Opinion -- Vouchers: the theft of tax dollars and our public schools

by iTeachQ
Daily Kos
Original Link: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/06/02/978999/-Vouchers:-the-theft-of-tax-dollars-and-our-public-schools?via=spotlight

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is calling for an expansion of school vouchers throughout the state, and using the Milwaukee voucher program’s so-called “success” to validate his education agenda. School choice advocates are rejoicing, but should they? Unfortunately, there seems to be little research to back up the claims of Walker or any other reformers. Why the rush? It is all part of the coordinated attack on public schools.
The pro-voucher movement is framed in terms of reforming public education, fighting bigotry, and saving poor urban children and has spent millions promoting this mirage.
Sounds like policy with sound principles, if only they were true. Unfortunately, the push is part of a nationwide moral agenda to hijack America's tax dollars and put them to use in private schools.
In recent months, we've seen the debate over vouchers intensify. With the tsunami election of 2010, state legislatures and our congress have swung to the ideological right on just about every education reform debate; vouchers included. With the amount of soft-money that groups are pouring into state legislatures, it was only a matter of time before it was rolled out.
Remember, this is part of a long-term plan that these groups have been slowly implementing. Now, their focus is on our children; they're using our children as tools to funnel more money into the private good -- away from those who need it.
Congress and the President have traded budget deals over the use of the questionable DC Voucher program, and two weeks ago the House Armed Services Committee had to vote down an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (H.R. 1540) that would have created a private school voucher program for children of military families with special needs.
When discussing education policy and the political debate in Washington and in our state capitals, wouldn't it be nice to have an idea of where national policy is going? Too bad, much like most of our President's education agenda, nobody knows where he stands.
One day he's against them, another he's in favor of them?
'Private school vouchers are not an effective way to improve student achievement," said the White House in a statement on March 29. "The Administration strongly opposes expanding the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program and opening it to new students." But less than three weeks later, President Obama signed a budget deal with Republicans that includes a renewal and expansion of the popular D.C. program, which finances tuition vouchers for low-income kids to attend private schools.
One could go on for days arguing the principles of school choice and which side President Obama resides, but the bottom line on this reform is the use of tax dollars in the private arena. Recent comments about the proposed school voucher programs ignore this simple truth: Vouchers rob public schools to fund private schools at taxpayer expense.
That is the message that we should be sending out.
A manufactured national budget crisis has forced billions in cuts to our public schools and more cuts are expected to vital programs like preschool education, early reading and reading support programs and programs for low-income students. The last thing we need to do is spend our scarce taxpayer dollars on private school vouchers.
That's where we should end. Vouchers steal money from tax payers and put it into private hands. But that isn't a problem for many, so I will continue.
Between 1966 and 2000, vouchers were put up for a vote in states 25 times, and voters rejected the program 24 of those times. Yet despite this historic unpopularity, voucher programs are exploding across the United States, with legislators from Pennsylvania to Indiana to Wisconsin championing the scheme.
Instead of taking away vital tax dollars from our public schools and handing it over to private schools, we should be investing in our public schools to reduce class sizes, increase parental involvement, and provide more high quality teacher training to give our children a better chance to compete for jobs of the future.
In addition to tax dollars being diverted away from traditional public schools, taxes used to fund vouchers or tax breaks are shifted in the direction of the right-wing religious schools. Teacherken asked last week in an excellent piece: "Do you want your tax dollars to fund right wing fundamentalism?"
He concluded then:

We will see continued efforts to shift public funds in the direction of such
religious schools. Vouchers are not necessarily merely a philosophical
orientation against public schools, although as originally proposed by Milton
Friedman, they represented a hostility to public institutions of any kind (other
than police and military). When looked at in combination with some of the
other endeavors advocated by the likes of Betsy DeVos and the idealogues
supported by some of the groups on the Right, there is a clear intent to impose
a wordview that is hostile to anything except their interpretation of Biblical
material. Ultimately, they want a theocracy that they and their ilk
define.

