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.

Sports Authority is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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 School Buildings Are Crumbling!!!!!!!! is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Democrats actually support vouchers on balance, but less than they do credits. The crosstabs for this poll reveal huge margins of support for vouchers by African-American and low-income citizens, followed by liberals. However, all the affluent liberal interest groups are absolutely opposed to vouchers. With the support of these elites and the assistance of the government-school lobby, a Democratic legislator is extremely unlikely to put his seat at risk if he votes against a voucher bill.

Here’s the problem: vouchers sound like a Progressive policy. Vouchers send government checks to low-income families, which sounds to many voters like some form of welfare. But it is adamantly opposed by liberal elites and supported by conservative elites.

Education tax credits bridge this political disconnect, drawing more support and less opposition across the political spectrum. And credits happen to be better policy to boot.

These lessons hold across the country, in state after state. And yet vouchers, more often than not, are the primary focus of national school choice organizations that provide advice, assistance, and money to proponents of school choice at the state level. A reassessment of how the school choice movement’s resources are invested is long overdue.

The Political Dynamics of Vouchers and Credits is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

PA Senate Should Unwrap the EITC Bill is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Everything You Need to Know About Public School Spending in Less Than 2½ Minutes is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Yes, the Department of Education Is Unconstitutional is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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:

Olbermann Mocks Obama ‘Jobs’ Plan; Try Blenders, Not More School Spending is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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:

K-12 Facilities Spending Up 150 Percent in Two Decades – Apparently Not Enough for Obama is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Vouchers ARE Government Money, and That’s the Problem is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

Education Tax Credits More Popular Than Vouchers & Charters is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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.

School Choice Murder-Suicide in Pennsylvania is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

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?

The PA Senate, not House, Is Blocking the Expansion of School Choice is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

E.D. Kain has a post up here (and here) comparing and contrasting vouchers in education and health care. It’s an interesting post that manages both insight and remarkable oversights in a very short space.

And the insight and oversights are bound up with each other:

I think it’s a consistent position to support both single-payer health care – something many progressives advocate – and single-payer education – something many libertarians advocate. . .

[Medicare] is a lot like what many school choice advocates want. They want government to foot the bill, but they don’t want them to provide the service, or at least not exclusively. This approach works for Medicare, and it could work for schools also. What we really need is single-payer education – not single-provider education. Anyways, the point is that we think about these programs in somewhat inconsistent ways. . . Even people advocating single-payer want to be able to go to a private doctor. And yet, these same people are terrified of the government paying for education but not actively providing the schooling.

Kain is right that many school choice advocates want a single-payer, government voucher system. But he’s absolutely wrong to imply the libertarian preference is for a single-payer, government voucher system in education. [Note: I look at ideologies as structures reflecting what people think is valuable, what works and why in politics and society.]

In education, we begin with an almost fully socialized system unlike anything else in American society. So its no surprise that education reform discussions produce ideological confusion.

Vouchers, because they move the means of production out of the hands of the government, into the hands of private providers, and afford the consumer some decision-making powers, are improvements from a perspective that advantages individual liberty. But the single-payer, government funding, and regulation inherent in a voucher program remain massive defects from the libertarian perspective.

Our health care system is crippled by government regulation and single-payer (private employer and government) distortions. But it is not fully socialized or government-funded like our education system. A single-payer government health system would make matters worse from the libertarian perspective.

Think of these policy scenarios on a Left-to-Right ideological scale running from 1 on the far Left to 7 on the far Right, with 4 in the middle. Our standard government-financed, government-run, socialized education system is a 1, as far Left as one can go. Voucherizing the entire system would push it to a 2.

Kain is correct that  ”it’s a consistent position to support both single-payer healthcare . . . and single-payer education,” because both are completely and comfortably on the Left side of the policy spectrum. Vouchers can’t solve all of our problems in education policy.

Vouchers in Education and Health Care Reform is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

There is an ongoing, nasty battle over vouchers in Pennsylvania that has split Republican legislators, the Senate from the House, and Tea Party groups across the state. The Senate is determined to pass SB1, an expansive voucher bill, while the House has already existing education tax credit program and doesn’t want to consider the voucher.

Beyond simple opposition to private school choice, concerns about the fiscal impact and a desire for benefits to be expanded to the middle class have led many Republicans and local Tea Party groups to oppose the voucher program.

In the meantime, the House passed a huge expansion of the long-running and successful education tax credit program by a massive margin . . .  and when I say “massive,” I mean 96 percent in favor to 4 percent opposed.

