PHOENIX – Public education advocates and leaders of the Arizona School Boards Association’s Black Alliance and Hispanic-Native American Indian Caucus gathered at the Arizona State Capitol on Thursday to protest a proposed voucher expansion initiative that they say would further defund public schools.
Senate Bill 1452, proposed by Sen. Paul Boyer, R-Glendale, would allow all children attending schools with a high percentage of low-income families or who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches to be eligible for the state’s empowerment scholarship account program. The proposed legislation was approved in a party-line vote 16-14 by on Monday, with Republicans voting in favor.
The current program, which serves 9,700 students, allows eligible parents to use state funding to pay for religious or other private education and education costs. Boyer’s bill would expand the program to serve a much larger group. More than 600,000 students receive free or reduced-price lunches in Arizona, the Governor’s Office has said.
Among those opposing the legislation were school board members, parents, superintendents, and other community members. Rather than routing money out of public schools, they argue the money should be used to help classrooms and neighborhoods where students live.
“A serious conversation about helping students begins from the premise that children be provided the tools they need in their own neighborhoods, easily accessible, without additional charges, or mandates to sign away one’s rights to antidiscrimination policies,” said Ann O’Brien, president of the Arizona School Boards Association’s executive board of directors. That, she continued, “is exactly what is required when a parent takes an ESA,” referring to empowerment scholarship accounts.
Berdetta Hodge, a Save Our Schools Arizona board member, said vouchers have an origin in segregation as they were invented after the landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education, which determined “separate is not equal” in schooling and mandated integration of public schools.
School vouchers allowed segregationists to “defy that decision by allowing white families in the South to flee from newly integrated public schools and take their children to segregated private schools, taking most of the public funding with them,” Hodge said.
Advocates want more for Arizona students.
“ESAs are merely a Band-Aid,” O’Brien said. “What we really need, and quite frankly what our students deserve, is a comprehensive solution to ensure that every student has an opportunity to achieve, thrive, and be successful in their own public school in their own neighborhood.”
Just two years ago, Arizona voters rejected similar legislation that would have allowed all 1.1 million public school students in the state to apply for ESAs.
SB 1452 now goes to the House for consideration.
This article appears in Feb 18-24, 2021.
Boyer used a disingenuous argument on Horizon that claims African American pastors came to him to support this. He also claimed voters didnt vote on this hair splitting version of vouchers (aka money laundering tax money for religious schools). This is the arrogance of Republican legislators, when voter reject one of their ideas at the ballot box, they always being it back with a modified nuance and claim this new idea is not what voters rejected. They are always wrong!
Arizona Black 8th grade math test scores ranked second in the nation in the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress. Whites ranked 7th and Asians ranked 11th. Hispanics ranked 20th but if they were separated in groups of Native Born and Foreign Born, most likely each group would have ranked 7th or better.
In 1992, as Arizona started on its journey to number one in the nation in school choice, school age children murdered 70 people. Most recently, despite a quintupling of at-risk school kids, murders by school-age children have dropped below 20.
The percentage of incarcerated juveniles has collapsed during this same time frame.
No group that opposes school choice for at-risk children is an “education” group. It is an “anti”-education group.
The use of the word “education” to describe such a group is an abomination.
John. You are definitely the King of Non sequitur.
“non-sequitor” def: a conclusion that doesn’t follow from the argument.
Your round about way of arguing that Arizona’s great outcomes don’t stem from 26 years of school choice.
While the rest of the nation slid from a 47 year peak of 36% of parents rating their child’s school an “A” school in 2010 to 24% in 2016, a 47 year low, major Arizona school districts climbed over 70%.
Yes, we get it Frances, it has nothing to do with school choice.
So, you might argue that other states spending more money has resulted in their outcomes.
Here is New York State at $25,000 per year per child, number one in the nation as compared to Arizona at $8,700, number 49:
Comparison of 8th grade math scores:
…………………………………………………………….New York…………….Arizona
Black………………………………………………………..258…………………….267
White……………………………………………………….292…………………….295
Asian………………………………………………………..305…………………….314
Hispanic……………………………………………………263…………………….269
The little secret in education policy is that not only is there not a positive correlation between spending money and outcomes, now with school choice, there is a negative correlation between money and outcomes.
School choice is a whole lot more important than money.
Why would you keep your children in an inferior school in New York costing you $25,000 per year when you can move to Arizona and get a superior education for one-third the cost?
Plus, Arizona actually has some jobs for these high-school and college graduates, growing at three times the pace of New York.
Altogether a better place for children.