SC - Issue Essay: Vouchers

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The Argument For... Contributed By Gordon Jones [Click here to learn about Gordon and our other contributors] My reasons for supporting Referendum #1 fall into four areas: 1. A philosophic bias in favor of freedom. In general, I think the free choices of individuals in markets produce better results than decisions made in the political system. I believe that the competition that comes with choice produces better results all around. The research seems to bear out that judgment. Where school choice has been tried, not only do those opting for private schools do better in school, but the students remaining in the public schools also do better. The U.S. Postal Service has vastly improved its service under (fairly limited) competition; no reasons schools shouldn’t do as well. Of course for most choices I do not advocate government subsidies for private choice. But where a decision (to educate all children) has been made societally, the mechanisms used to implement that choice should be as market-oriented and free as possible. 2. The question of an efficient delivery system to attain a societal goal brings up the question of costs. Utah faces a 30 percent increase in the number of K-12 children over the next 10 years. Utah already has the lowest per-pupil expenditures in the nation, and the highest pupil-teacher ratios. Those numbers will worsen inexorably unless we try something different. On average, Utah spends $7,500 per K-12 pupil per year. The average cost of an education voucher is anticipated to be $2,000. If one can purchase $7,500 in savings with the investment of $2,000, that is a deal one should take. Anticipating a couple of objections here, let me point out that since we are talking about future growth, the “fixed costs” argument does not apply. (In truth, it never did apply; the growing areas of, say, southwest Salt Lake County have been “draining” students from east-side schools for generations, and taking full funding with them. Charter schools “drain” students from traditional schools in the same geographic area, taking less than full funding but almost twice what vouchers will take. The schools on the east side and where charters exist have managed to make the adjustments just fine.) Another objection is that $2,000 (or even the maximum voucher of $3,000) will not cover private school tuition, so the economically-disadvantaged won’t be helped. The average private school tuition in Utah is $4,000, so $3,000 will certainly help, and it will completely cover tuition in many private schools, particularly the schools that exist in lower-income areas. Here are some numbers of interest: Total annual education spending in Utah clocks in at around $3.5 billion dollars. First-year cost of the voucher program is estimated at $9 million. Fully phased-in (after 13 years) annual cost of the voucher program is estimated (by voucher opponents) at about $70 million, which would mean that 35,000 students were taking advantage of it (out of a school-age population then of something in excess of 650,000), saving the taxpayers $262.5 million, for a net savings of about $190 million a year. True, some of those 35,000 would be students whose parents would have sent them to private school anyway, which reduces the net savings somewhat. Total private school enrollment today is around 15,000. That number will also grow, so let’s use a number of 20,000 private school students 13 years from now. If we were to subtract out that 20,000 and project a diversion of only 15,000 students as a result of the voucher program, the savings would still be $112.5 million, or a net $42.5 million per year. Sidebar: My recollection is that Utah has about 20,000 teachers. Those annual savings could mean more than $2,000 a year to those teachers. Alternatively, you could take the savings and hire 1,400 new teachers, reducing class sizes from 25 to 23. Per pupil expenditures would go up by $65. We’d still be last, nationally, but we’d be better off than we are now. End Sidebar. No doubt there will be some wealthy families that will take the $500 voucher to reduce the cost of Waterford from $13,000 a year to $12,500. Another sidebar: The argument is often made that this program will take from the poor and give to the rich, but that is obvious nonsense. The poor don’t pay taxes, particularly if they have children. The rich are already paying far more in taxes than they are ever going to be able to recoup with a $500 voucher. The program might take from the childless rich and give to the fecund rich, but the current system already does that. End sidebar. Far more numerous will be those stuck in the worst schools on the west side, who will be able to take a voucher of $3,000 and use it at a private school, increasing their range of choice and saving the rest of us money. 