[Newly enacted universal school vouchers are greatly exceeding
state budgets, and it’s not clear where the money to pay for cost
overruns will come from. ]
[[link removed]]

HOW RIGHT-WING BRAINCHILD ‘UNIVERSAL SCHOOL VOUCHERS’ BLOW
THROUGH STATE BUDGETS  
[[link removed]]


 

Jeff Bryant
November 12, 2023
Independent Media Institute [[link removed]]

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_ Newly enacted universal school vouchers are greatly exceeding state
budgets, and it’s not clear where the money to pay for cost overruns
will come from. _

, Cagle Cartoons: Pat Bagley

 

In 2023, Republican state governors went to unprecedented lengths to
enact universal school voucher programs in legislative sessions across
the country and made support for these programs into rigid party
ideology. Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott, for instance, went so
far as to recall the state’s legislature for a fourth special
session
[[link removed]],
a historically unprecedented action in the Texas Legislature’s
176-year history, according to a November 7 article in the Texas
Tribune. According to the report, “[t]he biggest point of
contention” is a universal school voucher bill that House
Republicans have repeatedly rejected. Previously, Abbott warned
[[link removed]] any
Republican holdouts that they would be challenged
[[link removed]] from
within the party in the 2024 primary elections if they didn’t get in
line and extend their support for vouchers.

Abbott calls his voucher plan “education freedom
[[link removed]],”
echoing a term favored by former President Donald Trump’s Secretary
of Education Betsy DeVos, who used her office to push
[[link removed]] for
a federally funded nationwide school voucher program.

School vouchers can take on many forms
[[link removed]],
including tax credit programs—which give tax credits to anyone who
donates to nonprofits that provide school vouchers—and so-called
education savings accounts (ESAs), which allow parents to withdraw
their children from public schools and receive a deposit of public
funds into an account that they can tap for education expenses. Abbott
is attempting to push through an ESA in Texas.

When voucher programs were initially enacted
[[link removed]] in
early adopting states, such as Florida and Arizona, eligibility was
limited to low-income families or to children with special needs or
circumstances. But the trend over the last few years has been to make
these programs open
[[link removed]] to
all or nearly all families. What Abbott is proposing, in fact,
would allow all families
[[link removed]] to
apply for vouchers.

Nine states have enacted universal school vouchers as of November
2023, including Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina,
Ohio, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia, according to State Policy
Network
[[link removed]], a
school choice advocacy group. Indiana’s voucher program is “near
universal,” as 97 percent of families are eligible under the scheme.

Republicans who oppose universal school vouchers, in Texas
and elsewhere
[[link removed]],
have expressed concerns about diverting tax dollars from public
schools, especially in rural communities
[[link removed]],
to private education providers that have little or no accountability
for how they spend the money. They’ve also questioned the
constitutionality of giving parents public funds to spend on private
religious schools.

But Republican state lawmakers who claim to be strict watchdogs on
government purse strings should also be concerned about another
consequence of enacting these programs—their potential to quickly
run through estimated costs and produce sizable deficits.

According to multiple reports detailed below, states that have been
among the earliest to adopt universal voucher programs are finding
that their costs are far exceeding estimates primarily due to the high
numbers of families taking advantage of the programs. These families
mostly never had their children enrolled in public schools.

In state after state, the number of families using vouchers to
“escape
[[link removed]]”
so-called failed public schools—an original argument
[[link removed]] for
vouchers—is dwarfed by a larger population of families who already
had their children enrolled in private schools and are using voucher
money to subsidize their private school tuition costs.

Another large percentage of voucher users are parents who homeschool
[[link removed]] their
children and use voucher funds to cover expenses they would previously
have been shouldering themselves. Vouchers also appear to be
incentivizing parents with rising kindergartners
[[link removed]] to
choose private schools instead of their local public schools.

Other reports
[[link removed]] have
raised concerns about the financial wisdom of giving parents free sway
over how they use voucher money, citing evidence that parents have
used the funding to make extravagant purchases or buy products and
services that have dubious educational value.

In the meantime, policy leaders and experts alike warn
[[link removed]] that
universal voucher programs are sending states, which are
constitutionally obligated to balance their budgets, into uncharted
financial waters.