But the Senate refuses to expand the credit program unless the House passes the voucher program.

Today, there are reports of a voucher bill to be introduced in the House. It looks likely to be worse than the Senate version, especially on the regulatory front, which in my mind is much more important than the limited nature of eligibility.

Based on the brief description of the voucher policy, it appears to hand expansive control over participating private schools to the state Dept of Ed and an appointed board. This would make participating schools de facto government schools. It reads, “The legislation will charge the Department of Education with promulgating regulations according to guidelines that will be specifically enumerated in the bill within 120 days of the effective date. The regulations will be subject to approval of the Education Opportunity Board, established in the legislation initially as a three-member board appointed by the Governor to serve four year terms”

The abdication of regulatory responsibility is what gave us out-of-control federal agencies like the EPA. It is very dangerous for lawmakers to provide mere “guidelines” to regulatory agencies. A lot will depend on how specific and limiting the bill is in this regard, but the language used here is worrisome. For instance, instead of tasking the DOE with “developing procedures to implement,” which is bad enough, the bill will have the DOE “promulgating regulations.” That sounds to me like they will establish general guidelines for the purpose of the regulations, such as measurement of achievement, which will then be translated into actual regulatory mandates by the DOE.

I wrote recently about why Indiana’s new voucher law is a loss for educational freedom , along with a detailed accounting of the regulations. The arguments apply here, but even more so . . . . This potentially hands the state DOE a blank check of regulatory authority, which will begin badly and won’t be difficult for the unions to co-opt over time.

And by compelling every taxpayer to fund every type of private school, the voucher is likely to generate social conflict that the state’s tax credit program entirely avoids.

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.

Report of New Voucher Bill in PA Raises Regulatory Red Flags is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

I’ve been trying to draw attention to the dangers that regulations like those in Indiana’s new voucher program pose for long-term educational freedom and choice.

It’s a difficult thing to do, in part because we have little freedom at all in the public school system that educates the vast majority of kids. Destroying the independence and diversity of the private education sector seems a reasonable risk to run for many if it means more choice for the majority of families. I disagree, and think that we’ll trade the possibility of a dynamic and innovative market in education for a new era of stagnant secular and religious public schools.

The other difficulty in explaining the threat of regulations like those in Indiana’s voucher law is that it is a complicated bill, linked to complicated existing state code.

In the interest of clarity and transparency, I’ve uploaded a two-page overview of the regulations, with citations and links for those who would like to take a look themselves. You can access it here: Regulations Associated with HB 1003 Indiana—2011-05-20

Let me know what you think, and whether I have missed or misinterpreted anything.

Matt Ladner replied to my concerns recently with some interesting qualifications and questions. He notes, “I haven’t seen an example yet of a voucher program in the United States swallowing up the private school sector and homogenizing them, but I agree that it is possible and a grave concern.”

The primary reason we haven’t seen this yet is that these programs have all been too small and constrained by funding caps. And that’s the problem with the Indiana plan and other plans to expand heavily regulated voucher programs; the better they are on coverage and access, the more devastating the consequences for educational freedom.

I find it horrifying to contemplate looking back 15 years from now at this moment of great opportunity and realize that, in the pursuit of choice, we imported the dysfunctions of government education and top-down control into the private sector and reduced both choice and freedom in the process.

An Accounting of Indiana’s Voucher Regulations is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Educational freedom is nothing to trifle with, all the more so because we have so little of it left. And yet there is little serious discussion about it among school choice policy researchers and activists. All that seems to matter is the expansion of “choice” at nearly any cost.

A blog response, of sorts, to my recent piece explaining why the Indiana voucher law is a defeat for educational freedom, just came to my attention (curse ye, fickle gods of googlealerts). If it weren’t written by a respected researcher, Greg Forster, posted on Jay Greene’s blog, I’d ignore the bullet-point simulacrum of an argument.

We need more serious debate. Argument makes for better thinking and better policy. There are valid points on many sides of this issue, and everyone makes errors in fact or logic. So please, I encourage someone to tear into all of the arguments against the new Indiana voucher law and explain why my concerns are misplaced. Chief Seattle, as all good schoolchildren in Indiana know, proves that wise words can change the world.

On Forster’s Point 1, he and the Indiana Non-Public Education Association are simply incorrect . . . less than 40% of known private schools are accredited, and they remain less than a majority even when you remove the Amish ones. This is not an opinion, it is a fact based on good data available on the state DOE website, and I have found a number of very friendly and helpful DOE employees (they don’t all respond like the finance folks) who can give further context and slight revisions to these published numbers. Beyond that fact, Indiana’s voucher law actually imposes some regulations not currently imposed even on accredited schools.

