The recently signed 2013-2015 budget, which expands Wisconsin’s school voucher program in an attempt to further privatize public education, will not improve the state’s school system. Instead of embracing policies that slowly privatize and weaken education, Walker and the Legislature need to enact policies that preserve and improve our public educational system, like Oregon’s recently enacted plan for a graduate tax.
For more than two decades, Republicans have led a movement in Wisconsin to slowly privatize the public education system.
Wisconsin’s school voucher program was created in 1990. This original program was quite limited in scope and, in retrospect, quite modest. Only pupils in Milwaukee from low income families were eligible for school vouchers. Also, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau, “Private schools in the [original school voucher] program were required to be nonsectarian.”
Yet, by 1995, the school voucher program had been expanded and sectarian private schools were allowed to participate. This led to a massive increase in the number of students in the school voucher program attending private sectarian schools. Just last school year, approximately 21,000 of the 25,000 students participating in the school voucher program attended overtly sectarian private schools; many of these schools were also underperforming compared to their public school counterparts.
While the first versions of Wisconsin’s school voucher program placed caps on how many students could participate in the program and also required that the families of students in the program have a low income, the voucher program, by 2011, had no enrollment cap and the income limit was increased to 300 percent of the federal poverty level.
The 2013-15 budget transforms the program, which used to only cover a limited geographical area, into a statewide program-making Wisconsin the fourth state in the country with a statewide school voucher program. While only 500 new students can participate in the program during the first year (excluding students already in the voucher program) and 1,000 new students in subsequent years, nothing prevents the Legislature from removing the cap later – this already occurred with the original school voucher program.
As Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, said regarding voucher enrollment caps, “We are only one budget away from opening the flood gates. It’s grown every single budget. By going statewide you sort of legitimize the concept.” Unless Wisconsin Democrats can make political headway in 2014, there is no question that the statewide voucher program will have no enrollment caps; the only question is how soon the caps will be removed.
The new voucher program doesn’t just expand its geographical scope. According to the LaCrosse Tribune, it also “increases the maximum voucher amount from $6,442 next year to $7,210 in grades K-8 [and] $7,856 in high school.” A few years ago, the voucher program cost $150.9 million. PolitiFact reports that, including the new expansion, the cost of the voucher program “averages $192.5 million per year for the 2013-15 budget cycle.”
According to the Wisconsin State Journal, Walker’s new voucher program also allows Wisconsin taxpayers to claim a tax deduction for their children’s private school tuition of “up to $4,000 for elementary school tuition and up to $10,000 for high school tuition.” The new budget funds this provision at $30 million annually to help parents of the nearly 100,000 private school students pay for their children’s private education. Thus, at the price of approximately $222.5 million annually to the Wisconsin taxpayers, Walker and the Republican-controlled state Legislature have succeeded in further privatizing the public educational system by using taxpayer funds to subsidize private schools.
Instead of zealously pursuing the privatization of our public educational system and thus undermining it, our governor and state Legislature should be strengthening public education – like Oregon has by enacting its “Pay it Forward, Pay it Back” plan. Oregon’s plan is essentially a graduate tax. In a graduate tax, a student does not pay tuition at a state university. Upon graduation, under a graduate tax scheme, a student pays back a small percentage of annual earnings (usually 1-3 percent) to the university for a period of 20 years. A graduate tax ensures someone with limited means faces no barrier in pursuing a higher education.
The 2013-2015 budget takes another step toward privatizing public education in Wisconsin by expanding the school voucher program on a statewide basis and also by allowing taxpayers to claim a tax deduction on their children’s private school tuition. Instead of trying to privatize education, our state officials should be strengthening our public schools by enacting something like a graduate tax. This would allow every person in Wisconsin, even those with limited financial means, to obtain higher education.
Aaron Loudenslager ([email protected]) is a second year law student.
