The far-right Goldwater Institute has filed a lawsuit claiming that the state has no right to regulate how parents spend their voucher money, the money that is paid by taxpayers. Goldwater says that if the parents misspent the money, it should be refunded to parents so they can try again. The Goldwater Institute, along with the DeVos family and Charles Koch, have sponsored efforts to expand the voucher program to cover all students in the state. They began with the “camel’s nose” under the tent, offering vouchers for students with disabilities (who abandon their federally-protected rights when they go to private schools); then added students in foster care; then added students in “failing” public schools; then students on reservations; then students from military families. They won’t be satisfied until every student in the state gets a voucher to leave public schools for a private school.
The Goldwater Institute, a conservative think tank, has filed suit against the state Department of Education contending it doesn’t have the authority to enforce rules governing Arizona’s school voucher program.
The suit — which was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court and names the state attorney general as a defendant — alleges the Department of Education didn’t follow the state’s rule-making process when it created the ESA handbook, a set of rules that outlines the Empowerment Scholarship Account program. The ESA program grants parents money to send their children to private school.
The suit also contends the Department of Education does not have the authority to require that parents who have misspent ESA money reimburse the state for those funds. It is demanding the Department of Education instead put that misspent money back into parents’ accounts.
Finally, the lawsuit claims the department has no right to make funding conditional on parents filing expense reports to document how they spent the taxpayer money. It calls the quarterly reports “cumbersome and time-consuming” and says as a result payments to participants are often late, breaching their contract and causing them to miss payments to private schools.
Under the ESA program, parents receive 90% of the state funding that would otherwise go to their local public school districts. Children in six categories, such as those with special needs, in foster care, from failing schools and others, are allowed to enroll in the program.
The voucher money, loaded on debit cards, is intended to cover specific education expenses such as private- or religious-school tuition, home-school expenses and education-related therapies.
Dawn Penich-Thacker, spokeswoman for Save Our Schools Arizona, which has opposed expansion of the ESA program, said the suit is really about stripping power from Kathy Hoffman, the Democratic superintendent of public instruction elected in 2018.
“They (Goldwater) don’t want her having any say over it,” Penich-Thacker said.
Parents have complained about the expense reports for years but Goldwater only now filed suit, Penich-Thacker said.
Last year, two bills in the Arizona Legislature would have stripped oversight of the ESA program from Hoffman and given it to the Treasurer’s Office, which is overseen by Republican Kimberly Yee.
“Suddenly, this is when the school choice community is up in arms,” Penich-Thacker said. “Parents are saying this is happening since day one, but it took the election of 2018 for anything to actually become a problem.”
The Goldwater Institute has been involved in shaping the ESA program since before the voucher program became law in 2011.
The think tank was instrumental in writing the legislation that created the program. It was also deeply involved in the numerous expansions of the law, which were often copied from model legislation written by special interests.
It was a big backer of the universal voucher expansion that would have allowed all 1.1 million Arizona public school students to use public money to go to private school. The number of students receiving the funds would have been capped at 30,000. Voters overturned the voucher law in November 2018 by a vote of 65% to 35%.
Goldwater also has wielded an “iron-like grip level of influence” behind the scenes with the Department of Education, attempting to dictate how the program should be implemented and acting as if it retained ownership of the program.
I think voucher money should be reserved for schools that promote each of the following:
–polygamy
–genital mutilation
–terrorism
–Satanism
–astrology
–druidic philosophy
–family dysfunction
–community fracture
This way we can be sure our tax dollars are being spent well.
Mary and Jesus were Anglo-Saxon
Nah, María y Jesús are Latin Americans.
The artist renditions of Mary in religious schools in the midwest make her look like Carrie Underwood.
You left out the FSM!
God chose Trump
” if the parents misspent the money, it should be refunded to parents so they can try again”
This is unbelievable. That amounts to an incentive for parents and “education service providers” to engage in fraud.
The money came from taxpayers. Who refunds the money to them?
YES: INCENTIVE to engage in fraud.
I think the massive expansion of vouchers in Ohio is really unpopular. Every newspaper is covering the complaints and it’s across the state- urban, suburban and rural so happening in many areas that are solidly Republican.
I hope it’s a wake up call to people in Ohio.
This was never about improving public schools. In fact, the Ohio voucher push reclassified public schools for the sole purpose of expanding vouchers. It had nothing whatever to do with public school students. Public school kids were simply used to achieve one of ed reform’s ideological goals.
Our kids were given more junk standardized tests and the scores were used for no other purpose than to expand public financing of private schools our kids don’t attend. Just to add insult to injury ed reform lobbyists then exempted private school students from taking the junk tests they impose on every public school student in the state.
Lose/lose for public school students. Big ideological win for ed reform. Once again 90% of students in the state- those that attend public schools- were the dead-last priority of this “movement”. Our kids are the collateral damage of their ideological crusade.
If Ohioans were asked, they would oppose vouchers, in particular for religious schools but, that’s not the way its seen at a site where I read about upcoming NCEA events. This is how the writer, Greg Dolan, saw it last winter, ” …midterm elections…education choice legislative planning was placed in the hands of American voters, who had decisions to make between pro-ed choice and anti-ed choice candidates…strong support to move forward…our Catholic missions in education in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tenn.”
