The latest news on the Empowerment Scholarship Accounts [aka Vouchers on Steroids] vouchers-for-everyone bill is that it’s stuck in the House, temporarily at least. Republican leadership postponed debate on HB 2482. They know the Democrats are against it, but the problem is, some Republicans are concerned about it as well. So until they can scare up the needed votes—and I use the term “scare up” advisedly—the bill is on hold.
But I want to bring up one more thought on the ramifications of offering vouchers for all Arizona children, using a post by Richard Gilman from his Bringing Up Arizona website, an excellent place to go for information and ideas about the state of Arizona education.
I mentioned earlier that the greatest beneficiaries of the vouchers-for-all bill are people of means. The ESA voucher for an average student is between $3,500 and $5,000 a year, not enough to pay tuition and expenses at most of the better quality private schools but plenty to give upper middle class and wealthy parents a way to lower their tuition costs on the taxpayer dime. In his post, Gilman covers another aspect of the bill: that it will encourage shady operators to create private schools on the cheap, lure in the children of unsuspecting parents, then pocket as much voucher money as they can. That’s what happened, by the way, when Washington, D.C., offered private school vouchers. A similar problem arises whenever there’s a rapid expansion of charter schools. A few years back, for example, horror stories were coming out of Florida about the unsafe conditions and nearly complete lack of education at a number of charters.
Here’s Richard Gilman’s take.
THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS
Psst, want to make a quick killing? Go into the school business with me. The state’s making it just too good to pass up.
They’re going to put well over $3,000 of taxpayer money in every kid’s backpack, tell his parents nothing more than he needs to get instruction in reading, grammar, mathematics, social sciences and science, and send him out to spend the money on whatever “education” provider he chooses.
Here’s the best part. All you and I have to do to collect this kid’s check is call ourselves a “school,” set up an Arizona address, and accept every child who walks through the door regardless of his race, color, or national origin. And believe me, we’re going to want to lift the money off of any and every of the little snot noses even if they come from New Zealand.
That’s all we have to do. No, really. That’s all there is. We don’t need accreditation or certification or any of that other education crap. You’re no educator, and neither am I. But what difference does that make? The state couldn’t care.
All we need right now is for our buddies in the Legislature to pass this bill they’ve got making tax money available to every kid.
Crazy, isn’t it? State law goes on and on and on dictating to traditional and charter schools, and to their administrators, teachers and students, what to do about everything. Probably even tells them when to go to the bathroom. But all that malarkey is for government schools. They gotta spend their whole time figuring out how to do everything they’re supposed to do on the money they’re allotted.
NONE of that will apply to us! We’re “free enterprise,” meaning we’re free to do as we please. Our whole deal will be figuring how we can make as much profit as we can on the money we’re allotted.
Get this. They actually wrote into state law that you and I’ll be protected against changing whatever we dream up doing! Pretty sweet, huh?
I’m seriously thinking we don’t need real teachers. Okay, maybe we’ll hire one token teacher we’ll put on our website. Otherwise there’s a bunch of stuff online that we can pass off as education. We’ll just put kids in front of a computer and tell them to have at it. Right, who knows how they’ll spend their time online. Not our problem.
My first plan was to rent some storefront locations, install some tables, chairs and computer screens, and hire a few adults to look after things. The adults could be child molesters for all we’ll know, the state isn’t requiring us to check anyone’s fingerprints.
But you know what, we don’t even need to do that. Our little customers can school themselves from home.
You look a little pale, my friend. Don’t worry. The state’s putting zero academic expectations on us. They’re not requiring us to tell ‘em whether our kids are learning anything. We won’t know either, but no matter. If the state doesn’t care, why should we? Success will be whatever we say it is.
Here’s what I’m thinking. We’ll call our school The Easy Way. This will be our pitch: “Don’t like studying? Don’t like homework? Tired of those standardized tests? Rather be out messing around than sitting in some dumb ol’ classroom? Try us!”
Once their parents sign a certificate at the start of the year, it doesn’t make any difference if they come to class or not. Kids will start bragging about how easy it is getting our diploma. Word will spread. Then Katie, bar the door. It’ll take a Brink’s truck to deliver us all that tax money.
Tell you the truth, the only thing that’s got me worried is that some other wise guys are going to have the same idea as us. A couple of the charter so-called “schools” are verging on it already. The next thing we know they’ll be going private to get the regulations off their back.
Yeah, yeah, every con man this side of the State Pen is going to spill to our idea too. That part could get ugly, but not to worry. We’ll just have to out-slick them on Facebook.
Remember it’s about the money, not about education. Oh baby! This is going to be so much fun.
This article appears in Feb 25 – Mar 2, 2016.
Safier writes, “I mentioned earlier that the greatest beneficiaries of the vouchers-for-all bill are people of means. The ESA voucher for an average student is between $3,500 and $5,000 a year, not enough to pay tuition and expenses at most of the better quality private schools but plenty to give upper middle class and wealthy parents a way to lower their tuition costs on the taxpayer dime.”
