Voucher Verdict: Utah Voters Seem Likely To Reject Sweeping School Voucher Scheme
Utah voters have several strong reasons to reject the Utah voucher scheme.
Next Tuesday Utahns head to the polls to consider dumping the nation’s broadest school voucher program. If the latest public opinion surveys are correct, the Beehive State is set to reject funneling tax dollars to religious and other private schools.
A recent survey released by Brigham Young University’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy showed that 60 percent of respondents oppose vouchers and 39 percent favor them. The poll’s findings, the Deseret Morning News reports, are similar to others issued by Dan Jones and Associates.
There may be some desperation setting in among the pro-voucher movement. That movement has seen private school vouchers schemes of varying sorts defeated time and again at the hands of voters, and they are justified in sensing that another shellacking is approaching.
Conservative pundit George Will used his column in The Washington Post to trumpet the vote as at least as important as next year’s national elections and spread misinformation about the Utah voucher scheme. The measure, euphemistically dubbed the “Parents for Choice in Education Act,” was passed earlier in the year by state lawmakers, but put on hold after opponents successfully forced it onto next week’s ballot as Referendum 1. The law would offer all the state’s school children $500 to $3,000 vouchers to attend private schools if they wish.
In his Post missive, Will claimed that the average private school tuition is remarkably smaller than the average $7,500 he claimed is spent on each public school student, thus saving Utahns boatloads in tax expenditures. His numbers are beyond fuzzy. According to an extensive report by The Salt Lake Tribune, the state’s private schools have tuitions ranging from $2,200 to $15,000. The Tribune concluded that only low-cost religious schools are “within the reach of the poorest families armed with a $3,000 voucher.”
The newspaper also reported that the voucher program in only two years of operation would likely cost the state more than $21 million.
However, the law, if supported by the voters, would also be constitutionally questionable and therefore open to litigation. The state’s constitution includes a provision, Article 1, Section 4 that states, “No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise or instruction, or for the support of any ecclesiastical establishment.” Another state constitutional provision, Article X, Section 9, adds, “Neither the state nor its political subdivisions may make any appropriation for the direct support of any school or educational institution controlled by any religious organization.”
Utah voters have several strong reasons to reject the Utah voucher scheme. It’s constitutionally suspect, and it would help very few families interested in sending their children to private schools – and according to polling there’s not that many of them. And despite Will’s sweeping claims to the contrary, it would be a costly endeavor.
Will, as other right-wing pundits frequently do, decried teachers unions for helping to fund the opposition to the voucher law. He attacked their arguments as being “intellectually bankrupt.”
Will failed to mention that the vast majority of the funding of the pro-voucher side is coming from one man, Patrick Byrne, head of the internet retail giant, Overstock.com. The Deseret Morning News reported yesterday that Byrne has funneled close to $3 million into trying to save the Utah voucher scheme. The lead group pumping the law, Parents for Choice in Education, has been the biggest recipient of those funds.
Byrne told the Associated Press earlier this year that it was his hope that vouchers will “take hold” in Utah and that “it will have a demonstrative effect that no other states can afford to ignore.”
Byrne may have been betting that Utah, which Will dubs “the reddest of states,” was a safe one to jump-start the lackluster voucher movement.
We hope that like citizens in a number of other states, Utahns will rebuff the drive to use tax dollars to help fund religious and other private schools.