‘It Depends on the State and Is Hard to Know’

Where will funding to cover cost overruns of voucher programs come
from?

“It depends on the funding mechanism in the voucher law,”
according to Jessica Levin, an attorney and director of Public Funds
Public Schools [[link removed]], an organization that
opposes efforts to redirect public funds for education to private
entities.

“For programs that divert funds earmarked for public schools… the
voucher funding would dip further into public school funds and/or
appropriations,” Levin explained in an email to Our Schools. “For
vouchers that are funded with general revenue funds, more money would
come out of the state general fund.”

Funding for Abbott’s proposed voucher plan
[[link removed]],
for example, draws
[[link removed]] from
the state’s general revenue rather than the main source of funding
for K-12 education.

Levin added that there could be other mechanisms to prevent cost
overruns, including spending caps written into the voucher law and
separate appropriations laws that could limit the total funding.

But in terms of what a state might cut to balance out the impact of
voucher costs, Levin said, “It depends on the state and is hard to
know.”

So far, Republican lawmakers have either denied
[[link removed]] the
existence of these cost overruns, or they’ve been unclear
[[link removed]] about where money to
cover the deficits will come from.

“I haven’t seen coverage of that question,” said Joshua Cowen, a
professor of education policy at Michigan State University, who
replied to a query from Our Schools.

Cowen has been an outspoken critic
[[link removed]] of
voucher programs primarily because of their tendency to have a
negative impact on student achievement.

Cowen has also expressed concerns about the potential financial
impacts of these programs, noting
[[link removed]] in
an April 2023 interview, that “[T]he real issue is that you’re
getting the state standing up new budgetary obligations to prop up
private school tuition where otherwise [those costs] have been borne
by the private sector.”

And he has warned of the dangers of vouchers to incentivize a market
for “sub-prime
[[link removed]]”
private schools that would quickly open to get the money but then
prove to be unsustainable and just as quickly close.

On the issue of voucher program cost overruns, Cowen told Our Schools,
“I assume states have different rules about what amounts to deficit
spending. But I’m not sure. Arizona is obviously the massive one.”

‘Arizona… the Massive One’

In Arizona, the first state to pass a universal school voucher
program, according to
[[link removed]] the
New York Times, Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs has raised an alarm
about the enormous cost overruns coming from ESAs, according to KTAR
News
[[link removed]].

In a memo
[[link removed]] issued
from her office, Hobbs declared that the voucher program “may cost
taxpayers up to $943,795,600 annually, resulting in a potential
$319,795,600 general fund shortfall in FY 2024.”

It would appear that these cost overruns would have to eventually be
covered by the state’s general fund. According to
[[link removed]] Common
Sense Institute Arizona, an organization that advocates for school
vouchers, “The ESA program is fully funded by the state’s general
fund.”

For that reason, Hobbs maintained that the impact of these costs will
go beyond funding for public schools, KTAR reported
[[link removed]].
“Public safety, all the big budget priorities are going to be
impacted if [the cost overrun] continues to grow at this pace,” she
said.

In May 2023, Andrés Cano, who was then the Democratic state
representative and House Minority Leader, seemed to agree with Hobbs
and told [[link removed]] ABC15
Arizona, “We’ll either have to tap into the rainy day fund, or
we’ll have to cut core state priorities.”

Despite these unplanned costs, “Republicans who have the majority in
the state legislature refused any attempt to cap or cut ESAs,” ABC15
Arizona reported [[link removed]].
Arizona’s universal voucher program was created by the state’s
former Governor Doug Ducey who called it the “gold standard of
educational freedom
[[link removed]],”
according to the Washington Examiner.

Republicans also offer differing opinions on whether the voucher
program is leading to overruns, and if they are, where the funding to
offset costs will come from.

Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, a
Republican, insisted
[[link removed]] that money to plug the
budget breach for the voucher program “comes out of basics of state
aid for the schools.”

He added, “The burden on the budget will be much less because
we’re talking about students who would be educated in one place or
another, and if they choose ESAs, it costs the state 10 percent
less.”

Horne’s math seems suspect based on the memo
[[link removed]] issued
by Hobbs, which blamed the cost overruns largely on the high
percentage of parents who receive voucher money despite never having
had their children enrolled in public schools.

