School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona's Budget.

[Passages]

Arizona, the model for voucher programs across the country, has spent so much money paying private schoolers’ tuition that it’s now facing hundreds of millions in budget cuts to critical state programs and projects.

by Eli Hager
July 16, 2024

In 2022, Arizona pioneered the largest school voucher program in the history of education. Under a new law, any parent in the state, no matter how affluent, could get a taxpayer-funded voucher worth up to tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private school tuition, extracurricular programs or homeschooling supplies.

In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model.

Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year.

As a result of all this unexpected spending, alongside some recent revenue losses, Arizona is now having to make deep cuts to a wide swath of critical state programs and projects, the pain of which will be felt by average Arizonans who may or may not have school-aged children.
https://www.propublica.org/article/arizona-school-vouchers-budget-meltdown?utm_campaign=propublica-sprout&utm_content=1723986001&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

[Irish_Dem]

1. Why would paying for both public and private schools be cheaper

that just paying for public school?

[flying_wahini]

2. Ding, ding, ding. It's not cheaper.

Gov Abbott is trying SO hard to get it passed in Texas. Failed by70% so he is reintroducing it again.

It even failed in rural red areas.

[Passages]

3. Yep.

[Irish_Dem]

4. Maybe people are wising up and not falling for the GOP tricks.

[FullySupportDems]

6. I want to say their theory is that

Fewer children would be attending public school, and so the public schools wouldn't need as much money? That might have been it. No real thought behind that theory. Or anything else they thought.

As a former libertarian, I can tell you these public school hating people think they're really smart. Like the one who wrote an article about how awful public schools are, and he didn't learn anything in his. The horrors.

[Irish_Dem]

7. It is cheaper to educate more children with one overhead and infrastructure.

But supporting two entirely different systems is costly.

Yes a man writing an article is literate and has good writing skills.
But he learned nothing from his public school education.
Sure. What a liar.

[FullySupportDems]

8. I should look up that article

It's been years ago, on Lew Rockwell. And it wasn't the dumbest article either, sad to say.

[Attilatheblond]

9. Former librarian myself, in an extremely small rural town. Some home-schooling parents wanted many books burned!

And they expected me to keep their teen kids off the Public Access Computers. Nope, can't do that. There were filters to prevent those PACs from accessing sites like porn and such, but minors are considered people who also have civil rights and the public libraries cannot infringe on those rights. Librarians were not subjected to parents demanding we enforce their home 'no internet' rules, but boy or boy, did I get a lot of abuse from parents who thought they owned me 'because they were taxpayers and I worked for them.'

Voucher legislation is sold to voters as a way of expanding their 'power' to decide what their kids are taught. That is code for: you won't have to have your kids exposed to 'the others' or anything you don't personally approve of. My experience with home schooled kids was they were kept naive and basically ignorant of life in the real world. They were left isolated, sullen, and ended up as ignorant and as the fearful parents who never wanted them to become independent human beings. Those kids were like hobbled horses with blinders.

It was so disheartening to watch them NOT grow. The few who tried to go to cities for education and/or work, usually failed and came 'home', eventually joining their elders at the bar, lamenting how awful life is in this country. Most of 'em have DUI convictions before turning 21. Downhill slide from there.

Breaks one's heart.

[FullySupportDems]

10. You've really seen the war on books up close and personal

I'm not sure how any reasonable person could navigate those arbitrary demands from parents at a library. Saintly patience! Librarians are great people.

Seeing the kids not able to grow and thrive sounds so sad. I think you must be right about the parents wanting to "protect" their kids from the bad public school environment, and pushing for vouchers for that reason. That makes sense. To them, of course.

[Attilatheblond]

11. The saving grace was that the population was so small

Not everyone was as deep into the right wing culture. But, I was one of only a dozen voters registered as DEM. I was always surprised there weren't crossed being set alight in my front yard. Seriously.

[Attilatheblond]

5. AZ Save Our Schools group works to get the real info out about how vouchers have harmed public schools.

Would recommend people in any state considering school vouchers look into this group for solid info about the drawbacks of vouchers. Also, good group to learn from to fight this money siphon from public education in your state.

https://sosarizona.org/]

Get the facts: https://sosarizona.org/the-truth-about-esa-vouchers/]

for starters:

ESA = “Empowerment Scholarship Account,” a deceptive term for voucher

ESA vouchers will cost the state $825 million in FY2024 (Arizona Department of Education)

Every new ESA voucher represents subtracts funding from our local public schools, which are already funded 49th in the US (Making the Grade 2023)

Vouchers do not save Arizona money: the minimum ESA voucher is $500 higher than the state per-pupil funding to district schools

75% of vouchers go to students already enrolled in private school or home-school (bit.ly/VoucherVerdict)

Supt. Horne is spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to advertise vouchers (Arizona Capitol Times)

77% of ESA voucher users are from wealthy zip codes in AZ (ABC 15)

Voucher funds are reimbursed by Supt. Horne’s ADE – most expenses are Amazon & Venmo purchases to a massive list of 3000 vendors (bit.ly/vendorsESA)

Reimbursements include questionable expenditures such as gourmet espresso machines, snow cone maker, home gyms, chicken coops, zoo and bounce memberships, trips, and so much more (bit.ly/VoucherWaste)

That 75% of vouchers go to students already enrolled in private schools or home schools and that 77% of ESA voucher users are from wealthy zip codes in AZ proves that this program is just one more funnel of taxpayer money to wealthy people who are already willing and able to afford private schooling. Legislators try to pass the voucher program as helping inner city parents with lower incomes assure better education for their kids is an especially vile lie.

Also, the voucher programs pay schools that do not have to accept any student who applies. IOW, no special ed, no need for making facilities adapt for differently enabled people. Also, no standardized testing requirements. IOW, here's a gob of tax payer money and look, no strings, no requirements like public schools have.

It's a massive siphon of public money into hands that mostly don't need it and/or people who just don't want their kids exposed to the realities of life. A massive injury to society and our future.

[eppur_se_muova]

12. Exactly what you knew would happen if you thought about it for even half a second.

Uglicans don't want people to think; they want to provoke them into outrage over fictitious "unfairness".

[Passages]

13. Precisely.

Vouchers Don’t Work in Rural Areas
Vouchers don’t provide an actual choice for students living in rural areas who have little, if any, access to private schools. If students are able to use a voucher, they are generally required to endure long, costly commutes. And, vouchers are especially harmful to the public school systems serving large rural areas because the schools are forced to spread the same costs for facilities, transportation, administration, and instruction over a smaller revenue stream.

https://www.ncpecoalition.org/ruralvouchers