Letter to the Editor: The paradoxes of school choice

Stock image | Photo by JackF/iStock/Getty Images Plus, St. George News

OPINION — The Utah State Legislature began the 2023 legislative session on Jan. 17 and, in under a week, is poised to pass legislation that will cause considerable damage to public education. HB 215 passed the House by a vote of 54-20 on Jan. 20 and now moves to the Senate.

HB 215 is a wolf in sheep’s clothing enticing many with the dual promise of increasing teacher salaries and providing greater school choice for parents and guardians.

Unfortunately, the promises are illusions and ultimately HB 215 will lead to a loss of public school funding, irresponsible allocation of funds moving from our most vulnerable to our most powerful populations and a host of other issues.

What is HB 215?

In short, HB 215 is a school voucher bill. Legislators do not want to call it a voucher bill, because nearly every time the public is asked about school vouchers, they reject the idea. In fact, a very similar bill was defeated by a 22-53 vote in the House last year, and in 2007 when the state Legislature passed a voucher bill, a public referendum overturned it with 62% support. In short, Utahns have been rejecting voucher legislation for a long time.

Legislators have rebranded HB 215 as a “scholarship” program, which differs from a voucher program in approximately zero ways.

The political tactic used this legislative season is to ramrod the bill through so rapidly that nobody has time to critically evaluate it.

HB 215 allows parents and guardians to apply for a scholarship (voucher) that will grant $8,000, which parents can apply toward private education or homeschooling. As currently proposed, the program will have enough money to fund somewhere between 4,500-5,000 scholarships (vouchers).

Why is HB 215 Problematic?

A multitude of issues accompany this bill. Five specific issues stick out:

  1. The bill takes from the poor and gives to the wealthy.
  2. Little or no oversight exists, and creating effective oversight would be too cost-prohibitive.
  3. Public tax money will be used to fund religious fundamentalist or “woke” curricula.
  4. Massive conflicts of interest.
  5. Unintended (I hope) consequences.

Bizzarro Robin Hood 

The $8,000 per pupil value of the scholarship (voucher) effectively means the state will be taking money from the poor in order to subsidize the wealthy. The $8,000 figure for the scholarship is derived through some murky calculation of what it costs to provide public school education to all students.

The money public schools receive from the state is called a Weighted Pupil Unit (WPU), and it currently hovers around $4,000. In other words, public schools receive around $4,000 from the state per student in order to provide public education.

However, that number is an average. Not all students bring the same required costs to education. Some students may only cost $1000 per year to educate, while other students – those who require Special Education, a 1:1 Para, ESL services or other specialized support – may cost $10,000-$20,000 per year.

For some reason the state has determined that public schools can educate all students for around $4,000 per student, but private schools need $8,000 per student. In a half-hearted attempt at equity, HB 215 does give priority to low-income students, should they choose to apply. However, very few low-income families are able to cover the costs of tuition, transportation and other miscellaneous fees at private schools for only $8,000.

In fact, the average cost for a private elementary school in Utah is $10,937 per year, and the average cost for a private high school is $12,872 per year (Private School Review). This means that although low-income families may be given priority for the scholarship (voucher), they would still not be able to cover the costs of a private education with the scholarship (voucher). Furthermore, receiving the scholarship (voucher) does not guarantee acceptance to any private school. Therefore, some low-income families may receive the scholarship (voucher) but have nowhere to go.

When there are no more low-income families to prioritize with this scholarship (voucher), the money becomes available for any and all other students who apply. High income families already covering the costs of private education may qualify.

This means people who are already able and willing to pay the full cost of a private education will receive a subsidy that is roughly twice the amount of money public schools receive for a typical student.

Taking from the poor and vulnerable and giving to the wealthy and powerful is a Bizzarro Robin Hood tactic. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of the state has no private schools (see map), so students in rural areas will not have anywhere to apply the scholarship (voucher) funds, should they choose to pursue them.

Image courtesy of Ryan Rarick, St. George News

Any student who qualifies for an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and wishes to use this scholarship (voucher) would have to sign away their Federal IDEA rights — the law that provides the right to an IEP for students with disabilities.