“More than 50 percent of ESA voucher funding represents a newly
incurred cost to the [s]tate,” the memo
[[link removed]] read,
“due to new applicants that were previously enrolled in private
school, homeschooling, or were attending non-state aid schools prior
to transferring.”

Horne’s claims of savings are even more suspect given that
the Arizona Association of School Business Officials
[[link removed]], according to multiple
[[link removed]] reports
[[link removed]] from
2023, has calculated that the cost of a basic voucher for a student in
elementary and middle schools is approximately $424 more per pupil
than what the state pays to public school districts and around $540
more than what the state provides for high schoolers.

Arizona’s universal voucher program also seems to be incentivizing
the private school market in Arizona to expand, as Cowen predicted.

ABC15 reported
[[link removed]] that
an unknown number of new private education startups have recently
opened to take advantage of the funding. The rapid expansion of
unaccountable education providers prompted Arizona Attorney General
Kris Mayes to warn parents that many of the new vendors “may be
fraudulent,” according to the news outlet.

Another concern among Arizona Democratic lawmakers and public school
advocates has to do with what parents are spending their voucher money
on.

ABC15 examined state records of what parents have bought with voucher
money in October 2023 and found
[[link removed]] “millions
of dollars in expenses that could be considered extracurricular.”

Examples include
[[link removed]] “approximately
$57,000 in purchases to Universal Yums,” a subscription service that
peddles snacks with a trivia hook from a different country monthly,
and $400,000 on “aeroponic indoor gardens” which families use to
grow their own food—at a cost of $900 each.

Parents used voucher funds to pay
[[link removed]] for
passes to a ski resort, ninja warrior training, trampoline parks,
climbing gyms, and martial arts instruction.

According to an investigation
[[link removed]] of
the 2022-2023 ESA transactions by ABC15, families also made a $3,400
“transaction at a golf store,” incurred a “$10,000 expense at a
sewing machine company,” and purchased appliances for freeze-drying
food that cost around “$3,000 each.” Parents spent voucher funds
on costly items such as pianos as well.

When public schools occasionally buy these kinds of items, the
products are used to educate hundreds of students for a whole school
year or more and are not meant for single-family use or for small
groups of students.

When ABC15 asked whether these purchases qualified for taxpayer
reimbursement, ESA Executive Director John Ward replied
[[link removed]],
“[I]f that’s how… [parents are] going to choose to use… [the
money], that’s their prerogative.”

Universal voucher programs are quickly running up costs and exceeding
budget estimates in other states that have adopted them as well.

A DeSantis ‘Priority’

Florida was an early pioneer of school voucher programs and
now spends more on school vouchers
[[link removed]] than
any other state, according to Public Funds Public Schools. The state
offers five different programs that, historically, have targeted
specific populations of school children, such as students with
disabilities or those from low-income or middle-class families.

That changed in March 2023, when Governor Ron DeSantis opened
[[link removed]] Florida’s ESA-style
voucher program
[[link removed]],
created in 2019, to every family in the state.

The new law, which also eliminated the program’s enrollment cap and
exemptions, was a “priority
[[link removed]]”
for DeSantis, according to the Washington Post. And on the day he
signed the universal voucher bill into law, he declared
[[link removed]] it
would ensure Florida remained “number one when it comes to education
freedom.”

The cost of the new program, however, is far from clear. Florida’s
Senate Appropriations Committee initially proposed that the universal
voucher program would need a budget
[[link removed]] of $2.2
billion with an additional $350 million in reserve “in case more
students then [sic] we expect enroll in the program.”

But an analysis
[[link removed]] by
the independent nonprofit Florida Policy Institute
[[link removed]] (FPI) and the legal advocacy
organization Education Law Center
[[link removed]] (ELC) puts costs of universal school
vouchers far higher, requiring an additional $890 million to pay for
new public school students enrolling in the program who were
previously not eligible, an additional $1.9 billion for private school
students enrolling in the program for the first time, and $85 million
for homeschooled students who are newly eligible for vouchers.