On Point 2, Forster doesn’t even attempt to engage the point I make in my article for why the freedom not to participate is no argument against the destructiveness of the regulatory framework. Because participating schools will have a significant financial advantage over non-participating schools, lightly regulated schools will face increasing financial pressure to participate. Over time, many of those who refuse to submit to state control will be driven out of business by competition from the highly regulated, but voucher-funded schools. Andrew Coulson has demonstrated this process of expanding state control with voucher programs outside the US, and regulatory burden and creep here at home.

In Point 3, Forster dismisses the slew of new private school regulations as unimportant without, apparently, knowing precisely what they entail. You can read through the bill that was signed here. The most concerning requirements are not a part of state accreditation, they are new to schools participating in the Indiana voucher program. For instance, voucher schools in Indiana are required to stress the importance of “respecting the rights of others to have their own views and religious beliefs.” What does this mean for religious private schools teaching that one can only be saved by belief in Jesus Christ? Would a school wherein a teacher discusses the recent federal healthcare legislation violate the provision mandating respect for authority should she criticize the law, or perhaps violate a respect for property if she speaks favorably of the individual insurance mandate in that law?

And the law expects enforcement, reading, “The department shall, at a minimum, annually visit each eligible school and charter school to verify that the eligible school or charter school complies with the provisions of [the voucher law].” Furthermore, “Each eligible school, public school, and charter school shall grant the department full access to its premises, including access to any points of ingress to and egress from the school’s grounds, buildings, and property for observing classroom instruction and reviewing any instructional materials and curriculum.”

There is more to mull over in my article and in Indiana’s new voucher law.

Forster’s Point 4 is a ridiculous non sequitur. The state can regulate curriculum in any way it wants to, therefore it doesn’t matter if it does so or not. Here is in full:

“The state already has virtually unlimited authority to regulate private school curricula, especially in the name of ‘good citizenship.’ The Supreme Court has given states more or less a blank check to control private school curricula, and the state has especially strong authority to require, and control the content of, “citizenship” education. The existence of a voucher program changes little in this regard.”

I wonder if Forster feels the same way about healthcare; “The state can require whatever it wants for health insurance, so it doesn’t matter whether or not they have a state agency review them for adequacy or impose detailed coverage requirements.” What’s the big fuss?

It would be wonderful if everyone who pays lip service to concerns regarding educational freedom and the expansion of state control would take the matter seriously enough to familiarize themselves with the basic, relevant facts. We might just have a good and productive argument.

Chief Seattle Declares Indiana’s Voucher Program Bad for Mother Earth is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed an expansive new voucher law today. It’s a disaster for educational freedom. Read the full explanation here.

The voucher program has been widely praised as a momentous victory for school choice and Gov. Mitch Daniels on the brink of his long-awaited presidential campaign announcement. In reality, the voucher program is a tactical victory for highly constrained choice won at the price of a broad strategic defeat for educational freedom. This program will greatly expand state regulation of and authority over participating private schools.

In our efforts to expand educational choice across the country, we can’t lose sight of what makes that choice valuable: educational freedom and the diversity of choices it allows to develop. School choice is meaningless if all the choices are the same.

Just a teaser . . . ever heard of Chief Seattle? Private schools in Indiana will know him well if they take a voucher.

Read the piece for these and other shocking details!

Indiana Voucher Law a Defeat for Educational Freedom is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

A new voucher program in Indiana looks likely to be signed by Gov. Daniels soon, but without a slight modification it may not have the benign budgetary impact that is expected.

As written, the program could have a significant negative impact on state finances if families claim both the vouchers and funds from the state’s existing education tax credits.

There is nothing that precludes children who receive a voucher from also topping off that amount with private funds from the existing education tax credit program. That means a voucher student could accept, for example, $4,500 in government funds and then apply for a tax credit scholarship that reduces state revenue by, say, $2,000. The voucher student would cost the state $6,500, not the $4,500 that would be counted on the books. If state funding is 100 percent sensitive to enrollment, the state would save $5,000 on that student switching, and the net impact on state finances would be a $1,500 loss. In other words, the program could have a negative net impact on state finances due to double-dipping.