So, the election of candidates becomes mandate for a single issue in the Catholic political world. Public education supporters won’t confront the Catholic political machine nor, even acknowledge its existence and the 20% of Americans who are Catholic don’t disabuse the hierarchy of the assumption.
A group who thinks they can win with one hand tied behind their back based on the flimsy knowledge that 66% of Americans want separation of church and state don’t understand the marriage of theocracy and oligarchy.
Despite my frequent quibbles with your words, I like that you are promoting visibility of American Catholic orgs as one of the major agendas piggy-backing themselves onto the school-choice movement. Orgs such as USCCB and NCEA are all about using public funds to support their religious schools, as are the Evangelicals. The other “agendas” are libertarian [no govt involvement in ed], neoliberal [public services delivered more efficiently by private sector], and the corporate profit-making sector [Gates, Pearson, hedge-funders et al]. (Did I miss anybody?)
Thanks, Bethree
Ed reformers in Ohio spent all of 2018 expanding charters. Nothing for public schools. Then they spent all of 2019 expanding vouchers- again- nothing accomplished for public school students. They will now spend all of 2020 defending their massive expansion of vouchers.
Public school students? No one lifts a finger on their behalf. This is capture. They simply don’t do the the work they’re paid to do because they oppose the continued existence of the schools our children attend. We should not have to pay their salaries. They should be replaced by people who intend to make a positive contribution to the public schools in this state. We should not have to fund this ideological crusade while the public schools languish in neglect. We can hire better.
Here’s Toledo:
“Local school officials are pushing back against the expansion of a school voucher program they say will funnel millions of dollars in much-needed funding from public schools to private schools.”
https://www.toledoblade.com/local/education/2020/01/13/school-leaders-battle-school-voucher-growth-toledo-lucas-county-ohio-education/stories/20200110145
National ed reform lobbyists parachuted into Ohio again and jammed thru a massive voucher expansion. There is now opposition in every newspaper in the state.
Let’s see if any of the people we hire and pay in Columbus pay attention. Let’s see who they serve- national ed reform lobbyists or the people who actually live in this state?
If they don’t pay attention we should fire them and hire people who actually work for us. Are we tired of paying public employees who are opposed to our children’s schools yet? Because we’re not obligated to continue to employ them. They can be replaced.
This whole libertarian/Ayn Randian/tea party nexus, (nest of vipers), of regressivism and free market piracy is a curse on this nation. They are determined to destroy our precious tuition-free public schools, K-12, by any means necessary. There is no way that you can maintain the real public schools while public monies are being siphoned off to charter schools, private schools, religious schools and home schoolers. Talk about insanity.
The nexus appears to be both libertarian and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, whose political arm is the state Catholic Conferences.
Attorney, Jesse Ryan Loffer, wrote at LawandReligion.com in an article titled, “CatholicPac…” about the goal in a section on education.
The Catholic bishops state they are strong supporters of parental school choice and have been from the beginning.
And the federal government is even worse:
“Secretary Betsy DeVos
Jan 10
This is a seminal opportunity to transform our nation’s education system; an unprecedented moment to shape the future of our nation.”
Under DeVos, you’re paying about 1000 public employees (the political appointees) who don’t lift a finger on behalf of public schools, because they oppose the existence of public schools. They return no value at all to public school students and families. They spent each and every workday promoting their ideological crusade to abolish the school your kid is attending this morning.
That’s not a good deal for you. You can and should demand better.
The 74 is the house newspaper of the ed reform echo chamber, but even for them this is over the top:
https://www.the74million.org/article/appraisal-as-louisiana-school-chief-john-white-has-been-an-extraordinary-leader-for-teachers-students-and-educational-excellence-his-legacy-will-last-far-into-the-future/
I think they’re elevating John White to sainthood.
Here’s an example of this hard hitting and very scientific “analysis”:
“What makes John an especially effective leader is that his clarity and drive are matched by his humility and inclusiveness — he is not merely willing but eager to have diverse perspectives at the table.”
Here’s a tip- promoting the careers of fellow echo chamber members in an endless round of mutual congratulations is not what most people consider “humility”. It’s just marketing.
Unregulated ESAs are an invitation to waste and fraud. Not all parents will spend this money wisely.
You’d think the Goldwater Institute never even heard of “taxation without representation”– or worse, approves of it wholeheartedly, provided tax expenditures support their ideological agenda… Not sure of just what that agenda might be, tho. Kinda looks like free-market capitalism except, oops, free markets aren’t free if propped up by tax dollars. More likely they push ESA’s disingenuously: just a distasteful way-station on the train to zero taxes for education.
Say it repeatedly:
Free markets don’t demand public subsidy
Related theocracy- Today, the Tennessee governor is going to sign an anti- LGBT adoption bill.
In the Koch colony of Kansas, in 2018, media reported that the “Kansas Catholic Conference, the voice of the Kansas Catholic Church on public policy urged people to write to their representatives in support (of similar) legislation.”
When the Catholic church doesn’t pay a price/ suffer consequence for noxious political positions , it emboldens the bishops to attack common goods like public schools. The Massachusetts Catholic Conference states at its site, the bishop’s prejudice against public schools.
BTW- the pretense of reviewing outcomes from LGBT adoptions wasn’t even undertaken for passage of the state laws.
The false flag – better outcomes for students- was thought necessary to sell the public on theft of their community assets, their public schools. The false flag is the work product of the predatory Catholic church and profit-taking S.O.B.’s