Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona is a decorated military veteran and a former astronaut. He recently introduced legislation to roll back Trump’s federal voucher program. The Wall Street Journal denounced Kelly’s proposal, and he responded with this letter to the editor.
He wrote:
Your editorial “Mark Kelly’s Bad Education Choice” (April 18) misses some key facts. We can all agree on one thing: Every parent wants their kid to get a quality education that sets them up to succeed. There’s no better path to the middle class than our public schools. I’m the son of two cops. I went to public schools from kindergarten through the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. That system gave me a shot, and every kid deserves the same, no matter where they grow up. Massive voucher programs threaten that.
Take my state. Arizona’s universal voucher program now costs about $1 billion a year and is growing. In your editorial, you note that’s only 8% of the state’s education budget, but that billion dollars is forcing real tradeoffs in the state budget, like cuts to community colleges and water infrastructure in a state facing a severe drought. Meanwhile, more than half of voucher recipients were already being privately educated. That means in Arizona hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are going to subsidize private tuition for families who were already paying for it.
The federal tax credit your editorial defends isn’t free, either. You acknowledge this reality when you criticize clean energy tax credits. With these education tax credits, the cost could reach as high as $50 billion in lost revenue in a single year. That adds to the federal deficit and will likely largely benefit wealthier Americans’ taxes because the credit is nonrefundable. Likewise, because the scholarships can go to households with up to 300% of the area median income, it will subsidize families who can already afford to spend thousands out of pocket to send their kids to private schools.
And public schools across the country will pay a price. When students leave, funding drops. Schools cut programs and staff, sometimes creating a downward spiral. It’s happening in Arizona now. Then what “choice” does a parent have when their local school closes? I support parents who choose private school or homeschooling for their kids. But if we want better outcomes for everyone—higher scores, higher graduation rates—the answer isn’t to take resources out of public schools, it’s to make them better.
I refuse to accept that in the richest country in the history of the world, only a small percentage of our kids get a good education. We should aim higher. My dream when I was a kid was to become an astronaut. I got to achieve that. Every kid deserves the chance to chase their dream too, and that starts with good public schools.
Sen. Mark Kelly (D., Ariz.)
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Students should profit from education, not private investors.
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I have a former student who is running what promises to be a quixotic race for state representative. Her Republican opponent just got into line to vote the Memphis district that gave Tennessee its last remaining democrat a congressional seat out of existence. She sends her kid to a private school on a voucher, hoping that he will have some advantage because of that, but she opposes vouchers philosophically.
This story illustrates how school choice people have created a set of rules that keep the system designed for them. Despite her aversion to vouchers, this person knows the strong tradition of learning, the small classes, and the dedication of the staff created by a stable school environment will not happen in her lifetime at the local public school. She is over a philosophical barrel. The private school spends mountains of cash to have small classes. No one will ever fund the public school that way until we find another stream of revenue for such support.
Meanwhile, the only place monetary support for excellence in education lives is in local areas where subdivisions of people in the top percents of earners send their children to well-funded schools full of children from stable family incomes. Republicans want this to remain this way so that support for good public education remains muted. The loudest voices are always from those who do not have to actually work for a living. Essentially, the voucher proponents are bribing voters with vouchers, moving money into the pockets of their supporters like old bosses used to hand out whiskey at the polling places.
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Thank you, Mark Kelly for supporting our public schools, one of the great success stories of this nation. The public school haters have been knocking and demeaning the public schools and their teachers for decades. One of Chris Christies’s favorite put-downs of NJ schools was calling them failure factories. Nationally, “our failing schools,” was an oft repeated unthinking phrase. All to support school choice and school privatization.
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