No. This has been another edition of easy answers to simple questions.
The argument that vouchers will help poor families is bankrupt on its face. Quite frankly, few if any working class families have the resources to cover the gap between the maximum voucher benefit and school tuition, which can easily run into the thousands of dollars per year.
Let’s review the basics. Vouchers will provide at most $3000. Tuition at most private schools starts well above that amount. Judge Memorial (my alma mater), one of the cheaper alternatives in Utah private schools, starts at $7250 (+ fees) for qualified Catholic students. For non-Catholic students, tuition is $8600 per year. Cosgriff Elementary is almost $4000 for qualified Catholic students; for non Catholic students it is almost $5000. Catholic education is consistently among the most affordable private school alterntaive – meaning that even these “affordable” alternatives are beyond the reach of most working class and poor families. The families that will benefit from vouchers are white, middle, conservative families that don’t want their kids learning about evolution. Claims about school choice and helping poor families are nothing more than empty rhetoric, successfully polltested but ultimately misleading.
What about the claim that vouchers will give parents the power to choose schools? Vouchers won’t make private education accessible to poor and working class families. Vouchers won’t create additional private schools nor will vouchers create space in existing private schools. Utah’s private schools are already every student for whom they have a desk. Vouchers will benefit families who can already afford private schools. In other words, upper income and upper middle income families. If the real goal were providing school choice, voucher proponents would be creating proposals to truly reform public education and keep it free. For instance, they might propose “school within schools” programs – where rather than a single high school with 2000 students, we have four schools sharing the space – each with its own teachers, students and programs geared toward the needs of students, and into parents could choose to enroll their kids. They might be propsing creative funding methods to increase the number of teachers in Utah’s schools. They might be using their vast resources to found excellent private schools. They would be proposing ways to decrease class size, to hire more teachers, to improve public school facilities.
Vouchers proponents are doing none of those things because the stated goals of the voucher movement are not achievable by providing private school vouchers.
Also, consider the frequency with which voucher supporters attack the teachers union. Attacks on the teachers union doesn’t make sense in the context of PCE’s rhetoric of “choice” and “helping families” and “improving education.” But attacks on the UEA and NEA are bread and butter to voucher proponents. What the hell is going on?
Well, the teacher’s union has a long history of fighting for teaching accurate science, not creationism, of advocating for the rights of children, of fighting for diversity, tolerance and inclusiveness. IOW, all the values that conservatives regard with distruct – science, diversity, children’s rights – have strong advocates in teachers. (As an aside, I’ve long wondered why conservatives are so distrustful of the idea of children’s rights – it occurs to me that children’s rights are an attack upon the patriarchal family structure so beloved of conservatives – a family structure in which children are regarded as having no rights not specifically granted them by their fathers.)
Anyway, attacks on public education through vouchers serve three purposes -
- To undermine the concept of public education in general by creating an environment in which people believe public schools are inherently flawed (hence rhetoric about “government schools”).
- To validate the idea of tax revenues supporting religious education.
- To undermine the teachers union and reduce the efficacy in advocating for causes that offend conservatives.
#1 by Richard Warnick on September 21, 2007 - 10:21 am
That $3,000 may just be the thin end of the wedge. Later they’ll come back and ask for more. Jeremy’s Jeremiad revealed the money quote last month from the Utah Taxpayer Association:
I still don’t get why the Utah Taxpayer Association always wants to raise my taxes.
#2 by glendenb on September 21, 2007 - 10:27 am
Richard – trust me, this is the thin end of the wedge.
#3 by Andrea on September 21, 2007 - 1:12 pm
Even if they raise the voucher amount, it would still be less than what we are spending right now per student in public schools.
#4 by Jesse Harris on September 21, 2007 - 1:39 pm
That’s from Albert Shanker, former head of the American Federation of Teachers. Those rare moments of clarity remind us that a union is primarily for negotiating compensation, not getting members to have greater input on the product produced. It just happens to make for good PR.
#5 by Don on September 21, 2007 - 2:33 pm
Andrea,
I like games. Let’s see if I can play too . . . hmmmm . . . any amount for vouchers is more than we currently spend on private schools.
Yep, I was able to come up with a talking point as completely meaningless as yours. We’re tied . . . your turn.
#6 by Don on September 21, 2007 - 2:33 pm
Jesse,
Point?
#7 by Rob Miller on September 21, 2007 - 10:25 pm
Let’s remember that Referendum 1 is the People’s Referendum. Not one legislative candidate campaigned on the voucher ticket. They campaigned on the education ticket leading Utahns to believe they were committed to our children and Utah Public Education programs.
