A clash in Arizona over state funding for homeschoolers illustrates some of difficulties with implementing any ambitious tax-financed school choice program. This bears on the Colorado debate over Amendment 80 (originally Initiative 138), the so-called “school choice” ballot measure, and on broader discussions about school choice.
Let’s set the context. In Colorado, we already have substantial school choice. Parents can send their children to any public school, space permitting. We have vibrant charter schools, which are relatively autonomous public schools. Parents can choose (and pay for) private schools. And parents have the freedom to homeschool as they see fit, with minimal controls. Many districts provide tax-funded programs one day per week for homeschool families.
We don’t have a generalized school choice program that provides tax funding for private schools and for homeschooling (aside from the once a week programs). Arizona does have such a program, as do various other states.
What about Amendment 80? The ballot proposal distracts from a serious discussion about school choice. As I’ve written, I oppose the measure because it invites additional regulation of charter, private, and home schooling. It seems to demand tax-funded universal preschool. And it does not actually create a school-choice program, although it threatens to send the matter to the courts. But whether one supports Amendment 80 is different from whether one supports school choice.
A crackdown in Arizona
In a recent article, the Goldwater Institute, which promoted robust school choice in Arizona, reported, “Homeschool moms Velia Aguirre and Rosemary McAtee wanted to give their children the best education they could, and thanks to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, their kids were thriving. Then Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes twisted the law to change the rules of the program, imposing an absurd new burden on ESA parents blocking their purchases of everything from kids’ books to the Constitution. Now Velia and Rosemary are fighting back with a new lawsuit, and the Goldwater Institute is helping them do it.”
We need to be careful with the acronyms here. ESA also can stand for education savings accounts, which are totally different. An education savings account usually means parents can put their own money into a tax-preferred account and then use that money for educational purposes. The Arizona program acts a lot like a voucher. Goldwater explains: “ESAs allow parents to use a portion of their children’s allotted state funding to purchase books, school supplies, and other curriculum materials that they can use to educate their children. Under the law, parents can then submit their expenses to the state for reimbursement.”
J. D. Tuccille also wrote about the dispute for Reason. He explains that Arizona’s attorney general insisted on “documentation that the [funded] materials are linked to approved curricula.” In what Tuccille calls “a not-so-subtle threat to families,” Assistant Attorney General Kathryn Boughton said, “The absence of requirement for documentation of a curriculum nexus may enable account holders or vendors to engage in fraudulent behavior.”
Goldwater holds, “The AG’s new mandate simply ignores state law and violates the Department of Education’s own handbook, which safeguards the ESA program by requiring documentation for unusual purchases, but not for common-sense purchases of items that are ‘generally known to be educational.'”
Who decides?
Tuccille plainly is right that the AG’s strategy is to “weaponize red tape.” On the other hand, we’re talking about taxpayer money here, so obviously government is going to put up some guardrails.
An article from ABC15’s Garrett Archer points out that nearly 75,000 students in Arizona used ESAs as of a recent quarterly report, spending some $525 million so far this year. Archer writes, “Over $86 million was spent [last quarter] on tuition, textbooks, and fees.” Parents spent an additional “$18 million for supplemental materials. This is a more controversial category since expenses here can range from pens and pencils up to a $3,400 transaction at a golf store or tickets to Arizona Snowbowl.”
An article from a year ago from Archer and his colleague Melissa Blasius found that, although most ESA money is spent for obviously educational purposes, some of the expenses are questionable. Examples:
“Our data analysis found approximately $57,000 in purchases to Universal Yums, a subscription box company that features snacks and trivia from a different country every month.”
“ABC15 also asked about a trendy product to grow your own food—aeroponic indoor gardens. ESA recipients spent $400,000 in taxpayer dollars on these tower garden systems.”
“ABC15 found some people buying pianos for their homes. One transaction was for nearly $4,000.” John Ward, executive director of Arizona’s ESA program, told the reporters that a piano is “absolutely allowable,” although “if it was a luxury piano, some type of grand piano, baby grand, we may not approve that as a luxury item.”
ABC15 also found “$3,400 spent on a single transaction at a golf store, a $10,000 expense at a sewing machine company, . . . more than 100 passes to Arizona Snowbowl ski resort,” and “$350,000 for ninja warrior training centers, trampoline parks, and climbing gyms.”
