Funding religious schools wrong, could go national
Private school voucher programs are on trial in the nation’s highest court, and as the nation’s petri dish for school privatization, Arizona is watching.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in Espinoza v. the Montana Department of Revenue. Here’s why: In 2015, Montana’s state Legislature created a tax credit voucher program that allowed individuals to donate their state tax dollars to a scholarship fund for students attending private religious schools.
However, their state Supreme Court quickly abolished the voucher program because it conflicted with Montana's Constitution, which prohibits state funds from directly or indirectly benefiting a sectarian or religious purpose.
Arizona has a similar clause in our state Constitution, but it’s long been interpreted by our courts as a minor nuisance easily circumvented. That’s why we currently see more than $200 million Arizona tax dollars going to religious schools every year.
Espinoza v. Montana requires the Supreme Court to determine whether the U.S. Constitution can force states to fund religious education in violation of state constitutions that bar taxpayer support for religious activities.
If the Supreme Court finds in favor of the Espinoza plaintiffs, who are backed by some of the same deeppocketed special interests that have pushed privatization in Arizona for decades, it could transform education across the country by opening the floodgates to publicly funded private religious education.
We’ve already seen it in Arizona: A small dollar-for-dollar tax credit program that began in the late 1990s has ballooned to more than $250 million annually, with a vast majority of the tax credits going to religious schools.
It’s unclear if the Supreme Court case means much to Arizona taxpayers beyond a lifting of the veil, a more honest and direct admission that our state government funds churches in potential violation of our state Constitution.
The workarounds Arizona developed two decades ago to skirt our Constitution’s prohibition on funding religious education would become unnecessary and the money would keep flowing out of our state coffers to private, religious schools and services even more efficiently, newly freed from the inconvenience of saying the money is really just going to that pesky middle man we call “parents.”
So while the Supreme Court case has some states on pins and needles, in Arizona we already know what their fates may hold.
In the 22 years since Arizona started tax credits for religious education and the nine years since we started ESA vouchers, Arizona has fallen to 49th in teacher pay and 46th in per-student investment. We have the second-most crowded classrooms in the nation and, related, the highest teacher turnover rate.
A national study released last month by the Education Law Center found Arizona to be “dead last” for student investment.
This, despite the fact that 95% of Arizona students attend the public schools these tax credits and ESA vouchers defund.
Despite the fact that studies consistently prove that students using vouchers to attend private schools score no better – in fact, often worse – than public school students, and that in states with private school voucher programs, segregation has actually increased.
Because we are already ground zero for privatization, Espinoza doesn’t decide Arizona’s fate. Instead, the future of religious, private school vouchers will be determined by our voters.
More so than the high court’s decision, how goes the Arizona state House and Senate in November, so too goes the future of public education in Arizona. While no Arizona voter has a say in the Supreme Court’s pending decision, we do have a say in whether Arizona keeps its constitutional promise of a free and equal public education for all.