The Trump administration has offered states the possibility of creating a voucher program that would undermine our public schools.
Donald Trump’s scheme stands to redirect hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars from public schools and send the money to elite private schools.
Who benefits? The rich. Who pays? The rest of us.
To gaslight us, the plan is described as a school choice scholarship program. Individual taxpayers can claim a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for donations to nonprofit organizations that then award scholarships to K-12 students who can use them to attend private schools.
It sounds egalitarian, until you look at studies of existing programs, which have found that these vouchers generally go to families already paying for private schools. In Arkansas, 95% of recipients were already in private school, and more than 71% of recipients in Arizona had never attended public school.
While the dollar amount of the voucher-scholarships hasn’t been set, they would likely not make a dent in private school tuition when you consider that a private elementary school in Buffalo charges $29,000 a year and one in Tarrytown costs $58,000 annually.
Vouchers work best for families who already have the money to send their children to private school.
New York should not opt into this voucher trap.
Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation estimated this private school voucher plan would redirect $3 billion in federal tax dollars to organizations writing tuition checks to private schools by 2029.
That’s money that could go to public schools, cancer research, roads, veterans’ hospitals, and the list goes on.
Local school districts would also suffer an immediate impact. New York has more than 700 school districts, with half having fewer than 1,800 students.
In a small district, even a tiny private school pulling a few students from public schools would mean per-pupil funding decreases while fixed costs — from transportation and school lunch to utilities and debt service — stay the same or go up. These communities would face a hard choice: cut spending on students or raise local taxes.
While in theory some public schools might benefit from this program (federal regs are expected in July), the law’s clear goal is to promote private education, including religious schools.
The reality is that private and religious schools are not governed by the same rules as public schools and can discriminate against students on almost any basis, from race to English language proficiency, religious observance, or disability.
Our public schools are also audited and reviewed by a variety of local and state agencies. Will the “scholarship-granting organizations” (SGOs) created to distribute voucher money face the same scrutiny? Somehow, I don’t think so.
Public education has had to deal with a range of “reform” ideas from the Common Core curriculum to unscientific teacher evaluations to the extravagant promises of charter school proponents. These initiatives often end up being ineffective, counterproductive and sometimes — as Ohio and Indiana have found with their own government-funded voucher programs — wildly expensive.
Rather than embracing this latest scheme, New York needs to focus on its existing public schools.
Nearly 90% of New York State students attend public schools. Let’s spend public dollars on public schools.
Gov. Hochul, New York does not want this voucher scheme.
Mulgrew is the president of the 200,000-member United Federation of Teachers.