Maybe the question caught Dr. Lance Evans, Mississippi’s new superintendent of education, off-guard, because his response didn’t seem to fully grasp how public funding of private school education might work in this state.
On Monday, during the monthly meeting hosted by the Mississippi State University Stennis Institute of Government and the Capitol Press Corps, Evans said that if the state Legislature were to adopt some type of voucher system, it should also mandate that any private school that takes the money would have to follow the same rules and face the same accountability standards as the state’s public schools.
In particular, under Evans’ conditions, that would mean the private schools would have to accept any child wishing to enroll, regardless of learning disability or behavioral problem, plus they would have to subject all of their students, including those who didn’t receive vouchers, to state testing to gauge how much they are learning.
Though this opinion mirrors the grousing of some public schools about unfair comparisons with private schools, it also is outdated when it comes to vouchers.
In places such as Mississippi, where there is a constitutional prohibition against sending public money directly to private schools, proponents of school choice no longer talk about vouchers, except as a shorthand. Instead, what they propose are “education savings accounts,” public funds given to families to use for their children’s education however the families see fit. It might be for private school tuition, it might be for defraying the cost of public school districts who accept students from outside the district, or it might be used for books and other educational resources parents need to home-school their children. In other words, with education savings accounts, if private schools get any of this money, it comes from the families, not from the state.
In addition, Evans’ contention that any private school that benefits from state funding should have to give state assessment tests to all of its students would constitute serious government overreach. The taxpayers who pay for the education of all public school students have a right to know whether their investment is producing the desired results. When it comes to private schools, though, the only people who have that right to hold the schools accountable are those who are paying the tuition and other related costs, most often the parents.
This is not to be construed, though, as an endorsement of vouchers or education savings accounts. We remain uncomfortable with them except in limited circumstances, such as the small programs Mississippi has already established to give families more options for children with special needs, such as dyslexia or other learning disabilities. If Mississippi is going to expand this concept, though, to students without special needs, the program should be means-tested: that is, only those families who don’t earn enough to afford a private school education should be eligible.
We are suspicious of those who argue for school choice with no income limits. It sounds too often like a cover for what amounts to welfare for the well-to-do, giving them public money to offset an expense they have been handling for generations on their own.
These families already have complete freedom to choose where they send their children to school. They don’t need the taxpayers’ assistance to exercise that freedom.
