Time for Utah Statewide K-12 Scholarships
– By Howard Sierer –
To paraphrase a line from the musical “Annie Get Your Gun,” anything Arizona can do, Utah can do better…or at least do as well. Arizona’s new state-funded scholarships for all K-12 students should be a model for school choice in Utah.
The key feature of Arizona’s new law is that it funds students, not schools. Families are empowered to choose the best options for their children using “educational savings accounts” funded by the state.
Arizona first created “Empowerment Scholarship Accounts” in 2011 for certain qualified students, including those with disabilities, wards of the court, residents on Indian reservations, and, importantly, those attending failing public schools. About 23% of the state’s students qualified for these scholarships that were pegged at 90% of statewide per student base spending.
The resulting $6,400 per child could be used for any educational expense, such as tuition at a private school, learning therapies, or tutoring.
A Goldwater Institute report explained that the 2011 ESA law put “private education within financial reach of even the most economically disadvantaged. The 10 districts where ESAs are most popular in Arizona are overwhelmingly socioeconomically disadvantaged. The three districts with the highest concentrations of ESA students have child poverty rates more than double the state average.”
This year’s new law expands the program to every state resident eligible to enroll in K-12 public schools and is sufficient to cover 100% of the statewide average private elementary school tuition. With the Supreme Court’s recent ruling requiring Maine to allow its scholarships to be used at schools sponsored by religious institutions, Arizona parents and students will be able to select from the state’s full range of public and private, secular, or religious K-12 schools.
I have been a consistent advocate for charter schools and publicly-funded independent schools established by teachers, parents, or community groups under the terms of a charter with a local or national authority. I’ve advocated voting for candidates who support school choice and for giving parents the freedom to choose charter schools for their children.
My rationale: During the pandemic, parents discovered that public school district officials and teachers’ unions often weren’t responsive to their concerns on school closures, mask mandates, and the curriculum.
Two recent polls demonstrate that Democratic governors, mayors, and school boards, egged on by teachers’ unions, mishandled their responses to the pandemic and suffered a dramatic drop in public confidence as a result.
An American Federation of Teachers survey of likely voters in battleground states found that 39% of respondents had more confidence in Republicans to deal with education issues vs. 38% for Democrats. A Democrats for Education Reform poll in battleground House districts found that Republicans were ahead on education by 3 points overall, by 9 points with parents, and by 10 points with minority voters.
These results are a shocking turnaround. A 2017 Gallup poll showed Democrats favored were by 17 points on education issues; Republicans are now favored.
Utah avoided the excessive school lockdowns experienced in many other states but nonetheless had its share of controversy, spurring sentiment for giving parents more educational options for their children. This seems like the right time for Utah’s Republican-dominated legislature to explore expanding parental discretion by allocating funding to students, not to schools. Arizona’s program is a useful model, one we can both learn from and expand on.
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