While public schools are legally bound to abide by the stipulations in an IEP, private schools receiving twice the amount of money are not bound to abide by any of the IEP stipulations.

Furthermore, the private schools are allowed to discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, sexual orientation and other factors. Once again, our most vulnerable and marginalized populations with the greatest needs will suffer from state sponsored discrimination through implementation of this scholarship (voucher) program.

Limited oversight and transparency

Organizing oversight and transparency systems for public money spent within private entities is problematic. First of all, effective oversight is cost-prohibitive. Second, requiring public transparency from private entities violates their privacy – a paradox.

Utah has some experience with similar challenges regarding charter school funding. A quick Google search produces a plethora of stories pertaining to charter schools mismanaging public funds:

Dozens of additional examples exist from the late 1990s to the present day regarding the complications and challenges of maintaining oversight and transparency for how charter schools receive and spend public money for education.

The intent is not to demonize charter schools but point out Utah has been attempting to create effective systems for charter school oversight and transparency for decades and still struggles. Lopping on the responsibility of overseeing hundreds of additional private schools and homeschools on top of the charter schools makes this task of effective oversight even more impossible. Not to mention, private schools don’t want oversight, that is why they are private!

We can look just across our southern border into Arizona to find evidence of exactly this issue. Azcentral.com published an article in 2018 stating $700,000 in voucher money was misspent on “beauty supplies, apparel; attempted cash withdrawals. A little farther away, in New York City, Failing Hasidic Schools received $1 billion in state funding over 4 years without any oversight and accountability, according to the New York Times. Examples of school voucher abuse abound in other states as well, including Oklahoma, Tennessee and Michigan among others.

No wonder Utahns have rejected voucher legislation for so long, Utahns are smart — probably because of public education.

State sponsored fundamentalist or woke curricula

Public tax dollars funding private schools will ultimately lead to state sponsored curricula from religious fundamentalism to “extreme wokeness.”

Fundamentalist religious groups will organize their own schools, or apply for this scholarship through schools that already exist, and use the taxpayer dollar to spread their fundamentalism.

Parents can seek private schools which teach concepts identified by some as “woke” or “CRT” and the state will fund it via this scholarship (voucher).  All of the hot-button issues the Legislature has worried about: transgender issues, alternative perceptions of history, SEL policies and more will enjoy free-reign in state-sponsored private schools through this voucher program.

Utah Parents United and their allies engaged in a lot of work to eliminate the great twin evils of our time — CRT and books — from schools. It’s all for naught through this program. Private school kids can go to their library and check out banned books state money purchased. Another paradox, the public schools cannot teach, or possess, the banned material, but the state will pay other people to teach it.

Private schools are not beholden to Utah State Core Standards, and if the state were to try to regulate their curricula, the schools would no longer be private — yet another paradox.

Conflict of interest

Looking once more at charter school management, we can see the future of inevitable conflicts of interest between some legislators who promote and pass this bill and the money they will receive from the funds of this bill.

A 2019 KUTV “Beyond the Books” investigation titled, “People who regulate charter schools also make millions off them”, highlighted the alarming number of state legislators who were earning money from school legislation they had a hand in passing.

Moreover, several legislators listed in the 2019 report eventually found themselves in scandals related to their association with Charter Schools.

Here’s the thing — these stories only came out because the charter schools have some oversight and transparency. Private schools will not.

  • Failing to provide Special Education Services will not be an issue for private schools because they will require their students to sign away their IDEA rights.
  • Unethical practices will not be an issue for private schools because their faculties and staff are not bound by the same professional and ethical standards as the faculties and staff of public schools.
  • Private schools will be able to collect the voucher money and spend it however they want without having to report to anybody.

A few bold predictions:

  1. Some legislators who vote for this legislation will make a lot of money off this legislation.
  2. Legislators who currently sit on school boards will collect money directly from this scholarship (voucher) fund to line their own pockets.
  3. Legislators who own land will lease it out to private schools, and the private schools will use voucher money to pay the lease.
  4. Other legislators will help to create “pop-up” private schools in order to cash-in on voucher money from students they recruit.
  5. Should this bill pass, I expect to read a 2025 “Beyond the Books” investigation revealing legislators connected to this scholarship fund and how much money they collect.

