Republicans in West Virginia passed a dramatic voucher bill that allows people to spend public education funds on almost anything. Governor Jim Justice, a billionaire, signed the bill into law.
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice on Saturday signed into law the bill that school-choice advocates say will implement the nation’s broadest nonpublic school vouchers program.
Programs in other states are limited to low-income, special-needs or other subsets of students, or have caps on the number of recipients in general. But West Virginia’s program will be open to all K-12 students, including by offering public money to families who already don’t use the public school system.
Effective beginning in the 2022-23 school year, families who withdraw their children from public schools can receive a currently estimated $4,600 per-student, per-year for private- and home-schooling expenses. Families also may receive the money for newly school-aged children whom they never want to go to public schools.
Republican supermajorities passed this legislation (House Bill 2013) without a single Democrat vote.
Democrats raised concern about its effect on public schools, which have been losing students annually since 2012, dropping from about 282,300 children that year to 261,600 in fall 2019 and, after the coronavirus pandemic hit, 252,400 in fall 2020.
State funding for public schools is largely based on enrollment, and children leaving them take that money with them to home- and private-schooling in the form of these vouchers.
The West Virginia Department of Education’s operations officer has said she expects public schools to retain most of their federal funds, plus any local excess levy property tax revenue, regardless. Some counties don’t have school excess levies.
Parents could use these vouchers for a nearly unlimited list of educational expenses, including online education programs, tutoring, books and private schooling, whether religious or secular. The vast majority of West Virginia private schools are Christian, but the bill doesn’t prohibit using the money for out-of-state boarding schools or other private, out-of-state education providers.
The legislation (House Bill 2013) has a trigger that will automatically be pulled if participation in the program isn’t above 5% of the statewide public school enrollment within the program’s first two years. If that’s the case, then, starting July 1, 2026, parents of all current nonpublic school children will be able to get the vouchers.
But whether that is triggered or not, the fact that the program offers the vouchers to parents of rising kindergarteners so they can avoid public schools in the first place means it eventually will be open to all who intended to avoid public schools all along.
Estimates from two state agencies projected that — aside from the roughly $22 million to $24 million in annual funding the program will shift from public schools to fund vouchers for students who are anticipated to leave public schools — the program’s biggest financial effect will be about $103 million annually in new state funding that will be required to subsidize those who weren’t going to public schools anyway.
There are an estimated 22,300 private- and home-school students in West Virginia.
Comparable private-/home-school voucher programs in other states, dubbed “education savings accounts” (ESAs) despite them generally being funded by the state instead of a family’s own investments, are far more limited than West Virginia’s program.
Read the rest of the story. Voucher zealots are thrilled.
West Virginia is hurtling rapidly backward into the nineteenth century.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is a reckless move for West Virginia. It will further damage the public schools that are already under funded. Low value vouchers are a waste of money as these questionable schools generally get poor results. At what point did some states decide to use public school budgets like a private ATM. If I am unhappy with the local police department in my town and decide to hire private security instead, will I get a rebate for the taxes I pay to the police department? No way! Why are taxpayers responsible for private decisions that people make? If they do not use the public schools, they should be personally responsible for whatever private option they decide. Taxpayers in West Virginia will wind up paying more or their public schools will suffer further decline and degradation.
Vouchers are a race to the bottom.
Should be spelled Vulture bill.
Vultures picking with their bills at the dead carcass of public schools.
Vulture Bill
Vulture bill is picking
Picking at the schools
Blood and guts are dripping
Dripping from the ghouls
Voucher is vulture
Voucher is vulture
Picking at school
Death is the culture
Guts are the rule
I don’t think public schools will survive this constant assault.
I agree. We are losing.
Justice should hang his head in shame. This is a state that has resisted privatization. Dems better wake up. The full force of the Republican party is now bent on destroying public ed with vouchers and charters.
Fully funded by the remaining Brother Koch and Betsy DeVos.
“Dems better wake up. The full force of the Republican party is now bent on destroying public ed with vouchers and charters.”
Does anybody else see the inherent, gaping contradiction in these sentences? Perhaps the notion that privatizing Dems will “wake up” is less a contradiction than a desperate delusion. I would argue the full force of the governing Democratic Party is bent in the same direction of Republicans. There is enough evidence and experience to conclude that the will never “wake up” in the sense that it is posited here. They are the enemy to the very idea of public education and should be treated as such. Hoping they will “wake up” is like betting on the winning the lottery.
Well the Dems in WV were woke enough to all vote against this bill (along with a few from the Rep party).
The puzzle we all must figure out. Why do people who are poor and facing heavy debt vote for Republican liars who care only about the corporations and the rich?
Carol,
What can be done? Why would dems care? How can this be fixed? Will it take complete destruction of public schools before we realize their importance?
Sounds like a tax payer case on first amendment grounds . Not the separation clause but the speech clause, modeled after Janus. Should the state be allowed to compel me to fund (religious ) Ideology I don’t believe in with my tax dollars . Actually that was part of the history of the separation clause. As that Religious institutions inherently have Ideologies. I should not be compelled to fund them .
Well at least the hypocrisy of the court would be on display when they did not even hear the case. .
What should Dems do? Stop funding the federal Charter Schools Program would be a good start. And fix all of the regulations that allow for-profits to run schools and charters to be unaccountable to the public. Red states… they can probably do little. But they control Congress and Blue states.
Imagine if the 2 teacher’s union presidents decided to use their power & leverage like the airline flight attendants union pres, Sara Nelson. Maybe the Dems would experience an awakening.
for years and years now: “Imagine” is all we get
Biden can start by honoring what was said during the campaign: eliminate federal testing and the slush fund that helps fund charters.. I have to wonder if Biden sold out his promises for thirty pieces of silver as Gates’ fingerprints are all over the DOE.
The main problem, as I see it, Joel, is that public education has no real political professionals–people with track records in real campaigns that achieve results and change–on its side. Your argument appeals to intellect, correct as it is. But if one wants to win political campaigns, there are strategic and tactical plans that have to be made, foot soldiers who need to be recruited, motivated and provided with guidance and intelligence, and consistent, sustained actions. Public education advocacy has none of those right now.
Strategically, there must be a realistic assessment of the world the way it is and what is needed to change it. “Should” is not a strategic or effective political argument or course. It is aspirational without any muscle or sustained leadership or organization behind it. “Is” must be the starting point. The first part of figuring out the “is” of public education is to determine what the assets, strengths and weakness of opposing sides are. These are fairly easy to figure out about the opponents of public education if one has read and paid attention to what I assume most people here know. But what about our supposed allies? They are weak, disorganized and unwilling to play hardball. For example, I had a discussion today with like-minded friends who pay attention to politics and policy who were shocked and disbelieving when I made the following assertion: Prior to Betsy’s ascension to Secretary, there was not a hair’s width of difference between her views on education as compared to neo-liberal Democrats like Cory Booker, the Center for American Progress, the current Sec. of Commerce, and most of the Biden Education Department staff. They just changed their rhetoric to fool people as they did absolutely nothing to change their actions. Or that people like Rosa DeLauro, who chairs the appropriations subcommittee on education hasn’t done a damn thing of substance to influence the big picture of education policy. Or that state legislative activity has not changed. Indeed, as the posts of the past few weeks on this site have shown, they have retrenched, intensified, and are on the path to be even more successful than they previously were. And our so-called leaders answer with “should” and “how dare they?”
The last time education advocates had any traction was during the statewide teacher strikes. But like a Christmas sparkler, their impact was not sustained and died as soon as they were over. In virtually every state, their progress is being turned back with a vengeance. That’s because the opponents didn’t take their foot off the gas, they accelerated and used the pandemic to fuel their malevolence. They have professionals, we have amateurs. They have people with track records. We don’t.
Constitutional arguments and being on the “right” side are toothless in the real world of politics. They are theatrical and theoretical. Leaders who have never put together a successful plan to change policy cannot be expected to know how to wage a significant campaign. They do not know how to muster grassroots advocates. Reporting on what small, well-meaning individuals and groups do is not political advocacy.
They have a long list of billionaires to hire professional campaign staff and to bribe legislators. We don’t. It’s that simple. Everything they want gets passed but fails.
If it’s that simple, then what the hell are we doing here? You have confirmed that we’re nothing but an insular whining debating society. And you call me defeatist? As long as you’ve got billionaires bankrolling you, I guess all that We the People… stuff is mythological schtick after all. All that time I wasted learning about these issues, thinking Derek Black’s optimism was well placed, that we could have done something important. Silly me.
GregB
I think we have two different dynamics here . There is the neo-liberal assault that we see in Blue States that we see resulting in what they call ” Public Charter Schools ” and a religiofascist assault backed by billionaires of which DeVos only represents the tip of the iceberg in Red States . Pushing vouchers and Charters that make no pretense about the ideology they teach.
Compounding this is the synergy of interests between right wing billionaires and the so called “Socially liberal ” billionaire class. Almost all of the social liberals are vehemently anti union. Almost none are in favor of even a minimum wage hike. Of course their free market philosophies do not extend to the Government enforced monopolies that pay them rents. Their support of free trade hinges on protecting those monopolies (intellectual property rights )in those agreements.
That synergy works very well in the assault on Public Schools.
The issue is not education. Education is part of a broader culture and class war . Some Democrats have allowed themselves to be duped or corrupted into pushing a right wing economic philosophy “Neo Liberalism “. That shift has a sad history dating back to the 60s and 70s as Kurt Andersen and Thomas Frank detail.