From a fiscal standpoint, the state would show an apparent “savings” based on the $4,500 voucher, but this would fail to take into account the reduced revenue due to the credit. And the law requires these on-paper-only savings to be passed out to public schools districts. The result? The state government could be out $7,000 on the student in this example, not the $4,500 it paid out in a voucher. The net impact wouldn’t be neutral, it would be a $2,000 loss.

This scenario looks only at how the vouchers might impact state finances. At the local level, the program is likely to have a strongly positive impact on the resources available for each student. But a school choice program’s impact on state finances — ensuring financial transparency, certainty, and a neutral or positive impact — is a critical concern in its own right.

Critics of expanding educational freedom always claim, incorrectly, that school choice programs are a drain on public resources. But the double-dipping that is allowed under this program could inadvertently prove them right — it would also make Indiana’s existing education tax credit program a mere appendage to the new government voucher system. In short, it’s an unforced error, and worth fixing.

Ensuring that Indiana’s New Voucher Program Lives up to Budgetary Expectations is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

I really hate to disagree with people that I both like and have tremendous respect for, but a new voucher program that passed recently in Arizona has been getting a lot of attention, and a few points need to be addressed.

The program is referred to as an Education “Savings” Account, although the accounts are not filled with personal savings but with government funds collected from state taxpayers.

Unfortunately, as Andrew Coulson has noted before, these ESAs retain the most important problems of regular voucher programs and add new ones as well:

• This is still a third-party-payer system that uses government funds. These ESAs are not like HSAs. HSAs and education savings programs like Coverdell accounts are filled by the person who earned the money in the first place. This is a government education account filled with public funds, accessible to eligible families.

• If the ultimate goal for ESA proponents is to have broad-based choice, why not let families who can afford it pay for education out of their earnings? Tax credits can accomplish this. ESAs make all families dependent on government funds sitting in accounts that the government controls.

• Because these are still government funds, the legal threats to vouchers will not be significantly mitigated. Each ruling striking down vouchers, including in Arizona, has relied on the fact that government funds carry restrictions on their use in education – even if there is an intervening choice on the part of parents. The Arizona program is unlikely to survive another challenge.

• Because these are still government funds, they are more likely than credits to bring serious new regulatory burdens. Andrew Coulson’s historical evidence and recent statistical analysis of existing credit and voucher programs demonstrates what common-sense tells us: government money brings regulations. Citizens and politicians think that all institutions taking government funds should be accountable to the government, not just parents. Education tax credits provide for direct accountability to both parents and the taxpayers who earned the funds being expended. Educational freedom is more easily retained within a fully civil society system which doesn’t require government action or legislation to address every problem.

• Only tax credits respect the values and preferences of the taxpayers who earned the money being spent on education. ESAs still compel all taxpayers to support, in some small measure, the educational choices of all families. This compelled support increases the pressure to regulate and restrict choices. Interest groups and citizens attempt to ensure that their tax dollars are spent according to their values and preferences, using the only means possible in the public sphere: rules and regulations. Credits confer on each taxpayer the means to affirmatively support the kinds of education with which they are comfortable.

• Long-term complications and problems are likely to arise with the use of third-party ESAs. Because unused funds revert at some point to the state (as they are not personal savings), individuals will not manage the accounts as they would HSAs and actual education savings accounts. Many families will likely spend out each year rather than shopping for value as promoters of HSAs suggest will occur. Alternatively, if some families do save excess funds from early years, they will likely over-consume in late high school or college because the money will otherwise revert to the state. It is not difficult to imagine all manner of problems this scenario could produce, from simple waste to various kickback schemes through which a person can cash out their government education accounts. Management of fraud and abuse will be extremely difficult in a large-scale, fully developed ESA system that relies on government, third-party funding.

Education ‘Savings’ Accounts Have Same Problems as Regular Vouchers is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States issued the Zelman decision for education tax credits. More than that, it’s Super-Zelman.

The findings in Zelman apply just as well to education tax credit programs, but only credit programs allow taxpayers to spend their own money on education.

As Andrew Coulson explained in detail earlier, the Court ruled that education tax credits are not government funds, and the plaintiffs therefore have no standing to bring suit in the first place. They were not harmed because none of their money was collected and then disburse by the state.

Children are rightly our primary concern, but taxpayers deserve more consideration than they often get in debates over education reform.

Education tax credit programs can expand educational choice and freedom while respecting the preferences and values of the individual taxpayers who earned that money in the first place.

Voucher programs simply cannot provide this kind of accountability to both parents and taxpayers.

SCOTUS Issues a Super-Zelman Decision on Education Tax Credits is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog