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Home schooling is the most dynamic and innovative segment of K-12 education. But even with technological advances, co-ops and hybrid schooling, taking on that level of individual responsibility for a child’s education is difficult.
One particularly difficult problem for home school families in Virginia and elsewhere is competitive sports, particularly in high school.
A private non-profit organization, the Virginia High School League, governs high school sports for public schools in Virginia and determines eligibility for participation. Home-school and private-school parents pay taxes for the public schools, but their kids are banned from participating in local high school sports run through the government schools.
For private school kids, that’s not typically a major problem; they have enough students to field teams and schools for their own league. But home-schoolers, especially in rural areas, don’t have those numbers. And that means they are out of luck.
There’s a bill being heard today (HB 947) that would prohibit public schools from joining an association with a blanket ban on home school student participation, and let each school district decide whether to allow them to try out for a team.
The Virginia PTA seems horrified that the home-school rabble might be included, proclaiming that “participation on athletic teams is a privilege that should be reserved for the public school students.” They have told members to call their representatives to say, “public school is your choice and team sports are a privilege you earned and expect them to protect.” Funny, I thought government school were supposed to be open to everyone . . . we certainly all pay a lot of money for them.
It’s always messy when the government runs things they shouldn’t – there is never a perfect solution – but it does seem odd and unfair for a private organization to ban a segment of Virginia’s children from joining a team in the local public school their parents support with their taxes.
Team sports shouldn’t be run through government schools in the first place, but if they are, they shouldn’t exclude children because their parents have taken full responsibility for their child’s education and shouldered its full cost.
The School Buildings Are Crumbling!!!!!!!!
From the-more-things-change-the-more-they-don’t files, I bring you alarming claims that our nation’s school buildings are crumbling and will soon crush the educational aspirations and physical bodies of children everywhere if more money is not spent, NOW.
In March of 1997, Education Week reported on the growing crisis in the condition of school facilities and inadequate spending:
The stories are familiar to school administrators: gaping holes in school roofs, crumbling walls etched with lead paint, heating systems that don’t work, and other serious structural problems that have become commonplace in many districts. . .
These stories certainly are familiar! Why, President Obama advanced the same tired line in his remarkably forgettable “jobs” plan of late last summer:
And there are schools throughout this country that desperately need renovating. How can we expect our kids to do their best in places that are literally falling apart? This is America. Every child deserves a great school – and we can give it to them, if we act now. The American Jobs Act will repair and modernize at least 35,000 schools. It will put people to work right now fixing roofs and windows; installing science labs and high-speed internet in classrooms all across this country.
Education Week gives voice to fears for the future in 1997:
Unless school leaders can persuade wary voters to pass bond referendums or raise local taxes, there’s often little hope of change . . . Some education leaders say it is getting tougher to pass bond issues when local residents, many of whom do not have school-age children, want lower taxes and are wary of how districts will manage the funds. . . And even if a bond passes, it rarely provides enough money to meet the needs of districts with fast-growing populations, said Carole Kennedy, the president of the National Association of Elementary School Principals.
The funny thing is, spending on school facilities increased at a rapid rate before 1997 and continued on afterward, increasing more than 150 percent in constant dollars from 1989 to 2008.
Government school lobbyists like Carole Kennedy, President Clinton, and President Obama have been successfully squeezing money out of taxpayers for decades based on false claims of crises. And not just for construction. Take a look at this video for everything you need to know about public school spending:
The Political Dynamics of Vouchers and Credits
The battle over school choice in Pennsylvania is instructive in many ways. The most obvious lesson is that education tax credits are easier to pass than are vouchers, ceteris paribus.
But why? The results of a recent poll from UnitePA and the Independence Hall Tea Party make the basic answer fairly plain: education tax credits are substantially more popular than vouchers. More than mere popularity is important, however. Credits are supported, on balance overall, by Democrats, and by a massive 30 points by Republicans. Both liberals and conservatives support credits overwhelmingly.