PCE (Parents for Choice in Education) targeted several Republican and Democratic legislative races and particularly one school board seat that was and is currently occupied by School Board chairman Kim Burningham. In that race Christopher Barden’s mouthpieces (he never did show up for a debate himself; he sent his beautiful blond and very lovely wife to one event and a striking young, well spoken young man, to another. At both these events Dr. Barden’s stand ins were asked about Dr. Barden’s position on vouchers and both replied that they would discuss Dr. Barden’s position with them afterwards, privately.
The one time I did meet candidate Barden he was well tailored and well groomed. I said hello Dr. Barden and he grunted something out of the side of his mouth and that was the only time I saw him campaign. Barden may have keep out of site, but there still was an enomorous amount of money thrown into his campaign, primarily by patrons of PCE. Even with Governor Huntsman’s endorsement PCE did everything they could to take Kim’s seat, but the people overwhelmingly elected Kim Burningham, again.
The PCE legislative candidates that made it passed convention were knocked out either in the primary or the general election. Not one survived.
One might think that the members who voted for private acedemy vouchers would have heard the voice of the people who elected them, but instead they through some money at the public education system they have starved for the last two decades and strong armed (bullied) their voucher curse through the Utah House.
Democratic senators brought some great amendments to the floor, to bring solutions to this flawed bill but the overwhelming Republican Utah Senate turned their backs on the Democrats and once again pushed the bill through without any true deliberation. Not one House or Senate Democrat supported this bill (HB 148).
Later they would pass amendment HB 174 to HB 148, with Democratic support, and this was a deliberate loophole to try to implement vouchers just in case an referendum petition was circulated.
Once the bill was passed and signed into law the good citizens of Utah stood up and decided to assert their constitutional right to have an equal say with the legislative branch and they gathered more than an adequate amount of signatures. Those signatures are the reason you hyave an up and down vote on this bill today.
The truth is the majority of the people I am aquainted with who are involved in this fight are Republicans. PCE loves to attach the words Liberal, and Union to everything piece of propaganda they distribute. They act as if people who see themselves as liberals (like Jesus), and that those teachers who made the CHOICE to join an association, or a union (the United States is a Union by the way) to protect their voice, and rights are somehow immaterial and that their voice doesn’t matter. They try to scare you by using the image of a the “Union Thug” an old worn out, out-of-date, and untrue representation of our Utah teachers and members of the UEA, who are again our friends and neighbors.
One of the main contributors to this fight by the way is Wal-Mart, a corporation that wants to destroy the labor movement so badly they will dismantle the public education system to do it. And there it is, the real reason this voucher law was bullied through the legislature, without debate or compromise by Republican leadership and spongers of this bill.
This is about Liberals…
This isn’t about unions…
This isn’t about CHOICE.
This is about the elimination of CHOICE, and the improprieties that are assocuiated with the passing of vouchers in Utah is more than enough reason to vote No on Referendum 1 come November.
But there are some many other well thought out reasons to vote NO in November.
Referendum 1 belongs to the diverse and unified citizens of the State of Utah.
Thanks for the inspiration Jesse.
#8 by Rob Miller on September 21, 2007 - 10:29 pm
Insert threw, instead of through.
Tired, went to The Guv’s funeral, it was a great celebration.
#9 by Rob Miller on September 21, 2007 - 11:25 pm
Replace “This isn’t about unions” with This isn’t about non-existent union thugs.
That’s why workers rights buster Wal-Mart is playing. And Amway too.
#10 by Craig Johnson on September 22, 2007 - 7:30 am
Rob – your clarity continues to amaze me! You’ve just summed up the whole sorry episode. Thank you!
#11 by Rob Miller on September 22, 2007 - 7:46 am
Thanks Craig,
Unfortunately I was too tired to fix the corrections.
Here it is again with corrections:
Let’s remember that Referendum 1 is the People’s Referendum. Not one legislative candidate campaigned on the voucher ticket. They campaigned on the education ticket leading Utahns to believe they were committed to our children and Utah Public Education programs.
PCE (Parents for Choice in Education) targeted several Republican and Democratic legislative races and particularly one school board seat that was and is currently occupied by School Board chairman Kim Burningham. In that race Christopher Barden’s mouthpieces (he never did show up for a debate himself; he sent his beautiful blond and very lovely wife to one event and a striking young, well spoken young man, to another). At both these events Dr. Barden’s stand ins were asked about Dr. Barden’s position on vouchers and both replied that they would discuss Dr. Barden’s position with them afterwards, privately.