And I mentioned earlier that the assertion that people of means will be the “greatest beneficiaries” of this program is not valid. Getting a $3500 to $5000 discount on tuition is in no way irrelevant to the middle class. If it’s $5000 per year and you use it for 12 years, that’s $60,000 you will save: at current rates, this is a little less than what is required to pay tuition, room and board at a private college for one year or a little more than enough to pay in-state tuition, room and board at the U of A for two years. When you live in a state where the public system is as underfunded and dysfunctional as some of our public districts are in the Tucson metro region, having discounts on tuition of this size at academically sound alternative schools, like our local Catholic schools, would be a real benefit to many families who are NOT “upper middle class” or “wealthy.”
The lack of oversight and accountability requirements in the particular ESA legislation referred to here is indeed a serious problem, and this legislation should not be passed. There are plenty of sound arguments against it, so there is no need for Safier to further damage his already battered credibility by continuing to assert that this legislation’s “greatest beneficiaries” would be “people of means.” It’s simply not true, as anyone who understands the financial realities of raising and educating children in this state knows very well.
Making our public schools strong and supported would solve many problems. School funding has been cut for decades. Tom Horne said years ago(the 90s) that he would live to see TUSD close … all because of the diversity programs offered. The bigotry and focus on making the rich richer is the driving force behind all that has changed in public education. Poorer children and children in special education do not get the same choices.
There is true oversight in public education. Vouchers will waste much money and since my parents who were not rich funded all of our Catholic education, the arguments that some children cannot get it, hold no substance for me. Religious education of any sect could and should be done after school or paid for by those who want it. I value my high school education in a public school as valuable in ways my Catholic education could not. Diversity and seeing the whole world was and still is invaluable to me.
So those who voted for our present Koch funded government in AZ have voted for what we have. Our present governor said that he would NEVER pay education back one cent. I heard it and read it. So to pretend that this isn’t orchestrated for the wealthy and people were not warned about what would happen if the present electorate was voted in, is simply not true. These changes benefit people of means. And college is now out of read for many, many more…. which is the point.
Guardians:
Making our local public schools “strong and supported” would require a lot more than increasing their funding. At this point, making TUSD “strong and supported” would require breaking up the board majority that has been running the district into the ground for the past three years.
Your stock villains, “the Koch brothers, the funding deficiencies, our governor,” etc., are indeed villains, but understanding their role is not sufficient to understanding what is going wrong with education in the greater Tucson metro region. For that, you need to look to your friend Dr. Sanchez whose compensation package will net him more than $400K this school year while he collaborates with the Arizona legislature to denigrate and defund desegregation. Under his leadership, “diversity and seeing the whole world” (?) is not something you will get on many TUSD sites, including the magnets. And as he further undermines the funding for integration and wastes more money on legal bills fighting the desegregation authority, we will see our already grave problems with segregation increasing rather than decreasing.
Guardians’ financial analyses, like Safier’s, do not hold water. If college is now more expensive, parents must ensure their children qualify academically at the same time that they must save more money for college expenses. If their neighborhood school is as dysfunctional as some TUSD sites are (e.g. west side sites where many classrooms continue to be run by rotating casts of subs who are not professional educators), some of these families may get better academic results by utilizing high functioning alternative schools that produce better academic results. Will it help families, in a context where so much must be saved for college expenses, not to have to pay out $60K per kid for K-12 if they have to exit a failing public school? Yes it will. The fact that Guardians’ parents, who were “not rich,” paid for their family’s Catholic education out of pocket decades ago in another state when the cost of college education and the conditions in the public schools were very different is entirely irrelevant when we’re evaluating the current situation in southern Arizona.
(A suggestion for Safier & Guardians and others in their camp: it is well past time to stop dwelling in the land of theory and abstraction and to start thinking through what the local REALITIES are. Recycled talking points from Pedersen, Darland & AEN will not solve the problems of parents who are faced with the very difficult problem of how to raise and educate children in this region. You may want to “save” the public district system, but some time ago we reached the point where we could not state “public schools are great!” without throwing a cloak over what the actual realities are in many of these schools. This is where we ACTUALLY are: NO ONE should have to enroll students in schools with the kinds of problems some TUSD sites currently have. As wonderful an IDEA it is to have high functioning neighborhood schools, it is not just, nor does it serve the academic or social / emotional best interests of kids to force them to remain in classrooms that are not meeting their learning needs.)
Sound policy formulation is based on fact, not on wishful thinking.
Does anyone know: is Safier a parent? Did he use public schools exclusively to educate his kids?
He spends a lot of his blog space arguing against policies that will increase access to private education. I agree that this ESA legislation going through the leg now needs more accountability built into it, but I also agree with some of the comments above that economically, there is a class of people for whom a $5K stipend would make enrolling a kid in a private school possible where it would not have been possible previously, and that class is not “the wealthy” or “the upper middle class.”
I hope those arguing against increased access to private schooling are those who used public schools exclusively themselves…private school parents who argue against increased access to private schools can’t really expect to maintain a reputation as “social justice” advocates….