Last year, Nevada adopted one of the most radical voucher plans in the nation. Of course, the vouchers are not called “vouchers,” but “education savings accounts.” But the principle is the same. Families will get a tax break worth more than $5,000 if they withdraw their child from public school and enroll them in a private or religious school. There are no limits on who may use these vouchers. In other states, vouchers are available only to those who are low-income or those who are enrolled in schools where test scores are low. In Nevada, anyone can use public money to go where they choose.
Here is a description of the debate.
Nevada is a state that has strong constitutional protections for public schools, but the governor and the legislature have decided that the state constitution doesn’t mean what it says.
One judge said the plan was unconstitutional in January.
One judge upheld the voucher program in May.
Here is what the state constitution says.
Article 11 of the Nevada constitution declares:
Sec: 9. Sectarian instruction prohibited in common schools and university. No sectarian instruction shall be imparted or tolerated in any school or University that may be established under this Constitution.
Section Ten. No public money to be used for sectarian purposes. No public funds of any kind or character whatever, State, County or Municipal, shall be used for sectarian purpose.
[Added in 1880. Proposed and passed by the 1877 legislature; agreed to and passed by the 1879 legislature; and approved and ratified by the people at the 1880 general election. See: Statutes of Nevada 1877, p. 221; Statutes of Nevada 1879, p. 149.]
You be the judge.
Do you see any ambiguity here? Do you see a constitutional clause that is permissive? Is the phrase “No public money to be used for sectarian purposes” ambiguous?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Politicians only care about constitutions when they suit their needs. Florida also has strong constitutional support for public education, Article IX, but that never stops the privatizers. Most judges are too embarrassed to blatantly ignore a constitution, but not all, and more, both legislatively and judicially, are willing to perform intellectual gymnastics to subvert original intent.
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Thank goodness that the voters of Florida rejected Jeb Bush’s effort to rewrite the state constitution and allow vouchers.
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True Diane, the voters rejected vouchers. However, there is a work around through corporate tax breaks, the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship. These “scholarships” are administered by Step Up For Students, and A.A.A. Scholarship Foundation- FL, LLC. The administrative fees are quite lucrative, and funding is still diverted from public schools.
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Nevada vouchers can also be used for home schooling. Peter Greene wondered if the $5,100 could be used to put a new roof on your home school. Ha!
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Vouchers don’t work as intended (refer to Dr. Figlio’s recent research). I anxiously await the publication of his research, at NBER. Figlio is an NBER research associate. I haven’t received a reply from Dr. Hoxby about the publication date. If NBER attaches the foreword, it may be wise to fine tune some of the “finding” language to avoid misinterpretation.
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https://www.facebook.com/events/261626537551880/?ti=icl
Press conference on Friday.
If you teach in Nevada, time to show up.
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https://www.facebook.com/ESA-Nevada-Super-Voucher-523399194474855/
This Nevada Super Voucher will not stay in Vegas.
The Nevada tax payers have had to pay huge sums of cash to “protect this legislation”. All sorts of outside of Nevada attorney fees and “help”.
The choice advocates from around the nation are gambling that Nevada is finally the place where parents can get a regulation free education check. The Treasurer will determine what is “curriculum” and parents will “police themselves”.
Most of the options for actually educating anyone are religious private schools. Nothing prevents parents from spending tax payer money on Catholic, Mormon, Jewish, Protestant, or Religious education.
Nothing says a parents cannot purchase a Cadillac with the cash and consider that “curriculum”.
Like our neighbor Arizona – the expectation is there will be many many cases of fraud.
What happens in Vegas will not stay in Vegas. This is a test case.
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My daughter was in public school when we first moved here. She spent 8 hours a day in a overcrowded school that was rated a 9 out of 10 but was so far behind what she was learning in Wisconsin. She would come home so exhausted after an entire day in an overcrowded school. There were so many other things that were horrible. A little boy was touching the boys privates he was sitting next to (I know this because the little boy told his mother in front of me at the bus stop). The school moved the child to sit next to my little girl but never talked to me about it! If I hadn’t known about the problem I would have no idea that she was desk partners with a child who is touching other kids privates. She asked us to homeschool her. So we did. We couldn’t afford to buy all of the curriculum on our own so we did a charter school here in Las Vegas where you teach your child at home but you see your teacher once a week for 2 hours. It was a better school than the one she was in but the curriculum wasn’t very good….it’s still the public school curriculum. So here I am at the present time. I have been homeschooling her at home at she is 2 grades above in reading and one grade above in math. We spend half the time on school she did at the public school so she has time to explore other kinds of learning like Spanish, Art, Nature, exercising, social events, going into nature, etc. She is so happy to learn now. She is an independent learner now. If she is interested in knowing more about a subject, any subject, she asks questions, talks about her ideas and we learn more together. It’s incredible. She was not doing that when she went to a public school building. Homeschooling isn’t right for every child but mine is thriving so much I am so happy we decided to homeschool her. It’s what is best for her I believe that 100%. It is, however, still a burden to afford any curriculum for her. It’s not cheap. To be able to have any help from the state to educate my child would be incredible. Anything helps. The state has failed miserable at educating children here. The schools are overcrowded, bullying is off the charts, the state is one of the worst states in the country for educating our children. It costs the state less to give funds to people to leave the public schools than it costs to educated them poorly in the public schools. As far as if a parent chooses religious curriculum…it’s the parents decision not the schools. The schools are giving money to the parents and the parents decide if the school is religious. Not sure why this matters though. At least the religious schools are teaching well and teaching people to treat each other with love and kindness. At least the ones I know about are doing that. My understanding of separation of religion from church and state is that a state can’t endorse a religion or make you participate in that religion but if the state is giving money to the parents to decide how to spend it and the state says you can’t go to a religious school that than it is endorsing no religion which is also not cool. No religion is still a religion. We should be free as a people to decide what is best for our children. The state shouldn’t have an opinion either way.
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