What Amendment 2 won’t do, opponents ignore

By Jim Waters

The best prospect for education choice to move forward in Kentucky is if what Amendment 2 doesn’t do and opponents won’t acknowledge are top of mind for voters.

Even though Amendment 2 doesn’t set up any school choice program, opponents call it “the voucher amendment.” They use shoddy research, exaggerated claims and pure fearmongering by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy (KyCEP) to support their claims that school-choice programs will damage the commonwealth’s budget and its public education system.

Passing the amendment doesn’t set up any school choice policy. It simply clarifies that Kentucky’s Constitution doesn’t prohibit lawmakers from funding school choice programs in the future. However, acknowledging the true character of Amendment 2 doesn’t fit opponents’ predetermined stance. Denying parents the same opportunities available to families in most other states must be accomplished at all costs – even if that means seriously exaggerating the price tags and ignoring the success of school choice programs nationwide.

A KyCEP report released this summer claimed a robust school choice program would break Kentucky’s bank with a $700 million price tag.

The cost estimates are based on an assumption that all 98,000 students currently attending a nonpublic school in Kentucky would receive a voucher. That’s way out of line with reality. John Garen, Ph.D., former chair of the University of Kentucky’s economics department, found KyCEP’s approach “exaggerates the fiscal cost of potential school choice programs by assuming 100% eligibility and 100% participation. The first is sometimes true; the second has never been.”

As Garen notes in his Bluegrass Institute policy brief, “Fiscal Effects of School Choice: Doomsday Speculation Versus Reality,” rarely do even well-established programs enroll more than 6% of eligible families.

Such research shenanigans diminish the credibility of KyCEP’s approach, removing any sense of objectivity while signaling to reasonable Kentuckians – including their legislators – that the conclusions reached through such exaggerations cannot be taken seriously and should not guide decisions affecting Kentucky’s families for generations to come.

The KyCEP’s credibility takes another hit by ignoring savings produced by school choice programs nationwide and their positive impact on students’ academic performance.

In his own simulation, which uses actual information from other school choice states, Garen offers a far more reasonable estimate of a program’s impact in Kentucky. He calculates that a $7,000 Education Savings Account or voucher used by 20% of Kentucky’s private and homeschool students – still a higher rate of use than most programs experience – would net $116 million in savings for state taxpayers.

Garen arrived at this calculation by coupling the cost of vouchers received by non-public school students with a reasonable estimate of the savings realized for each student using a $7,000  ESA or voucher, the cost of which is much lower than the $20,000 Kentucky’s school districts receive for each student enrolled in their schools.

“Savings” and “success” can’t be found in cynical opponents’ consideration. Instead, they try to make the case that growing school choice programs in other states are bankrupting state budgets.

Those claims have backfired. Arizona’s own Department of Education recently announced it was in the black at the end of the state’s fiscal year. While Arizona did have an overall deficit, that state’s education budget wasn’t the cause. In fact – and ironic in light of school choice opponents’ unsubstantiated rush to deem school choice a fiscal failure – it’s the education budget that helped shrink the size of Arizona’s shortfall.

Even the KyCEP report acknowledges “rapidly growing programs in Arizona, Indiana, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin,” which begs the question: Why are such alternatives growing in popularity if such options aren’t welcomed by parents, needed by families and setting kids up for success?

Recent studies show the positive impact of school choice policies on students’ learning in traditional public schools. For instance, in the 1990s, Florida’s public schools scored lower than the national average – and below or near Kentucky – on the “Nation’s Report Card,” but now has become a leader in academic results. This is all happening with public schools in a state where nearly 500,000 students participate in funded school choice programs that offer them a better education and a brighter future.

Yet antagonists don’t even want to have a discussion about how such policies could positively impact Kentucky, despite the fact that a majority of our public school students are not proficient in math and reading. They disregard the benefits, savings and general positive impact of other states’ school choice programs – something, however, that will likely be hard for voters to ignore.

Jim Waters is president of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. Read previous columns at www.bipps.org. Reach him at jwaters@freedomkentucky.com and @bipps on Twitter.