showed that the DSST network significantly outperformed DPS for non-FRL students and produced even stronger results for FRL students.

Figure 17

DSST graduated their FRL students at higher rates than DPS graduated non-FRL students for their 2016 graduation base, and the share of students obtaining a credential was over double for DSST as opposed to DPS for the 2016 grad base – 39% to 17% and 20% to 8% for non-FRL and FRL students respectively.

Conclusion

Amendment 80 aims to enshrine the full spectrum of school choice options into law. The state’s long history with charter schools provides reliable evidence that Colorado students have greatly benefited from this specific form of school choice.

The number of families that send their students to charter schools in Colorado continues to grow. Importantly, because charter school enrollment is optional—requiring a parent to opt out of their district-assigned school and go through a registration process at the charter school—we know this is an in-demand form of school choice.

When compared to traditional district schools, charters serve a higher proportion of students of color and more multi-lingual students. In addition, they do not receive the state-funded transportation resources district schools do. These factors make it more remarkable that charters maintain steady enrollment growth, notably less chronic absenteeism, and still significantly outperform district schools in academic performance. Amendment 80, if passed by Colorado voters, could be used as a tool to encourage more school districts to authorize charter schools seeking authorization to open. Colorado should continue to build on the number of rigorous, diverse, and family friendly charter schools. Charter schools are a value-add to the state’s educational ecosystem and should be expanded to accommodate growing demand from families.