Betsy DeVos’s Voucher Boondoggle

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When the Trump administration released its education budget last week, the most attention went to the deep cuts it would make in school funding and to a slew of federal K-12 programs. But the plan’s most important feature — one that would get $5 billion in new funds and could have far-reaching political consequences — is its support for school vouchers.

Even as the education budget calls for cutting about 8 percent of last year’s $66.6 billion allocation, the administration is increasing resources for school vouchers. A longtime priority of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, this shift would undercut both public and charter schools. Indeed, the Federal Charter Schools Program is among the programs set to be cut. The plan would give states block grants to give them discretion over how to spend a smaller pot of federal education funding.

Congress could ignore many of the education budget proposals as it has in recent years. But DeVos’s voucher strategy could get a boost from the Supreme Court, which just heard a case challenging a Montana Supreme Court ruling that invalidated a tax-credit scholarship program because the credits would be used at religious schools. If the Supreme Court greenlights the use of such voucher-like vehicles to pay for religious schools, it would devastate public-education funding.

DeVos has already made it easier for religious groups to offer federally funded services to private and religious schools. Last year, when Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill creating a school-voucher program that would be paid directly out of state funds, he effectively redefined public education, noting that any school that uses public dollars is “public education.”

DeVos responded via Twitter: "Completely agree, @GovRonDesantis.” (Florida has had a tax-credit scholarship program for almost two decades.)

Yet we know that the push for vouchers — even without a Supreme Court ruling allowing tax dollars to be used to pay for religious schools — is bad policy and a waste of money. Numerous studies, including from the conservative Fordham Institute, show that voucher programs have failed to improve outcomes (as measured by test scores) in Ohio, Indiana and Washington D.C., among other places, for participating students.

Vouchers are a giveaway for families who can afford to pay the difference between the value of a voucher and the cost of tuition at the most expensive (and best) private institutions. As tax dollars follow children into private and religious schools, vouchers will suck both money and a dwindling number of more affluent families out of the public-school system, accelerating the transformation of public schools into dumping grounds for the poorest and neediest children. At the same time, vouchers will open the way for cheaper, unregulated and often low-quality private and religious schools.

Legislators should be wary of further undercutting public schools, which have been gaining support among both rural and urban communities.

K-12 schooling remains a hot issue especially in local elections; thus, the combination of block grants and vouchers create a political minefield for Republican state legislators this election year. During the 2018 midterms, teachers in Kentucky helped a Democrat, Andy Beshear, defeat Republican incumbent Matt Bevin in the race for governor in a state Donald Trump had carried by 30 points.

In Wisconsin, where another pro-public education Democrat, Tony Evers, defeated Republican incumbent Governor Scott Walker, voters set records passing ballot measures increasing property taxes and allowing districts to exceed state-imposed revenue caps. These measures brought in an estimated $1.37 billion in additional public-school revenue.

Meanwhile, in Arizona, groups critical of public education, including ones backed by DeVos and the Koch family, chose not to campaign for a 2018 ballot measure that would have expanded the state’s voucher law when they saw it would be a losing battle. The expansion measure was resoundingly defeated following a vigorous anti-voucher campaign. And just last month, Governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, unveiled a budget with close to $300 million in extra funding for Arizona public schools.

In Tennessee, a lawsuit filed against the state earlier this month is the first of several expected challenges to a controversial voucher law that the state Legislature imposed on two counties last year against their voters’ wishes. The law is expected to cost Nashville alone more than $137 million over five years, as students and their per-pupil funding leave the city’s public schools.

Another major initiative in the Trump administration’s education budget could also ensnare legislators in risky fights during an election year. That measure calls for collapsing 30 education programs, including ones that fund everything from rural schools and help for homeless children to arts education and gifted-and-talented initiatives, into block grants. Promoted as a way to push decision-making to the state and local level, the budget would cut about 20 percent from last year’s $24.1 billion for standalone programs.

Red-state legislators may have to choose between funding charter schools, which are backed by powerful groups like the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, and public-school programs that have been long underfunded and that have won increasing support from parents in rural and urban areas.

The fallout from a block-grant program in Kansas, under then Republican Governor Sam Brownback, serves as a cautionary tale. In 2015, Brownback essentially froze education funding at 2014 levels, while giving districts more flexibility in how they spent education dollars. A year later, Democrats and moderate Republicans, many of them campaigning for increased public-education funding, swept aside conservatives allied with Brownback.

In 2017, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that public-school funding in Kansas was inadequate and unconstitutional and that it had shortchanged one-quarter of the state’s students. The same year, Brownback joined the Trump administration as an ambassador, having ended his tenure as one of America’s least popular governors.

To contact the author of this story: Andrea Gabor at Andrea.Gabor@baruch.cuny.edu

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.net

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andrea Gabor, a former editor at Business Week and U.S. News & World Report, is the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York and the author of "After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform."

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