School Vouchers

Education Program

SCHOOL VOUCHERS

With a daily barrage of articles condemning student, teacher and school performance, it is no wonder that both parents and policymakers are questioning whether public schools have failed. Increasing enrollment, budget crunches and teacher shortages may have stretched public education beyond its limits.

These concerns are driving parents to look for more and different choices. And state legislatures across the country are trying to accommodate them, examining policies that could help move students from public schools to private schools or away from organized schooling altogether. Through vouchers and tuition tax credits, lawmakers are creating alternatives to public education for a growing number of dissatisfied parents and raising serious questions about the role of public education in the new millennium.

A NEW ACCEPTANCE OF VOUCHERS?

Florida passed the first statewide voucher program in 1999, and interest in the issue has never been higher. Although this year was not atypical in terms of the number of state legislatures examining vouchers the seriousness of debate was unprecedented. Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Texas all had substantive discussion about vouchers. In 2000, at least 21 states have proposed voucher legislation across the country.

Vouchers use state money to provide tuition subsidies for students to attend private schools. Until Florida, the only publicly funded voucher programs legislated were pilot programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland.

According to Chester Finn Jr., former assistant secretary of education and president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, state legislatures are considering vouchers for a number of reasons: the continuing proliferation of other choice programs, the surge of interest in private schools for safety and academic reasons, changing public opinion and clarification of constitutional issues. All of these influences are coming together to make the public and state legislators think about new alternatives in education. Charter, magnet and alternative schools are expanding educational opportunities far beyond the neighborhood school.

Although government has been experimenting with choice and private service providers in the health and prison industries, virtually all students attend a traditional public school funded by and reporting to state and local school boards. "Only within education does choice seem like a revolutionary doctrine. The absence of choice is actually the anomaly," Finn says.

Finn believes that "people are unhappy with traditional public school performance for two reasons: Kids aren't learning to read, and kids aren't safe. Parents are beginning to say that if a neighborhood school won't come through, I will find one that will."

The Legislature in Florida became the first to allow parents across the state to "find" a private school, at the taxpayer's expense. Florida passed its voucher plan this year as part of a larger education reform bill proposed by Governor Jeb Bush. The program offers "opportunity scholarships" to students in chronically low-performing schools.

Under a new accountability program, students attending schools performing poorly in any two years during a four-year period will be eligible to receive a voucher to attend any private school or better performing public school.

Support for this new approach was far from unanimous, with many legislators concerned about the impact of the voucher program on Florida's public school system. Vouchers have created a situation where "the biggest opponent of public schools has become the state itself," argues Florida Senate Democratic Leader Buddy Dyer. He contends that Florida's new plan deals a heavy blow to struggling public schools and that it "will never help improve public education."

Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, agrees, arguing that vouchers are "siphoning off scarce public resources for the benefit of a few." Chase offers alternatives for improving public education, including smaller class sizes and successful models of comprehensive school reforms. "The only credible hope for millions of underprivileged urban children is a reformed and revitalized public education system," he says. "Reform means embracing the truly arduous task of shaping up the management of urban public schools, while holding students and teachers to significantly more ambitious standards."

But Florida Representative Beverly Kilmer, vice chair of the House Education Committee, believes the new voucher program will lead to more ambitious standards in all schools, with failing public schools turning them-selves around, prodded by the embarrassment of bad publicity and the fear of vouchers. "This program allows incentives for [public] schools to pull themselves up and provides the available help, with additional funding earmarked to help low performing schools. Our hope is that children will not have to use vouchers."

As can be seen in voucher debates across the country, a majority of legislators have not reached the same conclusion. In New Mexico, Governor Gary Johnson clashed with the Legislature, vetoing the entire state budget in 1999 because lawmakers would not consider his voucher plan. A special session was called to consider his plan to create a statewide voucher program that would eventually be available to all New Mexico students.

Senate Education Chair Cynthia Nava believes that the governor's proposal "would ruin public education in New Mexico. It will rob an already poor system." She sees the governor's plan coming on the heels of three years of increased public school funding as no coincidence. "Proponents argue that we are just dumping more money into a broken system and that vouchers will save education."

But she believes that "average citizens are not in favor of vouchers. And in a quiet moment, you can tell that those pushing the plan are not in favor of it either." The governor's plan was defeated during the special session by a vote of 29-11 in the Senate and 50-20 in the House.

CONSTITUTIONALITY AND OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

More states may now be considering vouchers because of a changing legal landscape for these programs. Back in 1971, the Supreme Court established three criteria to evaluate the constitutionality of religious assistance programs: The program must have a secular legislative purpose; the primary effect of the program must neither advance nor inhibit religion; and the program must not result in excessive entanglement of government in religion. The Court then used these criteria to overturn a New York tuition reimbursement program in 1973, arguing that religion was being advanced.

However, using the same criteria, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled last year that the inclusion of religious private schools in the Milwaukee voucher program was constitutional, arguing that the money went to parents, not to schools. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of the case, setting the stage for states to decide for themselves whether or not vouchers meet constitutional requirements.

Since then, other cases have produced contrary rulings, ensuring that the U.S. Supreme Court will have to resolve these conflicting decisions. In Ohio, the state Supreme Court ruled that the Cleveland voucher program was constitutional in regard to the establishment of religion, but its passage in 1995 violated the one-subject rule (it was passed as part of the budget rather than as a stand-alone program) and the program was overturned. The Maine Supreme Court, Vermont Supreme Court and the 1st Circuit Federal Appeals Court ruled that public money being used for tuition at parochial schools is a constitutional violation. And in March 2000, a circuit court in Florida ruled their new program unconstitutional. The program will be allowed to continue this year, but expansion has been put on hold as the decision is appealed.

Tuition tax credits have not had the constitutional problems of vouchers. The Supreme Court ruled the Minnesota program constitutional in 1983, arguing that the tax deduction-not only for private school tuition, but textbooks and other expenses potentially incurred by public school parents-was available to all parents and therefore not advancing religion. The Arizona Supreme Court, ruling the state's new tax credit program constitutional, reinforced that decision earlier this year.

Regardless of constitutionality, several important questions are being raised by both advocates and detractors of these religious school assistance programs. As states continue to debate voucher issues, legislators will have to reach some consensus on how to answer these questions:

Are these programs increasing student achievement? Research has been mixed on both the Milwaukee and Cleveland programs. According to one study of the Cleveland program, voucher recipients during the 1996-97 school year, on average, gained 5 percentile points on reading tests and 15 in math (relative to the national norm), but language skill scores declined 5 percentile points.

A study from the same authors found participating students in Milwaukee scoring higher on math and reading achievement tests. Other researchers have found no significant gains for voucher students in either city. Unfortunately, most of these initial studies have been questioned as researchers on all sides are accused of having special interest in their results. "States need to build an evaluation system into policy to know five years from now what difference vouchers have made," Finn says. "There is controversy in Milwaukee and virtually no good data in Cleveland."

What are the financial costs to the state and the effect on school districts? The total cost will depend largely on the structure of the voucher or tuition tax credit program.

The Institute for Wisconsin's Future estimates that the net loss to the Milwaukee school district due to the voucher program is $22.2 million this year. They claim that Milwaukee public schools are losing less than nine students per school due to vouchers, making it difficult to reduce costs to compensate for the forgone revenue, and raising questions about resources and class size.

A potential solution can be found in one of Pennsylvania's failed voucher proposals. It contained a "hold harmless" provision, providing school districts with extra state money to compensate for students lost through the creation of a voucher program.

Are there enough private schools with openings available to students with vouchers? It is difficult for vouchers to have an impact on the school marketplace if there are no seats available in private schools. In Florida, of the 800 Pensacola students in the two failing public schools eligible under the new voucher policy, only 91 applied to participate in the program. Yet there were only 59 slots available since only five of the approximately 18 private schools in the area offered to take these students.

In some states, private schools are not well distributed, making vouchers more feasible in populated urban areas. According to information on the New Mexico Department of Education Web site, four of the state's 89 school districts have 10 or more private schools, and more than half have no private schools at all. "There are no private schools available where the low income children that the voucher proponents are targeting reside," Senator Nava says.

Advocates argue that new private schools will open up to meet enrollment demands, as occurred in Cleveland with the creation of two Hope Academies that specifically cater to voucher students.

Should vouchers and tax credits be available to all students? Both Milwaukee and Cleveland make vouchers available for students below a certain income level. Florida's policy, as well as proposed plans in California, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, targets students in low performing schools. New Mexico considered legislation that eventually would have offered a voucher to every student in the state.

What is the role of the state and school district in a voucher system? Many voucher supporters worry about the potential for government to use vouchers to expand the regulation of private schools and create additional layers of bureaucracy. Detractors often cite a lack of accountability for private schools-which do not have to use certified teachers and comply with other state regulations-arguing that state assessments will be necessary as will other means of evaluating the performance of voucher students. Regardless, it will be difficult for the state, school districts and private schools to agree on the appropriate role for all education providers.

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

As options to traditional public schools continue to grow in number and popularity, the stakes of reforming public education are getting higher and the timeline for improvement is getting shorter. State legislators are sensing that parents are no longer willing to wait and see if new public school reforms are successful, adding a new urgency to education debates across the country.

Although Finn believes that "no one has a good crystal ball on this one," he sees "the only thing that is really clear is that school choice in various forms will continue to grow into a system where there are a lot of different flavors to choose from. Five years ago, no one ever would have thought about establishing a publicly funded voucher program. Now the question is where next and how many in what will clearly be a lengthening list of states with programs."

This growth will certainly be encouraged by the perceived failure of traditional public schools. "Florida's education system has been in a critical situation for a long, long time and something drastic needed to happen...we hit rock bottom and we have taken a major step forward," Representative Kilmer says.

Texas Representative Kent Grusendorf concurs, believing that something new must be done to address school performance. "Vouchers are not intended to harm the public schools, but help the public schools. We cannot maintain the status quo. I think people are afraid of change and abandoning the status quo. But how else are we going to improve?"

A slightly modified version of this text appeared in State Legislature Magazine, September 1999.

For more information contact Sara Vitaska @ 303-364-7700 x 1647.

Other information on the web:

American Federation of Teachers Voucher Homepage

Center for Education Reform

Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

Harvard Studies of Voucher Programs

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