"Educational Freedom"

 You will likely recall that sitting in Arizona has given me a front-row seat to watch the universal voucher program here play out. The voters in Arizona, by a wide margin, had said no to this nonsense but then the (barely) Republican Legislature decided voters were dumb and enacted it on their own. 

I know you believe this could not happen in Washington State but we are going into a time of the Upside Down so I would not make any bets about what may or may not happen in public education. The fact that even without vouchers, many Seattle parents are leaving SPS for other types of education is fairly worrying. 

Background via the Arizona Mirror:

The Arizona voucher program is in its third year. 

The program originated in 2012, but was expanded in 2022 from serving a limited group of about 12,000 students who met specific criteria to a universal program available to all of the state’s roughly one million K-12 students. 

After the expansion, enrollment skyrocketed to around 74,000 at the end of the last school year. That was more than the 68,000 students expected to enroll, with costs significantly higher than expected, at around $723.5 million — nearly $100 million more than was originally budgeted. 

And to note, Arizona has a 1.4B shortfall, much of that driven by the voucher program and tax cuts.

Let's go over a few stats for the Arizona voucher program:

- 75% of those who signed up already had their children in private schools and 67% had never had their children in public schools. So it's something of a rebate for those families. 

This points to a finding in other voucher programs - these programs are NOT reaching low-income families because the amount given will not cover most private school tuition especially since many private schools have raised their rates. So who is this really helping?

Of course, there is also the issue that many private schools do NOT accept two classes of protected students - Special Education and homeless. If you accept public dollars, you should be required to accept most students. 

- Two out of state residents have been indicted for applying for the voucher program for 50 kids, 43 of whom do not exist and receiving more than $110,000.

- Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs has called for an overhaul after citing items like ski resort passes and pianos being paid for with public funds. 

-The Arizona Attorney General's office is looking into some alleged illegal payments that got approved without needed documentation that is required by the state law. 

I am disappointed to see Rick Hess, who is a conservative thinker on education but with common sense, wrote this sad article saying that just because three states - two red and one purple - all said no to vouchers by wide margins, it's no reason to give up the fight.

And, if you are keeping up, having voucher programs in every single state is very much on the Trump education agenda (well, that and tearing apart the Department of Education). 

What parents wanted was immensely practical. This wasn’t about market theory. It was about helping parents find schools that served their children’s needs, kept their doors open, and embraced shared values. Indeed, liking choice didn’t mean parents wanted to defund traditional public schools; rather, the lion’s share of them consistently said they wanted more choice and also still liked their local schools.

Well, if the parents like public schools, why would they want more choice via vouchers?

Since around the launch of Milwaukee’s pioneering voucher program in 1990 until 2020, choice had been pitched as a lifeboat for America’s worst-served students.

He leaves out that Milwaukee's system is plagued with inconsistencies in that choice as well as misuse of dollars. 

As the Wall Street Journal’s Matt Barnum reported, “The [referendum] results suggest a divide between Republican lawmakers and voters, many of whom have said in opinion surveys that they are generally dissatisfied with what they view as a ‘woke’ agenda in public education but still like their own children’s local schools.”

Jim Waters, president of Kentucky’s free-market Bluegrass Institute who was surprised by the size of the defeat, explained that rural voters have “emotional” ties to local public schools and hoped a federal choice program would allow in-state advocates “to bypass the establishment”—declaring “they wouldn’t be able to stop this.”

And the suggestion that Congress needs to help choice advocates “bypass” opposition in Kentucky should scare the heck out of those who can recall that same plea being made on behalf of No Child Left Behind, teacher evaluation, or the Common Core—and how badly it ultimately boomeranged.

"Emotional ties?" So having a long-standing commitment to public education in your neighborhood is an "emotional choice?" Want to know why Texas can't pass their voucher program? Texas is a big state with many rural counties that have NO private schools. So the "choice" would be some online program that is already available. Those small districts would likely see fewer dollars as the large urban districts get defunded and shrink. I cannot imagine what Governor Abbott could offer those small rural counties in return for their legislators votes. Because those legislators sure would hear from their constituents if they vote yes. 

As well, vouchers, along with charter schools, help to increase both racial and economic segregation in public school districts. 

From the education blog, Chalkbeat:

The researchers also found that charter school expansion was strongly associated with less integrated schools. The study did not look at the impact of private school choice programs, such as school vouchers, or district open enrollment policies. Instead, the authors treated charter expansion as a proxy for a robust school choice system, as those policies often go hand in hand.

Studies have found that school choice policies can accelerate gentrification, allowing affluent families to buy homes in low-income communities while opting out of the local schools — one reason racially integrated neighborhoods don’t always lead to racially integrated schools.