Those additional costs, added to the $1.1 billion current costs of the
ESA program, would result in the state spending nearly $4 billion to
introduce a universal voucher program in the first year alone,
according to the FPI-ELC analysis.

Should the FPI-ELC estimate for voucher costs be closer to the truth,
the substantial cost overrun would have to be covered with dollars
from the public school budget, according to a different analysis
[[link removed]] by
FPI.

“While voucher programs are often funded as line-item appropriations
in the state budget or through state tax credits,” FPI’s
analysis found
[[link removed]],
“the… [universal] voucher is funded from [Florida Education
Finance Program] state allocations that would otherwise be directed to
the student’s resident public school district.”

FPI added
[[link removed]],
“The movement of public funding to private education occurs in the
context of Florida’s substantial underfunding of the state’s
public schools, as highlighted in Making the Grade 2021
[[link removed]].” In
that analysis, provided by ELC, “Florida receives an F on an A-F
scale on all three funding metrics: funding level, funding
distribution, and funding effort.”

As with Arizona’s universal voucher program, much of the estimated
overrun in Florida can be sourced to new voucher users who were never
enrolled in public schools. There are also similar concerns over what
Florida parents are using voucher money to buy.

As the 2023-2024 school year got underway, NBC6 reported
[[link removed]] that
the nonprofit agency tasked with administering Florida’s universal
voucher program, Step Up for Students
[[link removed]], issued a report finding that the
program had attracted nearly 123,000 new students. Most new voucher
users, 69 percent, previously attended private schools, and 18 percent
were entering kindergarten. Only 13 percent of voucher recipients had
used them to transfer from public schools. (There was no figure given
for the percentage of homeschoolers using vouchers.)

The Step Up for Students report also found voucher money was used to
purchase items that have questionable educational value such as
“theme park passes, 55-inch TVs, and stand-up
paddleboards,” according to the Orlando Sentinel
[[link removed]].

‘A Grand Experiment’

Like Florida, Ohio is an early adopter of school voucher programs,
having launched
[[link removed]] vouchers
in Cleveland in 1996. In 2023, under the leadership of Republican
Governor Mike DeWine, the state enacted
[[link removed]] an
ESA-style statewide universal voucher program.

DeWine initially may have had some reservations about the potential
cost of universal vouchers—warning it “would be very, very, very
significant
[[link removed]],”
according to a February 2023 article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
But a spokesman quickly walked back the comment, saying
[[link removed]],
“the governor neither endorses nor opposes” universal vouchers,
and his “attempts to expand vouchers [were] a possible precursor to
seeking universal vouchers.”

Republicans in Ohio’s state legislature claimed that making the
state’s voucher program universal “allows educational freedom
[[link removed]].”

Supporters of universal vouchers in Ohio coined the name backpack
scholarships
[[link removed]] to
help promote the program. But regardless of the different branding,
Ohio’s universal voucher program may come with the same financial
problems other states adopting these programs are experiencing.

When the backpack program was still under consideration, the
nonpartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission (LSC) that monitors
government spending warned
[[link removed]] that
the program would need $1.13 billion in the fiscal year 2025 if all
185,400 newly eligible students applied for vouchers.

That report
[[link removed]] by
LSC readily contends not all eligible students will take advantage of
the program. For that reason, Aaron Churchill, of the Fordham
Institute, an Ohio nonprofit that advocates for vouchers, called the
$1.13 billion estimate a “ceiling
[[link removed]],”
according to the Dayton Daily News, and not a true cost assessment.

But after the backpack program was enacted in July 2023, the
Associated Press reported
[[link removed]] that
an analysis by the Columbus Dispatch
[[link removed]] found
that by September the state had received applications totaling
approximately $432 million for the 2023-2024 school year—$34 million
more than what the Legislative Service Commission estimated.

“When Ohio’s two-year budget was drafted, the commission estimated
income-based vouchers would cost $397.8 million for fiscal year 2024
and $439.1 million for fiscal year 2025,” stated
[[link removed]] the
AP report.

In Ohio, the state’s contribution to education funding, including
its voucher programs, comes from the state’s general revenue fund
[[link removed]],
which means overruns from the backpack program may need to come from
the same source that funds public schools and other state expenses.