Different people will have different opinions as to the educational merit of some of those expenses. The point is that ultimately politicians and bureaucrats are going to decide what to fund and what not to fund, and such decisions necessarily involve judgment calls and gray areas.
Should parents be able to spend tax dollars on books promoting young-earth creationism for science class? On Dinesh D’Souza’s demonstrably bogus documentaries for social studies? On works promoting anti-Semitism? Who decides?
Revisiting a Colorado controversy
We in Colorado already have had a taste of politicians and bureaucrats debating the relative merits of tax-funded educational expenses. As I discussed in March, the State Board of Education cut off government funding for “parent directed” homeschool expenses involving minimal teacher oversight.
Let’s look back at the February 15 Board meeting discussing this (starting at the 4:43:00 mark). State board staffers claimed, misleadingly, that such spending constituted “de facto educational savings accounts.” Granted, the funding did operate somewhat like a voucher. Staff complained about “parents receiving reimbursements for educational expenses” such as “curriculum, computers, school supplies, sports programs, clubs, and zoo and museum memberships.”
Interestingly, even Steve Durham, a conservative Republican on the board, questioned “some of the uses described.” He said, “If we did have education savings accounts, I wouldn’t personally be in favor of allowing them for that particular use.” But why not? Traditional schools buy things like computers and take kids on field trips to the museum, so why are such things a problem if homeschoolers take advantage of them? My family’s membership to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science has provided some of our son’s most important educational opportunities.
The point remains, however, that what government funds, government regulates. Some potential expenses will be controversial, and in the end politicians and bureaucrats (and perhaps judges) will set the terms.
Alternatives to tax subsidies
Families that use private schools or who homeschool generally also pay taxes that support the public schools. Thus, such families pay twice for education, once for the public schools they do not use, and once for the educational opportunities they do use. That burden is fundamentally unfair. Many families justly can look at the money they get back from programs like Arizona’s ESAs as getting some of their own tax dollars back.
On the other hand, ESAs and vouchers obviously involve some wealth redistribution as well. Different families pay different levels of taxes, and some families have more children than others. Families without children or still expecting children still have to pay taxes into the public schools. Yet each child gets the same financing (at least potentially), regardless of how much in taxes their parents pay.
Any time you have a program that redistributes wealth for specific purposes, whether food or education, you’re going to end up with government rules on how the “public” money is spent. That’s inevitable. Such government control is why some people who strongly favor parents’ rights to direct their children’s education oppose vouchers and anything like them.
So we face two interrelated problems. First, currently government forces many families to help finance the public schools that they do not use, which is unjust. Second, anything like an ESA or voucher program involves the redistribution of wealth and thus brings government controls, which threatens parental autonomy.
What’s the way out of this conundrum? Here’s what I proposed back in January: “Parents who do not send their school-age children to public schools do not have to pay taxes to help support those schools. Whatever proportion of property, income, and other taxes go to schools, those parents either do not have to pay in the first place (I propose), or else they get the money back during tax season, up to the average per-pupil expenditure. I mean to include here property taxes paid indirectly through rent.”
Another possibility is to let everyone direct their education-related tax dollars however they want, within broad governmental guidelines. So, if a single person wanted to direct her education-related tax dollars to a private Catholic school, let her. This would demand that government decide what constitutes a “legitimate” educational expense. But presumably the pressure for government controls would be less severe because the proposal involves people directing their own money.
Here is an even more radical proposal. Government could stop funding education altogether, and then increase direct welfare payments to the poor, who could then use the funds however they want. Of course, parents still would have a legal obligation to educate their children. But direct, no-strings payments would maximize parental autonomy to decide how best to improve the lives of their children.
Even the most fringe Democratic Socialist will have a hard time explaining why a poor working couple without children should be forced to subsidize wealthy people who send their kids to public schools, which is part of what the current system does.
A lot of conservatives set their hearts on something like ESAs or vouchers, and some even equate “school choice” with such tax financing. But, as recent controversies in Arizona illustrate, what the government funds, the government controls. Do we really want to be left debating the details of those controls?
Ari Armstrong writes regularly for Complete Colorado and is the author of books about Ayn Rand, Harry Potter, and classical liberalism. He can be reached at ari at ariarmstrong dot com.
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