I was on a panel last year with someone from the Friedman Foundation, and he waxed on about how wonderful vouchers are and how much the public wants them. He cited polls to prove his point.
But there is only one poll that matters, and that is the one at the ballot box. That’s why the information in this post is so helpful. Keep it in your wallet, or just remember this plain fact: voters have never approved a voucher plan.
This is from Bill Phillis of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy:
Statewide referenda on school vouchers or their mutations: majority of citizens vote no
“Ohio’s education choice policies were initiated by proposals tucked in budget bills. Full debate on the merits of the proposals in single subject bills didn’t happen. In time, zealous advocates of choice policies gained sufficient political clout to leverage massive expansion. School districts lose over $1 billion annually to choice programs; and additionally, the state funds administrative cost reimbursement and auxiliary services for private schools. Districts also pick up the tab for transportation.
Vouchers and their mutations have never been subjected to a statewide vote in Ohio. Edd Doerr of Americans for Religious Liberty authored an essay that included the outcome of statewide referenda in various states over a 40-year span as follow:
Tax-funded vouchers
Nebraska 1970 Tax code vouchers 57-43 against
Maryland 1972 Vouchers 55-45 against
Michigan 1978 Vouchers 74-26 against
Washington, DC 1981 Tax code vouchers 89-11 against
Utah 1988 Tax code vouchers 70-30 against
Oregon 1990 Tax code vouchers 67-33 against
Colorado 1992 Vouchers 67-33 against
California 1993 Vouchers 70-30 against
Washington State 1996 Vouchers 64-36 against
Colorado 1998 Tax code vouchers 60-40 against
Michigan 2000 Vouchers 69-31 against
California 2000 Vouchers 71-29 against
Utah 2007 Vouchers 62-38 against
Florida 2012 Vouchers 55-45 against
Hawaii 2014 Vouchers 55-45 against
Tax-funded transportation
Nebraska 1966 Bus transportation 57-43 against (%)
Idaho 1972 Bus transportation 57-43 against
Tax support
New York 1967 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 72-28 against
Michigan 1970 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 57-43 against
Oregon 1972 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 61-39 against
Washington State 1975 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 60-39 against
Alaska 1976 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 54-46 against
Massachusetts 1986 Constitutional change to allow tax aid 70-30 against
Auxiliary services
Maryland 1974 Auxiliary services 56-43 against
Missouri 1976 Auxiliary services 60-40 against
Massachusetts 1982 Auxiliary services 62-38 against
South Dakota 2004 Auxiliary services 53-47 against
Textbooks
California 1982 Textbook aid 61-39 against
South Dakota 1986 Textbooks 54-46 for
Ohioans should be given the opportunity to weigh in on choice policies, i.e. tax funds flowing to privately-operated education entities. A statewide referendum would provide that opportunity.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When I was teaching in Pennsylvania twenty years ago, then Governor Ridge pushed to get a voucher bill that could pass every year. I am surprised not to see PA on the list above.
This blogger explains what PA has: https://yinzercation.wordpress.com/2012/05/29/eitc-no-credit-to-pa/
Thank You A L.
I read through the article from the link and it was very illuminating. The track of the money and corruption is very well laid out.
I will be sharing the link with family and friends in Pennsylvania.
The Church of Friedmanology is right up there with Gates’ Heaven and other lunatic cults when it comes to stubborn disconnection from reality.
Since the vouchers were defeated in Utah in 2007, the state legislature has done everything in its power to punish educators. The legislators see us as the driving force behind the defeat of vouchers. These are some of the things that have been done to education in Utah over the last eight years:
1. The rules were changed for selecting state school board members. Instead of a direct election, a secret panel chose three candidates for each district, and then the governor chose two from those three to appear on the ballot. The result has been to stack the school board with a lot of supporters and owners of charter schools. This policy was ruled unconstitutional by a state judge last fall, but the legislators couldn’t agree on a new policy in their recently-concluded session.
2. A bill was passed two years ago which removed the requirement for the state superintendent to be a certified teacher. This last fall, a new superintendent was appointed by the school board who is an attorney. He ran our most struggling urban district into the ground in three years’ time, and now is in control of the entire state’s schools. He recently called those of us who rallied for an increase in per pupil expenditures children who were crying because we didn’t get what we wanted at Christmas.
3. Per pupil expenditures have never recovered from 2008. In several of those years, growth was not even funded. Since Utah has a higher percentage of school-aged children per adult than any other state, funding growth is essential. Because it has not been funded, class sizes, already ridiculously high, have skyrocketed further. In 2008, I taught 190 students in grades 8 and 9 social studies. This year, I have 275 students.
