DeVos: School vouchers part of tax overhaul discussions

LAS VEGAS — More than a third of U.S. states have created school voucher programs that bypass thorny constitutional and political issues by turning them over to nonprofits that rely primarily on businesses to fund them. But the programs are raising questions about transparency and accountability at a time when supporters are urging that they be expanded into a federal program.

Unlike traditional school vouchers, which are directly funded by the states — or in the case of Washington, D.C., the federal government — these programs don’t use any public money. Instead, those who contribute to the voucher program get tax credits. Seventeen states now have the so-called tax-credit scholarships.

Both President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have promoted the scholarships as a way to give parents greater choice in deciding where their children will go to school. Supporters are pushing the administration to launch a federal program extending the tax credit scholarships nationwide.

Asked whether such a proposal might be included as part of a tax overhaul, DeVos said in an interview with The Associated Press, “It’s certainly part of our discussion.”

Depending on whom you ask, the programs are either another avenue for school choice drawing on the generosity of taxpayers, or a workaround to existing bans on giving public money to religious organizations — in this case schools — with a set-up that’s ripe for abuse. It’s hard to know who’s right, given that the states purposefully limit their fingerprints on their own programs.

For Mayra Puentes of Las Vegas, it was simply a way to get her children a better education. Her son, she said, was struggling in public school, in a state that is ranked at or near the bottom of national lists on the quality of public education.

Puentes said would not have been able to afford the combined $22,000 tuition for her three children at Mountain View Christian Schools.

In Nevada, scholarships are capped annually at about $7,700 per child. They can be used at 86 private schools, not all of them accredited.