Well said Ken.
But the shift continues: With the seismic shift in political boundaries this year the door is open for vouchers to be pushed.
What does the research say? The research on school vouchers is mixed at best, and there is no long-term study that has been done on vouchers that effectively proves that they improve schools, communities, or student learning. The bottom line continues to be that school vouchers are programs which take funds from public schools to fund private schools at taxpayer expense. Let me repeat that again. These are programs that rob our local public schools to fund private, for-profit, and religious schools.
The collection of data on vouchers is difficult in many states because the law doesn't require any particular exam, different schools administer different tests. What ever happened to transparency, accountability and a need to increase the use of high-stakes testing? Doesn't it seem peculiar that voucher schools aren't required to take the same exams as state funded schools (after all, they are not tax-payer funded schools)?
So in states where vouchers are prevalent, districts are losing funding, forced to adopt unproven high-stakes testing; while their voucher counterparts get a free ride on data collection?
Sounds much like the rest of education reform today. Let's take what we can't prove, make up a glossy report and begin shouting that we need to overhaul our education system.
The Milwaukee voucher program, the country's largest and costliest (to date), costs Wisconsin taxpayers $130 million every year. City residents pay $50 million to support this voucher program.
$180 million could go a long way to improving class-sizes, expanding art and music education, and improving the lives of the city's neediest families.
A review of The Comprehensive Longitudinal Evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program: Summary of Fourth Year Reports was produced by the National Education Policy Center with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice. The review (by Clive Belfield of Queens College, CUNY) was released this morning; find the full review here.
The Fourth Year Reports of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was done by Patrick Wolf who heads the the University of Arkansas’ School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP), which claimed that Milwaukee’s school voucher program has increased student attainment and saved taxpayers money.
Wolf's original report found that:

Thus far our research has generated a pattern of school choice results that
range from neutral (no significant differences) to strongly positive.
Although we have examined virtually every possible way that school choice
could systematically affect people, schools, and neighborhoods in Milwaukee, we
have found no evidence of any harmful effects of choice.

Wolf's report claims that taxpayers are saving money under the voucher program, but that claim is based on the faulty premise that voucher students would cost the same as other students. The fact remains that students who leave for voucher schools are likely to cost less (they're less likely to need special education or special accommodations that private schools aren't required to offer).
Without much digging into Belfield's review, you can begin to see the flaws in Wolf's work.
On the key issue of achievement of students receiving vouchers, however, the report merely concludes that the program is not harmful.
While it may be good that vouchers are not harmful to student achievement, I'm not sure that's what I want to hang my hat on. Not harmful to student achievement doesn't mean that vouchers haven't done harm to communities.
The researchers could find no overall positive test-score outcomes for students who participated in the program; but no negative outcomes were found for these students either.
Again? Really? Seriously? This is the best they can come up with?
Almost all other research on vouchers and school choice is omitted from the report. This includes not only research on the Milwaukee program itself, but also general topical research that might help to place the report’s findings in context.
The report re-affirms a general conclusion that competitive pressures should lead all schools to improve. Although this is plausible and in line with most other evidence, it is still difficult to accurately identify where the competitive threat is coming from.
I'm glad that not everyone shares the belief that vouchers are a valid school reform.
From the Pierce County Herald: Should we use public dollars for private schools?
This week State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, in a written statement, shared his concern about expansion of the voucher program. He shared data showing that voucher students do not out-perform Milwaukee Public School students.
Recent results from the long term independent study of student performance shows that both private and public school students have significantly lower test scores than the state wide average. Both school types have similar reading scores. But MPS students do significantly better than private school students in mathematics.
State Superintendent Evers credits this progress to a special Student Achievement Grant supporting “rigorous, highly evaluated math teacher leader partnership with the UW Milwaukee”. Mr. Evers noted this grant program is eliminated in the current state budget proposal.
His statement continued:
“To spend hundreds of millions to expand a 20-year-old program that has not improved overall student achievement, while defunding public education, is morally wrong.”
I couldn't agree more. The theft of America's tax dollars for a religious, ideological war on public schools is morally wrong. I would actually prefer: morally bankrupt.
A real study of choices.As an economics teacher, I am always reminding my students about opportunity costs and the law of unintended consequences. What are the hidden costs of eliminating public schools and forcing for-profit charters or private school vouchers on parents?
Where's my choice to send my children to a high-quality public school if tax dollars are being driven into religious or private schools?
People who believe in school choice, believe that by placing their children in private schools that they are doing the right thing. But are they?
Although the research has found that vouchers are not harmful to student achievement doesn't mean that vouchers haven't done harm to communities.
Think about what you could have done with those dollars if they were invested into the public schools.
By diverting public dollars away from our neighborhoods, what are the long-term consequences on our children? What is the cost to our housing values? What is the cost on communities who cherish and love their local public schools? How many communities have to be destroyed to save vouchers?
Nobody is ready to answer those or any of my questions.
We do know who is behind the push:
A handful of billionaires, corporate-backed foundations and non-profits, and Political Action Committees (PACs) are using their influence to set up front group after front group, determined to spread voucher progra ms across the country, taking aim at the heart of our public education system. It is up to Americans to educate themselves about this assault on public education and defend.
Voucher advocates, who often refer to their movement as about "school choice," say that the purpose of pushing their programs is to ensure that "low-income families can access the best schools for their children." Yet the historical record of vouchers shows that there has been little to no improvement in student achievement among kids who attended private schools with vouchers versus those who attended traditional public schools.
Privatizing American Schools
Betsy DeVos, like her brother (Erik Prince), is at the intersection of free market think tanks, the Religious Right, and business interests that see the potential in privatization. She has been able to bring together into a coalition unlikely partners including libertarian hedge fund managers and openly theocratic organizations. Meanwhile the pro-voucher movement is framed in terms of reforming public education, fighting bigotry, and saving poor urban children and has spent millions promoting this mirage.
I can't tell you about the long-term costs involved in robbing tax-payers to fund private schools, but I can tell you about the immediate costs to vouchers and tax credits around the country.
The tax-payer cost of "school choice"•Arizona’s Private School Tuition Tax Credit Program: This program cost Arizona taxpayers $17.28 million in fiscal year 2010.•Ohio’s EdChoice Program: This program costs Ohio taxpayers $45 million annually.•Milwaukee Parent Choice Program: This voucher program costs Milwaukee taxpayers $50 million a year to send children to private schools and costs state taxpayers $130 million per year.
And, what about D.C?•Washington, D.C. Voucher Program: This voucher program will cost taxpayers more than $100 million dollars over the next five years.
In meetings with President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats, Boehner won an agreement to extend the voucher plan, even while $38 billion was being cut from other federal programs.
The voucher scheme began as a five-year “experiment” in 2003, using federal tax dollars to pay for up to $7,500 in tuition for students to attend private schools. It was slated to end in 2008, but Congress decided to allow participating students to continue receiving vouchers until they graduated from high school.
Under the budget agreement, new students will again be admitted to the program, and funding will match Boehner’s original plan to spend $100 million over the next five years.
Again, all tax payer dollars going to fund privately run and many times religious schools and taking it away from our public schools.
And those are just a smattering of the existing programs.
In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, each state is expected to be on the hook for $1 billion over the next five years.
That is quite a bit of education that will be lost to American tax payers and public school students.
As I've stated multiple times before, public schools are the one place in our society where we have the chance to make changes. Public schools are the one place where everybody has an equal chance for success. Every child has a fundamental right to a quality public school education. And we must stay focused on that goal.
Unfortunately, deep pockets are behind the push.
This voucher scheme seems to be another education reform which is getting a free-ride on the taxpayer dime.
Unfortunately, I'm not surprised.