Education funding petition abandons public schools
By Maria Chapelle-Nadal
Guest Columnist
Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan recently announced the approval of an education funding petition seeking to amend the Missouri Constitution. The petition will be placed on the 2006 ballot for voter approval if it receives the number of valid signatures required for a proposed constitutional amendment.
This initiative is a big deal. If it were to pass, it would dramatically affect every school in the state of Missouri, and it would negatively impact many public schools in the state.
The petition seeks to amend the Missouri Constitution by allowing the use of public money for religious purposes and institutions; funding school vouchers at 100 percent for public and 75 percent for non-public students and allowing tax credits for school donations; and reducing the amount of lottery and gaming revenues available for public education by dividing those funds equally among public and non-public students.
While the initiative aims to change the dedicated minimum amount of state revenues designated for education from 25 percent to 33 percent, a substantial amount of such an increase would likely benefit private schools. Private schools would receive public money on top of the private funds that, in most cases, already adequately fund private schools.
This is not a measure that seeks to improve public schools. It is an initiative of abandonment – a right-wing initiative that essentially gives up on certain schools and communities.
The petition provides no clue as to the amounts and methods of distribution regarding the “scholarship certificates” that would be awarded “for all K-14 public school and K-14 non-public school students.” The only distinction made by the proposed amendment is that “100 percent of the amount of said scholarship certificate shall be distributed to public schools on behalf of parents or guardians choosing a public school education for their student, [while] 75 percent of the amount of said scholarship certificate shall be distributed through the parents or guardians on behalf of students choosing a non-public school.”
According to the proposed amendment, the “legislature shall annually determine and appropriate an amount to be provided for all” public and non-public school students. This would be an administrative nightmare. There is nothing in the proposed amendment providing guidance as to recommended amounts of the proposed scholarship certificates and whether scholarship amounts will be determined by need.
Proponents of school choice often make the politically expedient argument that such programs will help those in need, that such programs will help those parents who want to send their child to a private or “better” school but simply cannot afford it. If the supporters of the proposed constitutional amendment share similar points of view with the supporters of House Bill 639, introduced during the last legislative session, then I can safely imagine that the beneficiaries of the program will be composed mostly of middle- to upper-middle-class students.
HB 639 sought to initiate a tax credit program, whereby individuals and businesses could receive tax credits for making donations that would, for the most part, benefit private schools. As the advocates of HB 639 made clear last session, gaining favor with wealthier voters and providing a financial boon to private schools was apparently more important than an honest effort to improve public schools.
The proposed amendment also seeks to institute a tax credit program similar to the one proposed in H.B.639.
School choice proponents also typically argue that the threat of losing students provides an incentive for poorly performing schools to improve, while those students that do transfer to another school will inevitably improve educational performance. However, multiple studies have found no evidence that school choice programs either improve student performance or improve school performance among poorly performing schools.
The proposed amendment would also have a significant budgetary impact. The estimated state impact of the proposed amendment exceeds $3.5 billion annually.
Broad public support for school choice programs may be diminishing, especially in light of the decision made by the Florida State Supreme Court holding that school voucher programs are unconstitutional. Also, last year the U.S. Supreme Court held that states are not obligated to finance religious/private education.
While promoting competition between public schools may aid in improving education, providing state funds to private schools will only hurt certain schools and communities. We need to invest in communities, not private schools.
We could take the petition’s proposed increase in state revenues dedicated to public education and effectively use it to make an honest effort to improve public education. We could invest in teacher aide programs. Training individuals before they become teachers could be very helpful, as we would begin to increase the stock of qualified teachers, making public school class reduction possible.
We could invest in a system that appropriately measures school and teacher performance – a system that would account for the vastly different schools and communities throughout Missouri. Such a system would improve teacher and school performance while encouraging the adoption of creative and effective curricula for all of Missouri’s school kids.
Why are we looking at ways to take kids and resources out of public schools? Why aren’t we examining ways to improve public schools?
Maria Chappelle-Nadal represents District 72 in the Missouri House of Representatives.