Voucher Expansion Rejected in Missouri

Senate committee strips $50 million in voucher expansion funds from Gov's budget

Photo by Alexander Mils on Unsplash

A planned expansion of Missouri’s school voucher scheme is on hold. A key Senate committee stripped $50 million from a budget proposal that would have expanded the state’s private school voucher program.

Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe’s plan to rapidly enlarge a scholarship program for private and religious schools with an infusion of state tax funds was cut out of the budget Wednesday as the Senate Appropriations Committee finished revising spending plans for the coming year.

The $50 million request for the MoScholars program, which is supposed to be funded from donations and tax credits, was approved in the Missouri House as part of its budget proposal. But state Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Republican from Springfield and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, stripped it out after boosting the foundation formula for public schools by $300 million the day before.

Apparently, the move was a matter of priorities:

“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.

Hough is right to be concerned about voucher schemes eating up large chunks of the state budget.

The Indiana Voucher Mess

A voucher scheme in Indiana quickly grew out of control:

Only instead of $54 million in new money being spent on vouchers, the total cost is expected to exceed $300 million.

Started in 2011 under former Gov. Mitch Daniels as an avenue to help low-income students escape failing public schools, the voucher program has changed dramatically in the last decade. While it has helped thousands of families choose their preferred school, the cost is projected to grow 263 percent in just five years. This expansion is predicted to force public school districts to either make severe cuts or ask taxpayers for more money through public referendums.

This year, Tennessee and Texas have joined the states on the school voucher crazy train. Missouri is not there yet - and perhaps will continue to hold off on a rapid expansion of a program that both costs lots of money and produces little in the way of improved student outcomes.

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