Unintended (or maybe intended) consequences

Consequence No. 1

Because WPUs are assigned months ahead of time, it’s extremely possible and quite likely that some parents and students will declare their intent to attend a private school, qualify for the scholarship, then change their mind and return to the public school. However, the voucher money will have already been allocated to the private school and the public school will not receive any part of the WPU.

Consequence No. 2

Homeschool parents will be required to submit receipts for reimbursements in order to receive up to $8,000 to educate their kids. This is problematic for the low-income families who may not be able to front the $8,000 before reimbursement (by the way, private schools don’t have to provide receipts, they can just get the whole $8,000 up front).

Also, parents could potentially justify the purchase of a large item — a piano — as an educational expense, then re-enroll their child into public school the following semester. The piano becomes personal property and can be sold for market value — so the public school receives none of the WPU, the parent receives an $8,000 refund for the piano and sells the piano for market value. This is not a responsible use of public tax dollars.

Consequence No. 3

This is market manipulation — a strange thing to support for fiscal conservatives. Current education industries, such as those companies that build homeschool curricula will raise their prices when they realize more money is available at no expense to their consumers.

Conclusion

The arguments outlined above opposing the passage of HB 215 are simply a scratch on the surface of all of the potential problems the bill espouses. I did not address the largest aspect of HB 215. A proposed $6,000 raise for teachers which will cost the state around $200 million.

Instead, I will defer to my friend and colleague John Arthur (6th grade teacher, Utah Teacher Fellow, 2021 Utah Teacher of the Year, and 2021 National Teacher of the Year Finalist) explain why these issues must be separated:

Many teacher friends and colleagues are discouraged by HB 215. Teachers spend nearly all of their time thinking about how to help students learn. It’s on our mind at the grocery store, during little league baseball games, while we’re donating plasma at Biolife (we really need that raise). The mental labor teachers exert daily in their valiant attempts to meet the needs of their students leads to decision fatigue. Being absolutely gassed at the end of a day spent helping other people’s kids learn, and then learning about legislation like HB 215 becomes demoralizing. No wonder we are experiencing a teacher shortage, who would want to work in a field constantly under attack by powerful organizations who seem to be hellbent on destroying public education?

Linking a teacher pay raise to school vouchers feels like we are being asked to sell our birthright for a bowl of porridge.

I am not discouraged, though. Sometimes I am mad, but not discouraged.

I spend every day working alongside public school educators and students. Whatever the state Legislature does, we will figure out what to do. We always do.

We will work around whatever new obstacle comes our way. We will focus not on misguided legislation, but on helping students learn at high levels, motivating teachers to try more effective instructional methods, collaborating with friends and colleagues about how best to provide language support to the ESL population, specialized education services to students with disabilities and interventions for students who struggle to grasp difficult topics.

That matters more.

What bothers me is when public school employees are successful, that success will be used as justification for whatever decisions legislators make – if this voucher bill passes and our student performance is not negatively impacted, it will not be because of the effectiveness of the vouchers, but because of the resiliency, consistency and quality of the teachers and students who show up to do the work of public education every single day.

We showed up during the pandemic. We showed up when we had to wear masks. We showed up when people began attacking our school boards and district offices.

We. Show. Up.

It’s what we do.

I encourage everybody to contact their state senator and request to separate the teacher pay issue from the school voucher issue and to vote no on the vouchers.

But even if that doesn’t happen, we will be in the building working hard to make sure other people’s kids receive the best education possible.

Submitted by RYAN RARICK. Rarick lives in St. George and works for Washington County School District. He is a doctoral student in the TEAL Program at Utah State University and a member of the Utah Teacher Fellows part of the Hope Street Group. Views expressed here are his own.

Letters to the Editor are not the product of St. George News, its editors, staff or news contributors. The matters stated and opinions given are the responsibility of the person submitting them. They do not reflect the product or opinion of St. George News and are given only light edit for technical style and formatting.

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