3. Those are the people at whom this program is aimed, those without the resources to exercise choice today. After all, if one is a millionaire, one can already send one’s children to private school if one wants to. But if one is trapped by economic status in an area of failing schools, one has few options. And the persisting gap between majority and minority achievement rates is one of the most glaring failings of the public schools. That gap would be worse were it not for a dropout rate that also impacts most heavily those of limited income. The appeal of school choice is driving leadership at the national level to the minority community. Leading voucher proponents have included Polly Williams, Floyd Flake and Bernice Gates, leaders in their minority communities, and now the irreplaceable Howard Fuller, with his Black Alliance for Educational Opportunity. In years past, many “liberals” recognized the advantages of school choice for minorities. Hubert Humphrey said “I favor the creation of a tax system where parents would be able to receive a tax credit when their children attend approved private schools.” Pat Moynihan: “I do not think that the prospect of change in this area [education] is enhanced by the abandonment of pluralism and choice as liberal ideas and liberal values. If that happens it will present immense problems for a person such as myself who was deeply involved in this issue long before it was either conservative or liberal. And if it prevails only as a conservative cause, it will have been a great failure of American liberalism not to have seen the essentially liberal nature of this pluralist proposition.” Cleveland Mayor Michael R. White (who is black, BTW): “We’ve got to stop having a knee-jerk opposition to school vouchers and charter schools. . . . For all the African-American officials that have come out against vouchers, you will never find my name.” Robert B. Reich: “The only way to begin to decouple poor kids from lousy schools is to give poor kids additional resources, along with vouchers enabling them and their parents to choose how to use them.” The Salt Lake Tribune supported school choice until a couple of years ago: “One way to [stop UEA bullying] would be to offer Utahns educational choice. Let state education subsidies accompany each child to whatever school the child happens to attend, regardless of whether that school is public, private or parochial. “This way, UEA members will be focused on improving the schools in which they teach in order to keep children in them. This way, whatever resources come their way will be based on how well they teach, not their ability to bully.” Democrats in Utah often argue that they are unfairly stigmatized as “liberal.” Here’s a chance for them to use a truly “liberal” issue to illustrate their case. But though Bill Orton favored school choice when he ran for governor, not a single Democrat in the legislature supported it (including Duane Bourdeaux, who sent his children to private school). But aren’t private schools likely to be segregated? How can minority leaders and parents support that? It would be hard to find schools more segregated than Utah’s, but studies nationwide indicate that private schools are in fact more integrated, and that the behavior of their students is less racially-motivated. That is, they voluntarily mix more in lunch rooms and at recess. And this might be a good time to address the “creaming” argument, that private schools will siphon off the best students, leaving the “dregs” for the public schools. After all, the public schools have to take everyone, and private schools can pick and choose. Again, the facts don’t bear out this fear. While there are no doubt some “exclusive” private schools, private schools as a whole have a more diverse student body on any metric one could care to name, from race to economics to physical and mental handicaps and behavioral problems. The public school system already contracts with a number of private schools to educate students with certain mental and physical handicaps, and with certain behavioral problems. These arrangements constitute, by the way, a “voucher” program, just as the Carson Smith Scholarship program does. Voucher opponents try to have this “creaming” argument both ways. Harvard researcher Caroline Hoxby has found that when choice is increased, academic performance goes up both for the students moving from public to private schools and for the students who remain in the public schools. Since these are aggregate numbers, she notes, some might try to argue (some in fact have) that the reason public school scores go up is not because the public schools improve, but because the worst students take advantage of choice and leave, causing the average of the remaining students to jump. Hoxby somewhat dryly notes that critics can make this “anti-creaming” argument if they want to. 4. Social tensions. My fourth reason for supporting school choice is really a derivative of the first: my belief that markets avoid social tensions in ways that politics cannot. Politics is a zero-sum game. When a decision is made politically, one side wins and one side loses. In markets, both sides win. Translating that idea to education, consider “Investigations Math,” as implemented in Alpine School District. Some parents swear by it, others swear at it. But when the decision is made politically, one is either going to have it or not have it, and one side