Vouchers are opposed on balance overall and by Republicans in particular. Unfortunately, this means that Republican legislators who may support vouchers for ideological reasons face a Republican electorate that is decidedly opposed to them. This has consequences; we saw a major rift among the Tea Party groups in PA this year over the issue, with many groups opposing the voucher bill. Between the flak he is sure to get from the government-school lobby and the instinctive opposition to vouchers from many Republican voters who like the public schools and dislike government handouts (which is how vouchers are perceived), a Republican legislator might well put his seat at risk by voting for a voucher.
PA Senate Should Unwrap the EITC Bill
It’s often difficult to recognize the value of things we already have and easy to take old gifts for granted.
For much of this year, an intense and bruising battle has raged over the issue of education vouchers in Pennsylvania. This week, the House once again rejected the voucher proposal that has passed the Senate and is supported by Gov. Tom Corbett.
Overlooked amidst the tumult is another, better school choice bill passed months ago by the House and now waiting for action in the Senate. The House passed a huge expansion of the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC), more than doubling the size of the program with an astonishing 96 percent in favor to 4 percent opposed. At current levels of student support, it would help more than 60,000 additional children get a good education.
The EITC program has been a priceless gift to the children and state of Pennsylvania each year since 2001, helping to improve public schools and allowing taxpayers to invest education dollars more effectively. And an expanded credit program would bring the gift of a good education to tens of thousands more children, the gift of empowerment to thousands of parents.
The Senate can easily deliver these gifts to Pennsylvania for the New Year; just unwrap the EITC bill passed by the House and take a vote.
Everything You Need to Know About Public School Spending in Less Than 2½ Minutes
Neal McCluskey gutted the President’s new “Save the Teachers” American Jobs Act sales pitch a good while back, as did Andrew Coulson here. Thankfully, it seems a lot of senators agree it’s a bad idea.
Last week, a $35 Billion piece of the president’s new “stimulus” plan, which included $30 Billion to bail out government schools—again—went down in the Senate:
Our public education problem is huge; we’re spending far too much and getting way too little. But most people don’t know the basic details. They still think we need to spend more on education.
So, for all of you who want to get the details but don’t have much time, or have family and friends who need to be introduced to reality, I present to you . . . Everything you need to know about public school spending in less than 2½ minutes.
Watch it, “like” it, post it on Facebook, email it around, comment, and generally get the word out . . . because we really do need to get the word out.
Yes, the Department of Education Is Unconstitutional
Tina Korbe at HotAir had a mostly-great post on Michele Bachmann’s completely correct observation that the federal government is not authorized by the Constitution to muck about in education.
Specifically, Bachmann said, “[T]he Constitution does not specifically enumerate nor does it give to the federal government the role and duty to superintend over education that historically has been held by the parents and by local communities and by state governments.” Kudos to Bachmann for that. My colleague Neal McCluskey is the go-to guy on all of this, and explains it very succinctly in many places.
Korbe notes that Bachmann is right about the Constitution, but in an “update” at the end of her post, inexplicably adds:
Just wanted to clarify that Bachmann is “right about the Constitution” insofar as she says that the Constitution does not explicitly enumerate education as among the responsibilities of the federal government. I do not think the Ed Department is unconstitutional — but neither is it constitutionally mandated, leaving the people with the option of determining whether education is best directed at the federal or state level.
The Department of Education, along with so much else the federal government does, is unconstitutional. The only things that are constitutional for it to do are those things enumerated in the Constitution. Hence, if something is not listed there, it cannot do that something, period. That’s the whole point of enumerated powers.
Tina, I think a second “update” is in order!
Oh, and the feds have manifestly failed to achieve anything with their involvement over the decades.
Olbermann Mocks Obama ‘Jobs’ Plan; Try Blenders, Not More School Spending
Information about President Obama’s forthcoming “jobs” plan is so disappointing that even Keith Olbermann is mocking him.
And the saddest part has to be more spending on school infrastructure. As I pointed out last week, per-student spending on facilities has increased 150 percent over the last two decades, even after adjusting for inflation. And Andrew Coulson explained how public schools can spend so much and still have infrastructure problems: waste and incompetence.