4. The state has stopped funding Social Security payments for districts, leaving them to pay the costs instead. To make up for the shortfall, districts have frozen step increases several times, and cut the number of paid teacher workdays. In my district, steps have been frozen twice in four years, and our paid days have decreased from 188 to 183. As a result, I have lost money in real dollars every year for the past eight years. That’s before adding in rapidly growing insurance costs.
5. The state has increased the amount of money that the Uniform School Fund must pay into the state’s Rainy Day fund. This fund was NEVER tapped into for schools during the financial meltdown, but schools still have to pay into it.
6. The legislature cut 2% from the education base budget this year, as a “budgeting exercise.” The 2% was then added back in, but with strings attached. The Weighted Pupil Unit, which does not have strings attached to the funding, was then increased 4%. The legislature can then tell the public how “much we fund education,” when, in reality, they are cutting or barely increasing education funding.
7. The number of bills regulating schools has increased dramatically, and teachers are faced with numerous requirements. My personal favorite is that we have to teach students that the United States is a “Constitutional Compound Republic.” It took me nearly a year of asking everyone what that means before I learned that the “compound” is talking about federalism. Apparently, teaching students the concept of federalism is bad if we actually use the word “federal.”
This devastation to public education doesn’t even account for what happened in 2004 or so, when Utah went to a flat income tax. At that same time, the law was changed to allow higher education, which had always been funded separately, access to the Uniform School Fund, which had always been for K-12 only. Since, by law, all income taxes go to the Uniform School Fund, these two changes have cost Utah public education an estimated 1 billion dollars over the last decade.
Sorry to be so long winded, but that’s what’s happening here. Utah has NEVER funded education adequately, but since vouchers lost, the state is hell-bent on running public education into the ground. And it is working.
Yes, the new Utah state Supe (a lawyer) is hideous. He did major damage in the Ogden district that will take years to recover from, and now gets to magnify that at the state level.
AZ and Utah seem to be jockeying for who can treat public education the worst in the west. Funny, given the high numbers of a certain religious population in each that says they treasure children. Actions speak louder than words.
Well said, M. Quinn! I’m in a neighboring district to Ogden, and we’ve gotten a lot of teachers that were run out of Ogden. Their loss is our gain, but it’s sickening what has happened there.
The summary of the referenda is from my essay “The Great School Voucher Fraud” accessible at arlinc.org. — Edd Doerr
Utah also eliminated teacher seniority, instigated a complicated and unfair evaluation system and has accepted Common core inspite of huge backlash against its invasion of student and teacher privacy. Students are allowed to opt out but teachers are not allowed to discuss common core or testing with parents, this has cost teachers their rights to free speech. They changed the way new teachers acquire retirement funds.
In my district any one who could retire did. Many are leaving mid year as they reach the magic age or years in. The stress of meeting these requirements has me looking for a job outside of education inspite of having a master’s degree. I can’t retire for at least 10 more years. I here discovery cards entry pay equals my teacher salary. Hmmmmm?
Last year, I had 30 first graders in my title one classroom. We lost most of our para-professionals. I had one para for thirty minutes four days a week. Loss of funding is directly effecting student growth and achievement. In a year when students are first learning to read, one to one attention is critical to success. This felt more like herding cats. This year I have 25. Next year it looks to be 27.
I hear you, Firstgrademonkey. I have been blown away with the number of retirements, particularly mid-year retirements, that I have seen in my district this year especially.
It is worth noting the dates on this list.
Just wondering if there are more entries for 2000 and forward. For voucher opponents, it might be useful to have a ready-to-use “decade-by-decade” arrangement of this information.
The outflow of funds for public education to voucher schemes is likely to increase with the current campaign to establish freedom of religious conscience legislation.
These are the only actual referendum elections. — Edd Doerr
Well, Washington State GOP Senator Baumgartner (Spokane-area) put a voucher bill on the table recently. $5000 per kid for private schools. Hopefully it goes nowhere, but these days, who knows. Some of our Democratic senators just sold out teachers & kids to appease Duncan’s abhorrent “teach to the test/evaluate teachers by test scores so you can have your waiver” mandate. Stand on Children, LEV, and the usual Gates-funded players have been pushing that, of course. I’m sure they’re salivating over the voucher bill as well.
As a parochial school teacher, I can tell you that a majority of us do not desire vouchers. We much prefer a tax break for any educational investment beginning with preschool and continuing throughout life. This way public schools would not be financially impacted, yet those who wish for a private education, whether it be for religious, special needs, or personal choice would benefit.