The right has been playing the white working class on race and culture forever in this country . Skillfully hiding the economic damage they do to them at the same time. There is no unified voice on the the left . No vast left wing conspiracy to counter them. If anything the Democrats have insured that ” just enough is given to just enough to prevent a call for real change” .
JH and GB: While there’s merit in all your points, Diane names the underlying issue: a crushing steamroller of cash that suggests all the supposed ideologies on both sides of the fence are mere eyewash. “Bribe legislators” being the key words. There’s no other explanation for failure to legislate stricter gun control, healthcare for all provided by govt, path to citizenship for immigrants, all of which poll at 60-70% favorable and have for years—as well as equally high or higher support for overhauling infrastructure, addressing climate change, campaign reform, automatic voter registration. All of that is fallout from having created a society where the top 1% owns more assets than the entire middle & upper-middle classes. Now they write the policy.
That voters can be bamboozled into destroying public education makes me sick: it seems it has to be a literal survival issue to make the list.
Another grounds for legal challenge is that tax dollars are used to fund schools that discriminate based on race, gender, sexual orientation
Of course none of the challenges stand a chance in the current Court .
“Effective beginning in the 2022-23 school year, families who withdraw their children from public schools can receive a currently estimated $4,600 per-student, per-year for private- and home-schooling expenses”
The goal is to replace comprehensive public K-12 schools with a low value voucher.
When they get enough students taking the voucher, they’ll start a political campaign about how the public school students are wasting taxpayer money, and privatization is cheaper.
Ed reformers must be so proud of their hard work- the overpaid consultants and political operatives engineering these “systems” are going to end up with no public schools and a bunch of junk unregulated contractors.and huge fraud scandals.
We’ll know who to hold responsible too- the whole ed reform echo chamber who cheered on the dismantling and sale of public education the last 20 years. They haven’t done a thing to improve any public school school anywhere, but they have certainly realized their ideological goals.
Look for the next ed reform political campaign:
“public schools are too expensive! Everyone should just get a low value voucher”
They’re working up the marketing for the next campaign season.
20,000 full time think tank, university employees and political operatives and what they came up with is handing everyone a 4600 dollar voucher and abandoning the whole concept of public education.
Why did they need 15 ed reform foundations and billions of dollars to “create” a cheap voucher and a list of contractors? Couldn’t Gates, Broad and Walton have just kept their money if all we got out of it is “voucher”?
It’s been interesting to watch ed reform get more and more hostile to public schools and further and further Right.
The whole “movement” is indistinguishable from Betsy DeVos at this point. There is nothing she promoted that they don’t promote.
They now reject any regulation of even the contractors. It;s gone further than total privatization- they can’t even break ranks ideologically enough to regulate these privatized systems they’re creating.
West Virginia doesn’t know what they’re in for- my state, Ohio is utterly and completely dominated by the ed reform echo chamber and Ohio hasn’t done anything productive for public school students IN YEARS.
Session after legislative session is wholly consumed with the ed reform wish list, which NEVER includes anything positive for students in public schools.
You won’t see any productive or positive work on public schools coming out of that statehouse from now on- once the echo chamber controls the statehouse they control the agenda, and their agenda doesn’t include public schools or public school students.
Ohio can’t even manage to pass a public school funding bill- it’s been YEARS since anything good for public school students has come out of Columbus. They simply cease productive contributions to the unfashionable public school sector completely.
And here come the echo chamber funded studies, which always miraculously confirm the ideological agenda of ed reformers:
“Patrick Wolf
I conducted a meta-analysis of all the experimental evaluations of private school choice programs around the world & found that their achievement effects tend to be positive, especially after several years, in reading, and in non-U.S. countries”
The studies will be followed by carefully cherry picked examples of 3 or 4 high quality voucher schools, preferably “Montessori” because we all must pretend that outsourcing public education to contractors is somehow “innovative” and any junk voucher schools will be carefully and completely ignored.
Let the marketing and promotion begin. The sales goal for vouchers seems to be “+ 5% a year”. Let’s see if they can hit the mark.
Phew. I found & viewed that 2016 study with the info you provided. Their so-called meta-anaysis included only 10 studies (culled from a couple hundred to meet their jargon-y reqts). Bottom line: the US programs studied showed negligeable results [e.g., “leaning toward positive”]; the conclusion that results were overall positive depended entirely on a few programs in India and Colombia… doh!
Public schools are a huge failure. Let the children’s parents decide whats best for thier children. Children that are forced into these underperforming, indoctrinating and ever more morally corrupt institutions will not have the ability to attend any school of their choice, be it private or homeschool or a neighboring county even in another state. Horray for death to government education of our youth! Public education is a failure and deserves to be put to bed forever.
I do not know it vouchers are the solution but there is a serious problem when about 40 percent of the freshmen admitted to WVU fait the English and or Math entrance exam and are placed in remedial classes.