Reprinted from the NJEA Reporter, November 2003
(Third of a Series)
Existing voucher programs are already costing millions, and a totally 'free market' would ultimately cost billions
Supporters of vouchers usually avoid discussing the true cost of vouchers, because they're on thin ice.
With public schools struggling for resources and state governments awash in red ink, there's not a lot of extra money for taxpayer-funded tuition to private and religious schools.
So, they'll try to divert the conversation by insisting that vouchers will save tax dollars, since vouchers will be less than a public school's per pupil expenditure. Or, they'll insist that vouchers will reduce public school enrollments, thereby reducing class sizes and per pupil costs.
The flaws in their logic are obvious. First of all, where do you think voucher money will come from: (a) A tax increase? (b) Health care? (c) Highway funds? or (d) public education spending? And thanks to the fixed cost problem (see sidebar), taking one or two children out of a public school classroom and giving them vouchers only leaves that classroom - and that school - with less in the way of resources.
Make no mistake: vouchers will take money from public schools. The forces pushing for vouchers are the forces of privatization, and they want to get their hands on the $400 billion public education "industry" any way they can.
The potential cost of a voucher program could be staggering, particularly if it were open to students already attending private and religious schools. A $3,000 national voucher program would cost $15 billion for those students, before one public school student benefited. The cost to New Jersey taxpayers for the state's 300,000 private school students would be nearly $1 billion.
Estimates of the cost of a national voucher program open to all students run as high as $73 billion - far more than the federal government currently spends on public K-12 education.
Consider the cost of existing voucher programs in other cities and states:
- The Milwaukee voucher program costs $58.4 million, for 10,700 students. City residents pay higher taxes to pay for 45 percent of that amount; the other 55 percent is paid by Wisconsin taxpayers through general purpose taxes. To make matters worse, fewer than 20 percent of students in the voucher program actually attended public schools the previous year, meaning public funds were taken from public school students to subsidize students already attending private schools.
- The Cleveland voucher program has cost taxpayers more than $33 million from funds previously available for city programs for disadvantaged public school students. One in three students was already enrolled in a private school prior to receiving a voucher. In its second year, the program overran its budget by 41 percent.
- The Florida "Opportunity Scholarship Program" - the first statewide voucher program - could cost more than $250 million a year if all eligible students apply for vouchers. Corporate tax credits totaling $138 million have already been diverted to private schools; despite a legal requirement for annual audits, none has been conducted.
- The Colorado voucher program, enacted last April, is initially targeted at 11 low-income districts. They are being forced to spend thousands of scarce dollars on voucher startup/administrative costs in order to identify potential private schools, and to communicate voucher availability to students.
But these costs are only the tip of the iceberg. Since there are only an estimated 150,000 open seats in existing private and religious schools, voucher supporters envision an exploding "free market" of educational options, in which all sorts of dubious schools might qualify for taxpayer dollars (see sidebar stories from Milwaukee and Florida for a preview).
John Walton, heir to the Wal-Mart fortune and the single largest supporter of vouchers in the nation (more than $2 billion for pro-voucher initiatives, research, and think-tanks since 2000), told the Wall Street Journal in August 2000 that he is planning a chain of private, for-profit schools to meet the demand that would follow passage of a large-scale publicly funded voucher program.
Vouchers, it would appear, are more about money than education.
NEXT MONTH: - The "Choice and Competition" argument: why there is no level playing field between public and private schools, and a close look at the accountability problem with vouchers