The one time I did meet candidate Barden he was well tailored and well groomed. I said hello Dr. Barden and he grunted something out of the side of his mouth and that was the only time I saw him campaign. Barden may have keep out of site, but there still was an enormous amount of money thrown into his campaign, primarily by patrons of PCE. Even with Governor Huntsman’s endorsement PCE did everything they could to take Kim’s seat, but the people overwhelmingly elected Kim Burningham, again.
The PCE legislative candidates that made it passed convention were knocked out either in the primary or the general election. Not one survived.
One might think that the members who voted for private academy vouchers would have heard the voice of the people who elected them, but instead they threw some money at the public education system they have starved for the last two decades and strong armed (bullied) their voucher curse through the Utah House.
Democratic senators brought some great amendments to the floor, to bring solutions to this flawed bill but the overwhelming Republican Utah Senate turned their backs on the Democrats and once again pushed the bill through without any true deliberation. Not one House or Senate Democrat supported this bill (HB 148).
Later they would pass amendment HB 174 to HB 148, with Democratic support, and this was a deliberate loophole to try to implement vouchers just in case an referendum petition was circulated.
Once the bill was passed and signed into law the good citizens of Utah stood up and decided to assert their constitutional right to have an equal say with the legislative branch and they gathered more than an adequate amount of signatures. Those signatures are the reason you have an up and down vote on this bill today.
The truth is the majority of the people I am acquainted with who are involved in this fight are Republicans. PCE loves to attach the words Liberal, and Union to everything piece of propaganda they distribute. They act as if people who see themselves as liberals (like Jesus), and that those teachers who made the CHOICE to join an association, or a union (the United States is a Union by the way) to protect their voice, and rights are somehow immaterial and that their voice doesn’t matter. They try to scare you by using the image of a the “Union Thug†an old worn out, out-of-date, and untrue representation of our Utah teachers and members of the UEA, who are again our friends and neighbors.
One of the main contributors to this fight by the way is Wal-Mart, a corporation that wants to destroy the labor movement so badly they will dismantle the public education system to do it. And there it is, the real reason this voucher law was bullied through the legislature, without debate or compromise by Republican leadership and spongers of this bill.
This isn’t about Liberals…
This isn’t about non-esistant unions thugs…
This isn’t about CHOICE.
This is about the elimination of CHOICE. The improprieties that are associated with the passing of vouchers in Utah is more than enough reason to vote No on Referendum 1 come November.
But there are some many other well thought out reasons to vote NO in November.
Referendum 1 belongs to the diverse and unified citizens of the State of Utah.
Thanks for the inspiration Jesse.
#12 by Rob Miller on September 22, 2007 - 9:47 am
Fix the corrections?
Me bad
#13 by Don on September 22, 2007 - 10:33 am
Rob, I think you need to quit or you’ll just fall farther behind.
Regardless, the ideas you express are powerful enough to greatly outweigh any minor typos.
#14 by Don on September 22, 2007 - 4:35 pm
I’ve just posted some fiscal analysis of the voucher program over on Frank’ Blog (look for the comments by Don). I’ll repost it here for the benefit of OneUtah readers as well . . .
For all of my calculations I’ve been using the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s average voucher figure of approximately $2000 and the Utah Taxpayer Association’s figure of $7500/student for public education. With these assumptions each student who switches from public education to private (switchers) will save the state $5500.
In order for a fully implemented voucher system to just break even, the number of switchers must be just over 36% relative to the total number of private school students.
Here’s how the numbers break down for a total private student population of 30000.
30000 x $2000=$60,000,000 total voucher amount.
30000 x .3636 x $5500=$59,994,000 total savings from “switchersâ€.
This gives us a net loss of $6000, basically a wash.
Now, to get to a private school population with 36% switchers, the actual switch rate relative to the base private school population is about 57%. (19092 base population + 10908 switchers = 30000 total population). A 57% switch rate is simply unrealistic in the real world. In fact, it is almost four times the 14.5% rate estimated by the LFA.
Don’t forget, this wildly unrealistic switch rate is just to get us to the break even point. In order to get any type of real savings from the voucher program, the switch rate would have to be even higher. For comparison’s sake, a 100% switch rate would lead to a net savings of about 28.6 million. Again, this is hardly a windfall for taxpayers or public schools and it is based on a virtually unattainable number of switchers.
In the end it is hard to conclude anything other than Parents for Choice in Education, their media lackeys (Lavar Webb) and the Utah Taxpayer’s Association are being completely dishonest in touting the voucher program as some great benefit to public schools and/or a huge savings for taxpayers. It’s either that or they just don’t know what they’re talking about.