Arizona's universal school voucher scam is 10 times worse than we thought

Voters didn’t fall for the Big Lie about universal school vouchers back in 2018.

The proposal was sold as a way of providing a leg up for the disadvantaged when, in fact, it is a handout for the rich.

Voters saw through the scam.

Nearly 1.5 million Arizonans, 65% of the vote, defeated the expansion.

However, that didn’t stop former Gov. Doug Ducey and the Republican-controlled Legislature from ignoring the will of the people and passing legislation offering so-called Empowerment Scholarship Accounts to any student.

Sounds egalitarian. Sounds appealing.

Education:Horne administration proposes major changes to school voucher handbook

The money won't get students into elite schools

Sounds like the perfect way to lure scam artists and feed the greed of those who don’t need the help.

Which is exactly what it does.

Families with limited means will find out that the voucher money won’t get their kids into elite schools and might only afford them the opportunity to have their children suffer an educational setback by enrolling in a school with no oversight, no transparency and no rigid academic standards.

Meantime, families who already have their kids in private schools will have a big chunk of their children’s tuition paid for by working class families with students in struggling public schools.

We knew it would be bad when the voucher program kicked in. It was projected to cost the state $31.2 million.

The latest projections, giving the huge number of vouchers already passed out, are 10 times worse.

A good start toward bankrupting the state

The latest Joint Legislative Budget Committee projection has the universal voucher program expanding to 52,500 students by June 2024 and hitting up taxpayers for a whopping $376 million.

In the first year.

It’s a very good start … toward bankrupting the state.

Both monetarily and educationally.

The taxpayer dollars we’re handing out will go to private operations that get to pick and choose their students. They’ll go to home-schoolers who may or may not have any idea what they’re doing. They’ll go to schools that don’t have to produce public information on teacher credentials, or show progress on test scores, or keep anything close to the financial records required of regular public schools.

When the bill was being rammed through the Legislature, state Sen. Christine Marsh, herself an educator, tried to attach amendments that would have provided some transparency and accountability.

Then again, the poorly educated won't know they were scammed

The Republican majority was having none of it.

She said at the time, “We have no financial transparency and we have no academic transparency. I’d like to know how many families that earn maybe a million dollars a year are getting voucher money versus how many families earning maybe thirty- or forty-thousand dollars a year are getting voucher money.”

Gov. Katie Hobbs wants to repeal the universal voucher program, saying during her State of the State address that in time it “will likely bankrupt the state,” though she knows the current Republican-controlled Legislature will block any attempt at repeal.

All of that could be emotionally troubling and fiscally devastating for the generation that will inherit such a financial disaster.

Then again, students schooled in the fly-by-night operations encouraged by the voucher expansion program won’t be educated enough to know they were scammed.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Universal school voucher scam is 10 times worse than we thought