is going to win and the other side is going to lose. The bitterness of the battle has been prominently on display in recent years. With school choice, both sets of parents can win. Those that want Investigations Math can have it; those that want Saxon math can have that. Tensions are lowered and civility can prevail. The range of tension-inducing subjects is large (and growing) and frankly, I see school choice as the only way to avoid broad unrest and increasingly bitter political battles. Some of these are subject matter-related, such as mathematics and reading instruction methods; others are sex education, creationism v. evolution, drivers’ ed, the presence or absence of music (and whose music—John Cage or Mozart?) and the arts (and which arts—Vagina Monologues or Mark Twain Tonight?), vending machines and campus demonstrations. * * * * * In one sense, the majority of Utahns have had the best of both worlds for a long time. Education has been provided at taxpayer expense, and yet it has essentially been delivered by a relatively homogeneous school system closely mirroring the dominant socio-religious culture. That is less true today, and in my opinion less true than most members of that dominant socio-religious culture think. In the final analysis, school vouchers are likely to have less of an impact than either side imagines. Right now, fewer than three percent of Utah’s school children are in private schools. The national average is 13 percent. No matter what happens, for the foreseeable future 90-plus percent of our children are going to be in the public schools. If we can use vouchers to effect some modest savings, and at the same time introduce some innovation through competition, it seems to me that we should do so, even if there is no immediate, measurable benefit to the vast majority of us. For the children of the less fortunate, this is not a small matter. Scroll Down for Rebuttal		The Argument Against... Contributed By Craig Johnson [Click here to learn about Craig and our other contributors] On November 6^th, Utah voters will decide whether to put their stamp of approval on a flawed voucher bill or to send it back to the legislature. Some say “just give it a try,” which begs the reply “have they actually read the bill?" You’ve seen the ads and heard the soundbites. But you’re not here for soundbites. The fact that you are reading this article – along with my opponent’s remarks – is evidence that you care enough to thoughtfully consider this issue. I applaud you for this and thank Nick Ramond for creating a site that provides this opportunity. Aside from the philosophical arguments pro and con, in which legitimate and credible points from good folks are raised on both sides, the bill itself is what we’re actually voting on. And the bill itself has problems – serious problems. As more voters become educated on the actual bill, flagging support has further dwindled with voters rejecting the bill by a nearly two-to-one margin, according to the latest Dan Jones/Deseret News poll. Listed below are three of the reasons voters find the bill so troubling: The bill provides far too little accountability for taxpayer funds In other voucher programs such as those in Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin, accountability has been an Achilles’ heel. Lack of accountability has left legislators and other public officials in these states to bemoan the greed, fraud, waste, and abuse that have accompanied their state’s voucher programs. They’ve recognized, only too late, that once a bad precedent is established the resulting problems are extremely difficult to repair. A quick Google search yields many troubling examples. As recently as yesterday (10/17), two Florida private voucher school owners were convicted of swindling over $200,000 from state and federal programs, including purchasing a Hummer and another car for themselves using voucher funds. Given the experiences in other states, it would stand to reason that a Utah bill would seek to prevent these abuses. Unfortunately, just the opposite is true. The Utah bill has even fewer financial controls, curriculum requirements, teaching and licensure requirements, and accreditation requirements than these other flawed programs. And, unlike other states, the Utah bill is universal, encompassing the entire state regardless of income, NCLB status, or special needs. Instead of addressing the lack of accountability, the Utah bill would make matters worse. As a member of a state charter school committee (charters are free, public schools of choice), I am keenly aware of the recent governance and fiscal problems with a few of the charters around the state. Fortunately, these problems are addressable by state charter school officials. Like all public schools, Utah charter schools are subject to state open meeting laws and to sunshine laws such as GRAMA. Public neighborhood and charter schools are also required to post 3^rd-party audits each year and those audits are freely available for public review. Spending decisions are made under the purview of a watchful public eye. But this is not the case for private voucher schools. They can