School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona's Budget.

[sl8]

https://www.propublica.org/article/arizona-school-vouchers-budget-meltdown

School Vouchers Were Supposed to Save Taxpayer Money. Instead They Blew a Massive Hole in Arizona’s Budget.

Arizona, the model for voucher programs across the country, has spent so much money paying private schoolers’ tuition that it’s now facing hundreds of millions in budget cuts to critical state programs and projects.

by Eli Hager
July 16, 6 a.m. EDT

In 2022, Arizona pioneered the largest school voucher program in the history of education. Under a new law, any parent in the state, no matter how affluent, could get a taxpayer-funded voucher worth up to tens of thousands of dollars to spend on private school tuition, extracurricular programs or homeschooling supplies.

In just the past two years, nearly a dozen states have enacted sweeping voucher programs similar to Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account system, with many using it as a model.

Yet in a lesson for these other states, Arizona’s voucher experiment has since precipitated a budget meltdown. The state this year faced a $1.4 billion budget shortfall, much of which was a result of the new voucher spending, according to the Grand Canyon Institute, a local nonpartisan fiscal and economic policy think tank. Last fiscal year alone, the price tag of universal vouchers in Arizona skyrocketed from an original official estimate of just under $65 million to roughly $332 million, the Grand Canyon analysis found; another $429 million in costs is expected this year.

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[moniss]

1. Also done with little accountability

for scholastic outcomes.

[Irish_Dem]

4. The voucher program has nothing to do with academic excellence at all.

It is pure Christian indoctrination of children.

[moniss]

6. Of course and for years in Wisconsin we asked for

the same accountability as public schools and we got blasted about being "down on religious schools" and being "against people of faith". They did some of the same things with Day Care. Back in the '90's the right wing/religious cabal in Wisconsin pushed for state funds for Day Care Centers to be opened up. The money was supposed to go to churches etc. for them to use their buildings to provide a good thing for the community. Supposed to be no preaching/indoctrination etc. It turned into a nightmare because it turned out that some crooked people were going and getting their "minister's" credentials through those on-line scams where you send a few bucks and they send you a piece of paper looking like your high school diploma. Some were even serial numbered like they were some kind of registry.

Turned out that they would rent a shambolic place and hang a cross on the door and call it a church. So now they had their "papers" and an address. They would get approved and they were supposed to hire licensed day care workers. But they found that some of these places were firetraps with just some dirty cribs and blankets on the floor all being tended by people just hired off the street with no training/licensing. When they tried to pull funding the screams started about "picking on the churches".

Also some of the ones that were better run as far as cleanliness and staff had all kinds of indoctrination hanging on the walls. I have zero problem with people of faith as long as they make it theirs and not try to make it mine.

[Irish_Dem]

8. If you hold a cross in your hand you can get away with anything.

[moniss]

10. Well put and

when one does deep reading about the mission years in the West and up in Canada it is horrific. Even now the Catholic Church is not fully come clean about things and when a person reads about the Magdalene Laundries for example it is sickening. Let alone the blessing the main religions gave to colonialism. Basically a policy that can be stated thusly, "If you see it and want it then take it. If someone else has it then kill or subjugate them and take it."

[hatrack]

7. And grift - don't forget grift that is THE core Republican "value".

.

[Irish_Dem]

9. The GOP is a party of sociopaths.

Criminals who grift.

[underpants]

2. No means testing and buying homeschooling supplies

🙄

[Irish_Dem]

3. Let's spend most of our tax money on christian indoctrination of children.

[BoRaGard]

5. That's what you get for swallowing G.O.P. propaganda

Turns out that the republican kristofascists were playing AZ voter for "suckers and losers."

That is their way

[no_hypocrisy]

11. And that was The Plan.

Bankrupt the state via paying the tuitions of private school students.

[Timeflyer]

12. Florida's budget will go the same way. But the privatizers are raking in that sweet public tax money.

[eppur_se_muova]

13. Of course they did. Parents pay only a fraction of the costs of their children's public education.

Giving out vouchers for the whole cost is stealing money from other taxpayers -- and in a lot of districts, small businesses pay a big share of those taxes, so you'd think small business owners would be vehemently opposed. Of course, any taxpayer w/out children in school is subsidizing those vouchers. Why can't people think these things through ?

[marybourg]

14. Quelle surprise!