Utah Judge Rejects School Voucher Scheme
Public money must be for public schools, ruling says
A Utah judge has ruled that a proposed school voucher scheme violates the state’s Constitution.
Utah’s $100 million school voucher program violates the state’s constitution, a judge ruled Friday.
“[Because] the Program is a legislatively created, publicly funded education program aimed at elementary and secondary education, it must satisfy the constitutional requirements applicable to the ‘public education system’ set forth in the Utah Constitution,” Third District Judge Laura Scott wrote in her ruling. “The Program is not ‘open to all children of the state.’”
Despite the ruling, Utah’s Gov. Spencer Cox says he will persist in seeking to divert public funds to private schools that are allowed to limit who may attend.
As the ruling noted:
Private schools and other providers participating in Utah Fits All aren’t required to serve students with disabilities and can deny admission based on factors like gender, religion or income, the ruling states.
The decision in Utah comes amid a flurry of voucher-related legislative activity.
Missouri legislative leaders rejected a $50 million funding commitment to a school voucher scheme there.
“I want to make sure that we’re fully funding our obligation to public schools before we start spending 10s of millions of general revenue dollars on private schools,” Hough told reporters after making the cut.
Meanwhile, Texas lawmakers gave a greenlight to Gov. Greg Abbott’s voucher plan:
The Texas House gave final approval Thursday to a bill that would create a $1 billion private school voucher program, crossing a historic milestone and bringing Gov. Greg Abbott’s top legislative priority closer than ever to reaching his desk.
Here’s the deal: Vouchers are expensive. And they don’t help kids. In fact, in many cases, the evidence shows kids accepting vouchers actually end up performing worse than their public school peers.
On all proficiency tests, students getting a voucher for one year or less overall are about 75% proficient. Three years later, they’re 54% proficient.
That’s a drop of nearly 1/3!
Ouch. Not great. Students are LOSING ground academically after taking vouchers.
Put another way, the voucher students’ first-year scores would rank in the top 1/4 of all Ohio Public School Districts; their third-year scores would rank in the bottom 1/5 of all Ohio Public School Districts.
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Another day, yet another voucher scam defeated! Public school $$ for public school kids! Not for some grift!