operate in a cloud of secrecy. Most of the folks I talk to are shocked to discover that the private voucher schools that would receive hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars would have no such transparency under this bill. While it is certainly true that a dissatisfied parent can leave the private voucher school and take their business elsewhere, this single measure of accountability is only part of the equation. Parents and taxpayers expect proper controls of public dollars to be established. The failure of the bill to enforce even basic minimum standards for the proper use of funds is an almost certain guarantee to create wealth where it’s not deserved and victims where it could have been avoided. The good judgment of parents to leave a bad-fit school will not prevent fraud and abuse of public funds. Those controls rest with our elected officials and public auditors. And while many schools would act appropriately, this alone is not a sufficient reason to pass legislation that hands abusers a blank check on the public’s nickel. Utah has the ignominious reputation as the fraud capital of the United States. Passing a voucher bill with even fewer protections than other states is just a really bad idea! For a quick summary of the differences in accountability between public schools and private voucher schools, please review the link below: http://www.utahnsforpublicschools.org/facts/public_vs_private.php While proponents will seek in their upcoming newsletters to dismiss these concerns as “Halloween scare tactics,” these problems are real. They’re happening now in other states and the Utah bill would set the scene for an even larger mess. *************** The bill costs far more than it saves This is a simple fact and proponents’ claims to the contrary are either incomplete or are based on grossly overblown speculations of the number of students who might switch to private schools. To bring some sense into the discussion of costs vs. savings, I would recommend reviewing the impartial analysis of Referendum 1. This analysis, conducted by the Lieutenant Governor’s office in partnership with Legislative Fiscal Analysts (the folks who assess the financial impact of legislation), concludes that the voucher bill will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The impartial analysis is required by law to be impartial. Either side may challenge the language or the conclusions. Neither side did. Yet this hasn’t stopped voucher proponents from attempting to discredit the impartial analysis. Paul Mero of the Sutherland Institute went so far as to call for the elimination of fiscal analyses for referenda and ballot initiatives. Some important details of the impartial analysis can be found in the official voter information guide. In the guide, you can see, for instance, that in the 13^th year of the program the estimated cost is $71 million while the savings estimates range from $11-$28 million. This yields a NET COST to taxpayers in the 13^th year of $43-$60 million. Over the course of the 13-year phase in, the total net cost to taxpayers for the program (total costs - total savings) is estimated at $164-$334 million. The graph below shows the costs and savings of the program as it is phased in. The escalation of costs results primarily from paying vouchers to an increasing number of private school students who never intended to go to public schools in the first place. (Source of data – Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst) The “red line” of the graph demonstrates the costs of the program. The “green line” represents the best possible cost savings (it assumes no fixed costs for the switchers), while the “black line” represents the lowest possible savings (it counts only WPU expenditures). While proponents will claim that these are simply “estimates” (so how can we be sure of anything, etc.), such a line of thinking is unwise. To achieve even a break-even on the bill, the Legislative Fiscal Analyst would have to be off by hundreds of millions of dollars. This is unlikely. These folks analyze hundreds of bills per year – they’re pretty good at what they do. If you’ve seen the “cookie stacking” ads from the pro-voucher side, you may wonder how this all plays into the debate. Simply put, the savings mentioned in the ads are represented in the “green line” of the graph. But, as you can see, this is just one piece of the overall picture. Some pro-voucher proponents claim that the bill would save as much as 1.8 billion dollars. This is terribly misleading. These numbers refer to the cost of educating all current and future private school students over the next 13 years should they all suddenly decide to attend public schools. Closing down all of the private schools and absorbing those students into public schools is a silly notion and is not what’s on the ballot. It is a red herring argument. Proponents are expecting voters to count the difference in what we would have spent on all private school students vs. the cost of vouchers as some sort of savings. But this cannot be, for we are currently spending $0 to educate students who always intended to go to private