Utah ready to adopt nation’s first universal school-voucher program

Arizona should pay close attention to what’s happening in Utah, where the nation’s first universal school-voucher program is about to be offered as an alternative to the usual one-size-fits-all government school system.

After years of failure, Utah’s school-voucher proponents finally have succeeded in getting the state Legislature to approve a plan, and Gov. John Huntsman Jr. quietly signed the bill into law Tuesday. The “Parent Choice in Education Act” will provide every Utah parent with school-age children a voucher worth from $500 to $3,000 based on family income, redeemable at any eligible private school.

Apparently to placate those who fiercely resist students fleeing to private schools, for each student who leaves the public system with a voucher, public schools will receive the difference between what the voucher pays and the $5,500 the state now spends per child. By comparison, Arizona spend an average of $7,720 to $8,500 per student each year, depending on who makes the calculation.

In effect, Utah public schools will be paid a minimum of $1,500 for every student they lose. That’s $1,500 for each child they don’t teach, every year for five years.

It’s not an ideal situation, but it’s a dramatic step away from the closed system monopoly public schools have enjoyed. The Utah legislation is significant because every student is eligible for a voucher. Most importantly, however, parents who desire their children to be taught in private schools now can make that happen with the help of some of the taxes they’ve been paying into the public system for years.

We would prefer to see parents allowed to take all of their own tax money and buy whatever education they deem best for their children without any strings attached. However, when government deigns to give people back their own money, it can be counted on to attach numerous conditions. Indeed, the Utah legislation provides for so-called accountability standards, which appear to impose on private schools requirements for teachers and accounting procedures.

Nevertheless, the Utah universal voucher plan signals a new swing of the pendulum away from taxfunded public school monopolies to a more healthy, market-driven system in which parents reclaim their right to have their children educated where and by whom they choose, without having to pay double for the privilege.

Teachers’ unions and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano adamantly oppose vouchers out of fear that the public education system will be eviscerated and jobs threatened. But where more limited voucher plans have been in place such as Milwaukee, there is little perceivable injury to the public system and even some improvement spurred on by the new private competition.

The debate over vouchers and public schools usually centers on money gained or lost, or allegations of improved or degraded education. Ideally, we would like to see this issue revolve not around money or even some arbitrary assessment of the “quality” of public versus private instruction.

Ideally, this issue should be one of freedom of choice. Parents, not the state, should be the ones to determine where and how their children are educated, irrespective of who thinks the quality of education meets some arbitrary standard. The Utah voucher plan expressly recognizes this, declaring: “(P)arents are presumed best informed to make decisions for their children, including the educational setting that will best serve their children’s interests and educational needs.”

Implicit in this is the idea that the money parents pay in taxes for education should attach to their children, not to public schools or to public school teachers.

A decade ago, Arizona was the national model in the school choice movement with the expansion of charter schools, the creation of personal income tax credits and funding for small voucher programs targeting narrow groups of students in special categories. But such innovation has been largely stifled in recent years. Now, our neighbor clearly has moved out ahead of us.

With Napolitano unlikely to accept universal vouchers anytime soon, we have the opportunity to watch Utah demonstrate how effective placing our trust in parents can be.