By RICK SHUMATE | Arkansas Advocate
Gov. Sarah Sanders’ school vouchers program has taught us once again a self-evident lesson about human nature: Free money is popular.
For the upcoming school year, all parents in Arkansas qualify for about $6,800 in state subsidies for private school tuition or homeschool expenses, no matter how much money they make or the test results of the public schools their children attend. So not surprisingly, as of this writing, 45,500 applicants have stepped up to the trough, blowing through not only the $187 million legislators appropriated for the program in the state budget but another $90 million in reserve funds set aside just in case the appropriation ran out.
Arkansas Department of Education officials recently insisted to legislators that there will be enough money this year to hand out vouchers to every parent who qualifies, although the Arkansas Times did the math and made a compelling case that some parents are likely to be put on a waiting list.
Whether the money runs out this year or not, what’s clear is that the vouchers program, Sanders’ pet project, has become a voracious consumer of taxpayer dollars, with more than $374 million spent in the first three years — on a program that hasn’t, doesn’t, and won’t improve a single public school anywhere in Arkansas and which research shows will actually negatively affect educational outcomes for students who use it.
More than a few taxpayers might also be chagrined that voucher money has been used to subsidize enrichment activities for homeschool students that include horseback riding, ninja warrior training, cooking classes, and archery — activities that parents of public school students must pay for themselves. Or that vendors getting money from the program operate largely on an honor system when it comes to complying with program rules.
To their credit, Arkansas legislators didn’t set up the vouchers program as an entitlement with open-ending funding, which led to a budget meltdown in Arizona. Instead, they limited participation based on annual appropriations. When the money runs out, priority is given to students already in the program, and new students go on a waiting list.
Funding alternatives?
But with expenditures now approaching $300 million a year, the fiscal cliff caused by the vouchers program will soon force lawmakers to start making difficult choices.
They could pay for vouchers by raising taxes, clearly a nonstarter for the Republican supermajority. They could also keep costs in check by limiting the number of participants. However, telling parents no after promising them free money would create intolerable political pressures, given that the point of the program is to allow parents with ideological opposition to public schools to escape from them.
The third and most likely alternative: Find more money for vouchers by tapping into revenue growth or raiding existing programs in the state budget. Unless legislators discover a money tree growing on the Capitol grounds, they’ll have to prioritize vouchers over other things they might like to finance, including Sanders’ own often-stated desire to eliminate the state income tax.
And before legislators indulge the governor with hundreds of millions more dollars of voucher spending, they might want to more closely scrutinize how some of that money is being spent, as I did by filing a FOIA request for applications submitted by all 569 voucher vendors approved for the 2024-25 school year.
While voucher money handed out to parents of private school students mostly goes toward tuition, homeschool parents can use their vouchers with any vendor approved by the state.
Last fall, there was a public kerfuffle when a horseback riding stable in Fayetteville posted on Facebook that it was accepting voucher money. After the state’s own data showed just 44% of the voucher money given to homeschool parents went for education-related expenses, legislators limited voucher spending on extracurricular activities to 25% of the voucher amount, which is still about $1,700 a year.
Many of these vendors do offer educational services, including books, classroom materials, and tutoring, including specialized services for kids with learning disabilities. But the money is also being used for lessons in jiu jitsu and krav maga (an Israeli combat technique), musical training for aspiring rock stars, and specialized athletic training, in addition to the aforementioned horseback riding lessons, cooking classes, and ninja warrior instruction.
This is not to say that these vendors aren’t offering legitimate services, or that students aren’t benefiting. Dressage and ninja warrior training perhaps have their place. But why should the hardworking taxpayers of Arkansas be paying for any of this?
Parents certainly have the legal right to opt out of public schools and educate their kids themselves. But if they forsake the educational opportunities provided by law and financed by taxpayers, they should also assume the financial obligations that go with that decision, including paying for their kids’ extracurricular activities.
Vouchers instead create a perverse system that’s akin to going to a birthday party, turning up your nose at the cake on offer, and then asking the host to give you money to buy your own cake.
Vetting vendors
Equally troubling is the ease with which someone can become a vouchers vendor, which requires going online and responding to 18 questions. Many of the applications, when printed out, come to just three or four pages; once submitted, the review process by the Arkansas Department of Education takes just 10-15 days, which doesn’t leave much time for in-depth vetting before vendors start tapping into state funds.
Vendors also operate on an honor system. For example, they have to acknowledge, with their initials, that the services they provide meet program rules, but they are only required to “describe” the services, rather than provide detailed documentation of them. I found descriptions – in approved applications – that were as brief as a single sentence.
They must also acknowledge that they’ve done background checks on any employees who work directly with students, but the application does not require them to submit those background checks unless the education department asks to see them — one of the many scandals waiting to happen with this loose level of regulation.
Vanity projects
State school voucher programs have become a new political fad, vanity projects pushed by right-wing governors looking to create a legacy. But the legislators going along with these schemes are paying scant attention to the long-term financial implications, which loom ever larger in Arkansas.
At some point in the future, Sanders will ride off into the sunset; the legislators who shoved through her vouchers program in less than three weeks will drift away. But vouchers will remain — a giant maw gobbling up taxpayer dollars that will bedevil future governors and lawmakers, while doing precious little to improve educational outcomes.
Which brings up another self-evident lesson for us to relearn: Free money may be popular, but it isn’t actually free.