schools. Fact is, paying vouchers to such students represents a new cost to taxpayers. To provide clarity, the impartial analysis demonstrates the complete picture of costs vs. savings. The bottom line – over the course of the 13-year phase-in, this bill demands an increasing amount of taxpayer funds to pay vouchers to students who never intended to go to public schools. This creates neither competition nor savings. Over the phase-in, the bill would result in a new, unnecessary private school funding mechanism, paid for by taxpayers from state sales tax revenue, to the tune of $164-$334 million. Proponents may choose to support vouchers for other reasons but the impartial analysis makes it clear that taxpayer savings is a false argument. ************* The bill is an empty promise for most low and middle-income families According to official state figures, the average tuition for one year of K-12 private education is just over $8,000. This is very different from the $4,000-$4,250 number used by pro-voucher proponents. To arrive at the smaller numbers, you must exclude ALL private high schools (proponents only count K-8), then remove the 6 or 8 most expensive K-8 schools (depending on who is doing the calculations) and finish by calculating the capacity-weighted median of the remainder. In their ads and charts, proponents then contrast this massaged number against a fully burdened $7500 cost of public education, K-12, all schools included, whether special ed or breezy mainstream, whether urban or rural, whether brand new or fully paid for. It’s an inaccurate and misleading comparison. Truth is, official state figures show that public schools are less expensive than private schools. This stands to reason, given the economies of scale we enjoy with public education. Private school attendance at a quality school is expensive. Most low and middle-income families, even with a voucher, would not be able to afford a quality private school. The graduated amount of the voucher depending on income ($500 to the wealthy and up to $3000 for those who qualify for free or reduced lunch) does help level the playing field somewhat. But the fact remains, under this bill, that the probability that a wealthy Utah family who can already afford private school will use a voucher is far greater than it is for a low or middle-income family. With increased access comes increased usage; simply put, those with greater discretionary incomes would use vouchers far more than would those with lower incomes. The exceptions – those low and middle-income families who might benefit from a sound, accountable voucher program – are the victims in the crossfire of this bad bill. Consider private initiatives such as the admirable efforts of Children First Utah, a non-profit organization offering private school scholarships. These groups serve a legitimate purpose – to offset expensive private school tuition for low-income families. Legislators would have been wise to pattern the voucher bill after the qualification requirements of Children First Utah. CFU enforces a strict income cap, based on family size, to qualify students for their program. But with the voucher bill, even millionaires qualify for a $500 voucher. There is no cap. Strange but true. If the bill were truly about helping those who couldn’t afford private school, it wouldn’t be handing out vouchers to those who can already easily afford it. When tuition, fees, books, supplies, transportation, and lunches are factored in, the final bill for one year of education at a quality private school remains out of reach for far too many low or middle-income families, even with a graduated voucher. The bill fails in its lack of reach at the lower end and its overreach at the higher end. And to add to the irony, you may recall that vouchers would be paid for by state sales taxes. All of us, whether rich or poor, pay state sales tax. Such gives rise to a “Prince John” scenario (an inverse-progressive tax) – taking from the poor to pay for the rich. Proponents try to cover this up, too, saying that poor folks don’t pay taxes. But we all pay sales tax – the would-be source of voucher funding as specified in this bill. On a personal note, I find it curious that the same legislative forces pushing this expensive voucher program couldn’t come up with $2 million for preventive care for elderly, blind, and disabled Utahns. The Utah voucher bill is the only such program in the history of the United States without an income cap. It hands out money to those who don’t need it and is an empty promise for too many Utah families. *************** On a final note, I’d like to emphasize that although this bill has serious problems, the vast majority of Utahns support the mainstream philosophical arguments of both sides. This bodes well for our future. I applaud the good people who support excellence in education. Competition, market involvement, and offering a range of options are noble and important values that have helped make America great. Other ideas, such as cooperation, the social contract, and opportunity for all are also cherished values in our society. It would be a shame for this bad bill to cause greater divisions of good people on both sides. While I value the good work and good ideas behind the intent of the bill, the bill itself does not serve the best interests of Utah families. The bill must be rejected. And I believe it will. I urge you to vote AGAINST Referendum 1. Let’s vote down this bad bill, and, together, work toward real solutions and real reforms to improve the educational opportunities for all of Utah’s schoolchildren.