How would public schools NOT be affected by tax credits? In my state, all income tax revenue goes towards public education. So tax credits would lessen the amount of income tax revenue. Maybe it’s different elsewhere, but in my state, tax credits are just stealth vouchers.
My state wanted to give tax credits to businesses who provided “scholarships” for private schools, too. So it wasn’t even just individuals who would profit by taking money from public schools.
I posted this is the wrong response above. It belongs here. Here is the ALEC playbook in PA. Here is a blog link to explain it:
The tax credit is done at the federal, not state level. I went K-12 public schools, and believe it or not parochial educators want successful and properly funded public schools. Otherwise, we end up being used as life boats taking in students who have no desire to incorporate faith as a daily part of their education. That only weakens the uniqueness of parochial education.
Mark: I am an honors grad from a Catholic high school, so I know a bit about church schools. Note that tax credits and tax deductions are not the same thing. Tax credits for faith-based schools siphon public funds away from public schools, subsidize the fragmentation of education along religious and other lines, and violate the religious freedom of all taxpayers not to be compelled to support religious institutions. Faith-based schools ARE religious institutions. Again, read Laurence Winer and Nina Crimm’s 2015 book, God, Schools, and Government Funding, and my essay, The Great School Voicher Fraud at arlinc.org. — Edd Doerr
I read recently that Catholic parochial schools are losing students in alarming numbers because of these tax credits and vouchers as children, who would have attended parochial schools, are being lured away by the false promises of corporate Charters—for instance, the 1,600 cooperate Charters supported by the Walton family.
Vouchers and tax credits are essentially the same and are equally damaging to public education, religious freedom and church-state separation. — Edd Doerr
Mark: Several states have tax credit plans and the US Supreme Court has let them get away with it. See the 2015 book, God, Schools, and Government Funding, by law profs Laurence Winer and Nina Crimm. — Edd Doerr
Edd: How can a tax credit at the federal level for any type of educational expense damage public education? If you fear the very rich abandoning public education, that’s already happened. The wealthy who keep kids in public schools do so because the schools are outstanding. BTW, a majority of K-8 parochial students attend public high schools.
As for separation of church and state, only a portion of the tuition would be tax deductible. Having taught in parochial schools for 21 years I can tell you absolutely that their is plenty of secular education going on in any day. Yes, there is a cross in every classroom, along with prayer time and references to faith. But many non-Catholics attend parochial schools including Buddhists, Muslims, and even atheists. The fact is faith and government are interwoven at many levels.
The real worry for public education is not private schools, but the Koch Bothers school board takeovers, Pearson, and other “education foundations” that are destroying public school system.
“The wealthy who keep kids in public schools do so because the schools are outstanding.”
While they might be true, I respectively disagree that public schools the wealthy do not use are not outstanding.
For instance, our daughter attended public schools k – 12 where the billionaires didn’t send their children, and she was accepted to Stanford where she graduated from that university last June.
In fact, even the high school where I taught had a few children who went off to attend universities like MIT and Stanford, and these students were in HS classes with gang bangers in a community with a childhood poverty rate of 70% or more.
“How can a tax credit at the federal level for any type of educational expense damage public education?”
If those funds are cut from the public schools that support federal programs, then that’s less money in the public schools for those programs. The federal pie is only so big and if you add a slice called tax credits to that same pie, that means the other slices get thinner—that equals less funding to support those federally mandated programs.
The perfect evidence that reveals how a few billionaire oligarchs are funding a covert operation—well, not really covert any more—to circumvent democracy to get what they want.
That’s a big debate in Texas right now too. http://www.chron.com/news/politics/texas/article/Senators-debate-school-vouchers-bills-6160591.php I think most of the public who is for it is for it because they have been sold on the idea of choice. I believe that’s very deceiving and they will change their minds if it ever is put into practice. First of all most schools will end up doing lotteries-so it’s more about luck than choice not to mention the schools will be the ones choosing which students they will take. And many public school systems already offer parents choices with magnet schools, etc. so why do we even need a voucher system?
Does anyone in the ed reform movement ever do anything that benefits kids in public schools?
I know public schools are unfashionable, but this is ridiculous.These people have zero interest in the schools 95% of kids actually attend.
The only time they mention public schools is during “testing season”
Can we maybe pass the hat and hire a few competent, interested advocates? The people we’re paying in government could care less about our schools.
Mostly full of hot air