A similar story is playing out in Indiana, another state with a long
history of vouchers that began
[[link removed]] to
accept nearly all family applicants in 2023. A family income threshold
that limited eligibility for the previous voucher program was lifted
to allow all but a small percentage
[[link removed]] of
the wealthiest households to qualify, according to Chalkbeat.

Making its voucher program nearly universal may cost Indiana as much
as $1.1 billion over the next two years, according to The 74
[[link removed]].
But “no one knows” what the final tab may be, Chalkbeat reported
[[link removed]].

“One reason for the uncertainty: Universal vouchers are, in effect,
a grand experiment states are conducting in real time,” said
[[link removed]] Chalkbeat.
“Budget analysts have scrambled to predict the programs’ eventual
price tags, but they can only guess at how many freshly eligible
families will participate.”

‘Open Season on Private Entities Spending Your Tax Dollars’

Iowa is yet another Midwestern state that enacted
[[link removed]] an
ESA-style universal voucher program in 2023.

Republican Governor Kim Reynolds—who declared vouchers a “top
priority
[[link removed]],”
according to the Des Moines Register—signed the state’s universal
voucher program into law in January 2023, calling it
[[link removed]] “just
the first step in giving educational freedom to Iowa’s students and
parents.”

In June, the Des Moines Register reported
[[link removed]],
“More students have applied for Iowa’s state-funded education
savings accounts than expected, meaning the cost of paying for the
private school scholarships could exceed what the state budgeted.”

In July, Iowa Starting Line reported
[[link removed]] costs
surpassing the original state estimate of $107 million and rising to
$133.5 million based on 17,481 approved applications. In October, the
Iowa Department of Education reported
[[link removed]] that
18,893 ESA applications had been approved, which, at $7,600
[[link removed]] per
voucher, brought costs to more than $143 million for the 2023-2024
school year.

As costs for universal vouchers soar, it’s also not clear where Iowa
lawmakers will come up with funds to cover the program’s overruns.

According to Sioux Land Proud, when Iowa lawmakers passed the
state’s budget, money for universal vouchers was already “spoken
for
[[link removed]]”
in the state general fund. But that doesn’t answer the question of
where money to cover the cost overruns will come from.

Meanwhile, there are reports
[[link removed]] of
private schools in Iowa jacking up tuition costs to take advantage of
newly available voucher funds. Such revelations prompted Iowa State
Auditor Rob Sand to warn
[[link removed]] that
there will be “[o]pen season on private entities spending your tax
dollars with no oversight.”

Education Freedom Has a Cost

In May 2023, North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Roy
Cooper declared
[[link removed]] a
“state of emergency for public education” in a special address.
“Legislative Republicans propose pouring billions of dollars in
taxpayer money into private schools that are unaccountable to the
public and can decide which students they want to admit,” Cooper
warned.

Four months after Cooper’s declaration, Republican state lawmakers
in the Tar Heel State passed a budget
[[link removed]] that
included a universal voucher program, which Cooper allowed to become
law, realizing his veto would quickly be overturned.

Cooper’s warning, absent from any kind of national campaign by
Democrats against school vouchers, was a lone voice lost in the chorus
of calls for “education freedom” coming from Republicans. And
Democratic party leaders remain all over the place on education
policy.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona has been openly opposed to
vouchers, calling them a form of “privatization
[[link removed]],”
according to Politico. But other prominent Democrats, such as
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, have spoken in favor of vouchers
[[link removed]]—although
Shapiro reversed
[[link removed]] his
position on vouchers when confronted with a budget that included them.

When voucher programs result in cost overruns in multiple states,
Republican lawmakers will likely conceive of some sort of unified
strategy to shift the focus from the issue. But the financial fallout
of universal voucher programs will give Democrats an opportunity to
call out their political opponents for being reckless with public
money intended for children.

_JEFF BRYANT is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our
Schools [[link removed]], a
project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a communications
consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the
Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for
progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and
reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he
speaks frequently at national events about public education policy.
Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm [[link removed]]._

_This article was produced by Our Schools
[[link removed]], a project of the
Independent Media Institute._

* school vouchers
[[link removed]]
* State budgets
[[link removed]]
* Public Education; US School Funding; Unequal Education;
[[link removed]]

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