A Rebuttal... From Craig Johnson [Click here to learn about Craig and our other contributors] My opponent’s article highlights his personal economic preferences and includes some social commentary. It’s an interesting read and I commend my opponent for a well-written philosophical piece. But it has little to do with the bill we’re about to vote on. As citizen-legislators, our job is to consider the bill before us and to make an informed decision based on facts. My opponent speculates on the costs vs. savings of the bill in wild opposition to the impartial analysis as performed by the Legislative Fiscal Analyst. I leave you to judge which numbers are unbiased. In my article, I presented three grave flaws in the bill – poor accountability, unnecessary high cost, and failure to help most low and middle-income families. Any one of these flaws is sufficient grounds to reject the bill. Ironically, however, the bill also fails to support the market forces arguments raised by my opponent. Let’s review: As the impartial analysis indicates, the skyrocketing costs of the Utah bill as it is phased in would come from paying vouchers to those who never intended to go to public schools in the first place. Such choices are pre-determined. And as any economist will tell you, subsidizing pre-determined choices does not create competitive pressure since it does not alter any outcomes. These parents have already made up their minds to send their children to private schools. There is no point in handing out vouchers to them since it does nothing to influence other schools to improve. We would be spending hundreds of millions of dollars in new, unnecessary costs and receiving no competitive benefits whatsoever in return. This makes no sense. But what about the switchers, proponents ask? Let’s begin with those switchers who would have switched anyway without a voucher. Again, we would be paying out vouchers for no reason. As it stands now, any competitive pressure induced by their departure is already realized. With vouchers, this market force doesn’t change. The only thing that’s different is that we would be spending money – millions of taxpayer dollars – unnecessarily. So, that leaves us with the switchers who would leave because of the voucher. We’ve already spent hundreds of millions of dollars just getting to the point where we might see some competitive forces at work. Was it worth it? Do public schools actually improve because of vouchers? Not really. Multiple studies show that vouchers do not make public schools better. In the New Zealand program, for example, some poorly performing schools simply became worse as they ended up with larger concentrations of difficult-to-teach students. Lawmakers, committed to seeing market forces work, ignored these schools for years. But it didn’t work and in the end they had to intercede and invest in these schools. Returning to our scenario - remember, we would have spent hundreds of millions of dollars needlessly paying for predetermined choices just to get to the point where a few switchers might exert some competitive pressure. In the bill’s impartial analysis, given the price elasticity of demand, the Legislative Fiscal Analyst determined that about 3 students per school per year might switch because of the voucher. This small switch rate is completely insufficient to force whatever improvements proponents claim the bill will generate. So this leaves proponents with only one remaining scenario to talk about – more switchers! With the flaws in the bill becoming clear and with the cost vs. savings argument debunked, we’re now starting to see the “more switchers” argument surface. Senator Bramble recently said: “One way to avoid higher income and property taxes is to offer parents the option to have their children move into the private sector and take some pressure off our public schools. That's what the voucher plan is all about.” (Emphasis added) For the bill to become effective we must somehow greatly increase the number of switchers far in excess of the impartial analysis. Proponents are now making the case that we must increase the switch rate; they’ve even raised the specter of tax increases if we don’t. Ironically, I’ve watched a couple of pro-voucher friends in the blogosphere challenge the Legislative Fiscal Analyst’s findings and try to improve upon the numbers. The result – they have switched their positions and are now voting against the bill. For the sake of argument, though, let’s discuss how this might happen. How do we convince MORE families to LEAVE the public schools? If motivating more families to LEAVE the schools is necessary for the bill to become effective, what does this mean for our public schools? Remember - it took hundreds of millions of dollars just to get to the point where we must now entice thousands upon thousands of additional public school students beyond the impartial numbers to LEAVE our public schools just to recoup the opportunity costs so the bill might exert market forces so it might create some competitive pressure so our schools might improve in spite of studies showing that this hasn’t worked when it’s been tried before. Does this sound like a winning strategy? But even if all of that does happen, just where does that leave the overwhelming majority of students who remain in our public schools? If the goal is to convince students to LEAVE the public schools, then what possible motivation do these lawmakers have to improve our public schools? If we improve our schools, we reduce demand to leave. If we reduce demand to leave, we reduce the switch rate. If we reduce the switch rate, the bill becomes an expensive failure. Why on this green earth would we set up a scenario in which the success of one program is based on the failure of another? Why would we sacrifice the quality of the public schools where 96% of our children attend just to make them SO BAD that people would WANT to leave, just so we can say this bill was not a failure? This bill makes no sense! Let’s vote it down and work together to craft real solutions.		A Rebuttal... From Gordon Jones [Click here to learn about Gordon and our other contributors] “Jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam today.” -Lewis Carroll It is nice to know that there is some common ground. I appreciate Craig’s implication (though he doesn’t really say it) that those on my side of the debate “support excellence in education.” And he really does say nice things about Children First Utah, the private organization that generates scholarships for low-income students. But permit me to doubt that Craig is as positive about school choice as he claims here. I think if he really believed that “Competition, market involvement, and offering a range of options are noble and important values....” he (and the organizations with which he is associated) would at some point over the last seven years have supported some of the other efforts that have been made to provide school choice in Utah. Instead, he opposes parental choice through vouchers in ANY form. At the end of his essay he asks us to “vote down this bad bill” and “work toward real solutions and real reforms to improve the educational opportunities for all of Utah’s schoolchildren.” I’m interested to know what these “real reforms” will consist of. Will they include merit pay for teachers? Will they include alternative certification? I’m willing to bet that they will not include tuition tax credits or vouchers that would put parents back in charge of the education of their children. Will they be “jam today”? I’m dubious. This bill, says Craig, is flawed. Is there, then, a parental choice bill anywhere enacted or proposed in the United States that he could support? I have been a drafter of legislation for 30 years, and I recognize that perfection is elusive the first time. One enacts a bill whose general aims one supports, and one monitors its implementation and corrects it as necessary. One does not simply oppose it as the UEA and the rest of the education Establishment did. When Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, the National Education Association did not oppose it, and now seeks to improve it during its reauthorization process. Conceivable including millionaires is a flaw in the bill. I have argued, and still do, that the beneficiaries of this bill will not be the millionaires, who can already afford private schools for their offspring, or who live in areas with excellent schools anyway. The beneficiaries will be low-income parents struggling to improve the lives of their children. But there certainly is a marginal benefit to the millionaire, who can qualify for a $500 voucher. Let’s correct that next February. If we do, will Craig support the bill? Craig says that Children First Utah serves “a legitimate purpose—to offset expensive private school tuition for low-income families,” and he is right, which is why I have supported CFU from its inception. But CFU cannot meet the demand. So many low-income families apply for its scholarships (which are nothing more than vouchers, financed in part by the tax-deductibility of contributions) that it has to choose the lucky children by lottery. What other flaws does the bill have? Craig cites financial accountability, a strange charge, considering that no one has yet been able to figure out what happened to $24 million in textbook money the legislature appropriated to the public schools four years ago; or considering the years-long embezzlement of funds from at least two public schools in Utah that came to light last year. The fact is that private schools accepting vouchers will undergo yearly audits. That’s more than the public schools get. No, I’m afraid it’s “jam tomorrow and jam yesterday, but never jam today.” And the fundamental reason is an unwillingness to trust parents with the education of their children.