Fri, Jul 18 2008
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Published April 29, 2008 04:25 pm - The bill in no way “creates a voucher system.” School-choice bill misunderstood by 30 By Brandon Dutcher Guest Columnist A recent letter signed by 30 superintendents of eastern Oklahoma school districts (Phoenix April 24 Opinion Page) was critical of Senate Bill 2093, the New Hope Scholarship Act.
The bill would give a tax credit to taxpayers who contribute to organizations that provide private-school scholarships for low-income children currently attending failing public schools in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. The superintendents wrongly assert that the bill “creates a voucher system that would take public dollars and transfer them through the use of tax credits to private schools.” The bill in no way “creates a voucher system.” A voucher is like a food stamp. Just as recipients of food stamps can redeem them at the grocery store of their choice, school vouchers (education stamps, if you will) allow parents to take government money and spend it at the school of their choice. There are currently 14 school voucher programs operating in nine states, so there’s no excuse for these superintendents not to comprehend what a voucher system is. Moreover, the New Hope tax credit doesn’t involve “public dollars.” It involves money that goes from your checkbook to a private charity. It never goes near the state treasury. As the Arizona Supreme Court ruled — and the U.S. Supreme Court let stand — in a school-choice tax credit case in 1999, “public money” is revenue the government actually receives. “Thus,” the Court ruled, “under any common understanding of the words, we are not here dealing with ‘public money.’” We’re dealing with the donations of generous Oklahomans who want to give new hope to children trapped in the worst schools in these districts where the graduation rate is an appalling 50 percent. By the superintendents’ way of reasoning, your entire paycheck consists of “public dollars,” and you should be thankful that they let you keep any of them. The superintendents also claim that “the end result is still fewer resources left for those students who remain in public schools.” The opposite is true. There will be more resources — not fewer — left for those students who remain in public schools. As Dr. Susan Aud explains, “When a student uses school choice, the local public school district no longer needs to pay the instructional costs associated with that student, but it does not lose all of its per-student revenue, because some revenue does not vary with enrollment levels. Thus, school choice produces a positive fiscal impact for school districts ... Instructional spending per student has consistently gone up in all affected public school districts and states. School choice has not prevented those states and districts from spending more on the students who remain in public schools.” Indeed, if the superintendents had done their homework, they would have discovered that under the New Hope bill per-pupil funding increases by approximately $38. The superintendents also say the bill represents an “all-out attack” on public education, an odd claim considering the bill would affect 0.16 percent of the state’s students. All in all, a pretty sloppy performance for a group of folks with doctoral degrees. Brandon Dutcher is vice president for policy at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs and editor of Choice Remarks (Click Here). 
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