But the president’s school construction plans are such a spectacularly sorry response to our Great Recession, Little Depression, malaise, what-have-you, that it deserves to be revisited with a pitch-perfect intro by Mr. Olbermann:
K-12 Facilities Spending Up 150 Percent in Two Decades – Apparently Not Enough for Obama
USA Today reports that part of President Obama’s much-anticipated plan for the economy, 3.0, might involve sending billions more in construction funding to our government school system:
A plan to boost construction jobs nationwide by providing federal money to repair public schools is picking up support among unions, economists and liberal advocates with direct ties to the White House.
Brilliant! Just the thing to fix our education system, economy and massive deficit . . . more lavish spending piled up high upon our already-lavishly-funded government schools.
Andrew Coulson already reviewed the dismal record of our total K-12 education “investment” over the last few decades. The short story; the cost per student has nearly tripled while test scores at the end of high school are flat.
But maybe, despite $500 million-dollar debacles like LA’s RFK high school and countless other examples of stupendously overbuilt government school facilities, just maybe we’ve neglected to spend “enough” on school buildings overall.
Here is the truth, in all of its depressing visual simplicity:
Vouchers ARE Government Money, and That’s the Problem
The recent decision of a Colorado court to halt a first-of-its-kind voucher system instituted by a local school district has, not surprisingly, been subjected to widespread criticism from school choice supporters.
The Heritage Foundation’s Rachel Sheffield, for instance, argues “The judge’s decision is the result of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that claims that the program violates the law by providing public money to religious organizations. . . . In typical statist fashion, these claims are born from a philosophy that holds that the money you earn is in fact not yours to keep but instead belongs to the state.”
The problem with this argument, and with vouchers generally, is that voucher money DOES belong to the state. The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn that Rachel cites here concerned an education tax credit program in Arizona, not a voucher program.
Vouchers are grants of government funds, while tax credits are private funds. The court held that money spent and claimed as a credit, which is never collected in taxes in the first place, remains private money, not government spending like school vouchers. Other taxpayers can’t be harmed by the choices of those claiming credits because each taxpayer gets to decide, individually, what happens to their own money.
Under vouchers, as Justice Kennedy explained, “a dissenter whose tax dollars are ‘extracted and spent’ knows that he has in some small measure been made to contribute to an establishment in violation of conscience. … [By contrast,] awarding some citizens a tax credit allows other citizens to retain control over their own funds in accordance with their own consciences.”
The challenge to the AZ education tax credit program failed because only private funds are involved. A taxpayer challenging a voucher program would have standing under this decision.
State constitutions typically include provisions that are much more restrictive of how state funds can be used in education and which pose much greater threats to voucher programs. Colorado’s court ruling, for instance, identified five separate legal problems with the Douglas County voucher program.
Part of the reason Colorado’s program was stopped in its tracks is a state constitutional provision that reads: “No appropriation shall be made for charitable, industrial, educational or benevolent purposes to any person, corporation or community not under the absolute control of the state, nor to any denominational or sectarian institution or association.”
There is certainly room for a different interpretation of this provision, but ruling that vouchers are in violation of it constitutes neither judicial activism nor statist thinking. Indeed, it could be argued that this is the more conservative, originalist interpretation.
There is simply no way around the fact that vouchers are government funds, subject to whatever constitutional and statutory restrictions a state may place on their use. In the case of education, these restrictions are many and serious.
The most recent and bracing conclusion comes, again, from Arizona. In 2009, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in Caine v. Horne that voucher programs for disabled and foster children violated a state constitutional ban on aid to private schools because it was an expenditure of government funds. That same court previously upheld a state tax credit program on the grounds that the credits did not constitute an expenditure of government funds. The status of vouchers as government funds was key to the decisions overturning Colorado’s earlier voucher program in 2004 and Florida’s in 2006.
