School choice advocates blame the decisive defeats of major ballot referendums on vouchers in three states this year on the campaign spending and propaganda by opponents. Yet, even in deep red Kentucky and Nebraska, where overwhelming majorities of the electorate endorsed Donald Trump, voters broke with Republican orthodoxy and rebuffed vouchers.
Maybe, voters in Kentucky, Nebraska and Colorado blocked public tax dollars flowing into private hands not because they were bamboozled, but because they saw the problems in existing vouchers programs and recognized the ultimate goal was the decimation of public education. A $1.4 billion budget shortfall in Arizona is blamed in part on the unchecked expansion of its school voucher program, which is expected to cost state taxpayers $429 million in fiscal year 2025.
The shaky rollout of Georgia’s newly enacted voucher program is also a demonstration of the inherent risks and the potential runaway costs.
Gov. Brian Kemp and Republican lawmakers didn’t risk trusting voters to decide before pushing through their voucher bill this spring, likely because two polls conducted early in the legislative session found the majority of Georgia voters opposed using public money to pay private school tuition. As a result, the GOP leadership in Georgia avoided the word “vouchers.” Their $6,500 vouchers to pay for private school or homeschooling expenses come disguised as the “Georgia Promise Scholarship.”
That wariness of Georgia voters reflected in the polls was warranted. While Senate Bill 233 was proposed to apply to students attending the lowest performing 25% of schools in Georgia, a wider interpretation appears to be in the works.
It’s hard to know for sure as the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement has twice in the last two weeks pulled back the list of low-performing Georgia schools where kids next year would be eligible for vouchers, citing a need to review the calculations used in the selection process.
“GOSA is conducting a very careful, thorough and conscientious analysis and validation process to ensure the ultimate list is accurate, and it will therefore be posted at a later date in the new year. We continue to work with stakeholders during this process,” said Joy Hawkins, GOSA executive director on Friday.
Those pulled lists of eligible schools qualified at least 340,000 students enrolled in more than 500 schools for vouchers, although the law caps funding at a level sufficient to underwrite vouchers for approximately 21,000 children.
During the legislative debates, sponsors insisted the taxpayer-funded voucher would be limited to students in schools that performed in the lowest 25% on state metrics. However, eligibility now is based not only on the performance level of students’ current schools but of other schools in their attendance zone. This leaves the door open for elementary students at strong schools to receive scholarships if their future high school is underperforming.
And, oddly, while the legislation language doesn’t exclude charter schools, those schools are somehow magically now exempted from losing any students to vouchers even if they, too, are performing below state metrics. It’s a surprising exemption given that some of the lowest performing schools in metro districts, including Atlanta Public Schools, carry charter status.
A cynic might suggest there is something besides sloppiness and bad math in Georgia’s rocky voucher rollout. For example, how do we end up with an eligibility inventory of students that is 15 times the number budgeted for in the law? And why do low-performing charter schools win a “get out of jail free card” that prevents their students from qualifying for a voucher?
Politics figures into the answers to both questions. By instantly qualifying thousands more students for vouchers, proponents create a demand that can justify the same rapid and reckless expansion that left Arizona in a financial free fall. Charter schools already represent a form of school choice and tampering with them may have had political repercussions.
That Georgia’s voucher program is rife with political maneuvers is no surprise given the rationale never included any real educational value. Well regarded studies show statewide school vouchers lead to some of the largest academic losses in the research record.
Vouchers turned into a divisive political tactic under the manipulations of politicians eager to buoy their conservative credentials. The role that public schools long served as a community focal point and a place of common ground is no longer valued by those benefiting from an “us and them” political view.
The broken promise within the Georgia Promise Scholarship is that these vouchers help children. They don’t. They help politicians.
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