Private schools, think twice about taking public voucher cash

Voucher expansion comes at a price.

In their quest to receive more public funding, private schools may one day be required to open their doors to accept a more diverse enrollment of students, enroll and meet the needs of students with disabilities and English-language learners, administer state-required standardized tests, provide data on their student attrition rates and suspensions, and offer information on teacher and administrator salaries and attrition rates.

This call for accountability will be even more pronounced for private schools as a result of the recently enacted Empowerment Scholarship Account legislation.

The expanded legislation allows 30 percent of the public-school population to be eligible for private-school admission by 2022.

The demand for even greater accountability will be intensified if the cap of 30 percent is removed and all publicschool students become eligible for voucher support.

A movement in this direction is not far-fetched.

Lawmakers’ original ESA intent was to have no cap on private-school enrollments, and a representative of the powerful Goldwater Institute said immediately after the passage of the new legislation that the cap would be removed in the future.

The accountability mechanisms offered in this legislation are an illusion of oversight for the significant public dollars private schools could receive. The legislation requires private schools to report their student achievement results only if they enroll 50 or more ESA students, and only if they utilize standardized tests.

It does not require a rocket scientist to figure out how to “game” the system. Private-school leaders need only to insure that they never enroll more than 49 students and/or never administer standardized tests.

But private schools should not assume they have “cover” from accountability.

They must accept that Arizona’s citizens, parents and educators, already faced with a dramatically underfunded public-school system, will not sit idly by as millions more of taxpayer dollars are diverted to private schools.

It is reasonable to predict that there will be public outcry for full privateschool transparency and accountability for every ESA public dollar spent.

Private schools must ask themselves if they are ready to sacrifice their established traditions for expanded state financial support — support that will make them more public and less private over time.

Private schools should pause in their pursuit of increased financial support from the state, given it may well mean losing their long-standing autonomy and identity.

Private schools must ask themselves whether they are ready for this fast-approaching reality of accountability, and whether they can survive as the institutions they once were.

Gerald Tirozzi served as commissioner of education in Connecticut and was an assistant secretary of Education in the Clinton administration. Email him at gntirozzi@gmail.com.