Unlike vouchers, education tax credit programs have withstood every state and federal challenge advanced against them over the past two decades. Major credit programs in Indiana, Florida, Georgia and Pennsylvania – to name a few – have yet to be challenged. And for good reason; they are on solid constitutional ground at both the state and federal level.
Using state money to fund private school choice with vouchers opens a world of serious and legitimate risks to which education tax credits are not vulnerable.
Education Tax Credits More Popular Than Vouchers & Charters
As Neal wrote about earlier, Education Next has released their new poll, and there are some interesting results.
Surprisingly, the authors buried the lede in their writeup; education tax credits consistently have more support and less opposition than any other choice policy.
This year, donation tax credits pulled in a 29-point margin of support (that’s total favor minus total oppose). In contrast, charter schools had a 25-point margin of support.
The authors added a new, less neutral voucher question that boosted the margin of support to 20 points. They couched the policy in terms of “wider choice” for kids in public schools, and the implication was that it was universal. All three of these additional considerations tend to have a positive impact on support for choice policies.
The standard low-income voucher question showed a big jump this year from a -12 in 2010 to a 1-point margin of support. The last time Education Next asked a low-income tax credit question, it garnered a 19-point margin of support.
Last year, tax credits had a 28-point margin of support (that’s total favor minus total oppose). In contrast, charter schools had a 22-point margin of support and vouchers for low-income kids went -12 points (more respondents opposed).
Public opinion is consistently and strongly in favor of education tax credits over vouchers and even charter schools. And thankfully, they’re a much better policy as well.
School Choice Murder-Suicide in Pennsylvania
A huge school choice opportunity has been lost for the moment in Pennsylvania. But that lost opportunity is not the voucher program that has drawn so much attention.
The political conflagration touched off by the push for a targeted, failing-schools voucher program incinerated along with it a massive expansion of an existing, popular, successful, bipartisan-supported, and better program; the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC). The House passed this expansion of credit program by a massive margin. And when I say “massive,” I mean 96 percent in favor to 4 percent opposed. Unfortunately, a stand-alone credit bill was not considered in the Senate, and the expansion fell by the wayside as the voucher battle raged.
In the next session, it would be good policy and politics to consider vouchers and credits separately. They are substantively different means of fostering choice, and the public deserves a clear debate and vote on both policies in separate bills.
The Educational Improvement Tax Credit program is vastly superior to all of the voucher bills. Vouchers are open to credible legal challenges, afford no accountability directly to taxpayers, and government money brings stifling government regulations. Furthermore, giving vouchers only to kids in or around “failing schools” won’t produce a dynamic market because there is an ambiguous, limited, and potentially shifting customer base. A failing-schools voucher program is a terrible policy design.
The EITC should not be legislatively handcuffed to vouchers. Vouchers are an inferior policy and a proven political liability. For once the popular, politically smart, most principled, and most effective thing to do are all the same; drop the voucher drama and expand the education tax credit program.
The PA Senate, not House, Is Blocking the Expansion of School Choice
Republicans in Pennsylvania’s House, which has been reluctant to take up a controversial Senate voucher bill, have been on the receiving end of an intense lobbying campaign for vouchers.
I am all for grassroots groups putting pressure on lawmakers to do the right thing. But amidst all the sound and fury, those pursuing vouchers with such single-mindedness seem to have missed one very important fact; the House already did the right thing. They passed a massive expansion of the existing, successful, and uncontroversial education tax credit program by a massive margin (only 4 percent opposed).
The Educational Improvement Tax Credit program is vastly superior to all of the voucher bills under consideration. It has shockingly broad bipartisan support. It was easily expanded in the House. But for some reason, the Senate will not take it up.
There are good reasons for Republicans and Democrats in the House to oppose all of the voucher bills. There is no good reason for the Senate to refuse to expand the education tax credit program.
So, I have a few questions for the activists pounding away for vouchers.
Why not melt the Senate phone lines instead of the House? Why is a new, inferior voucher program more important than expanding the better, less controversial, more cost-effective tax credit program?
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