As a reminder, taxpayer-funded school vouchers go into already deep pockets

Public school advocate and former Little Rock School District board member Ali Noland has been keeping an eye on the school voucher program created by Gov. Sarah Sanders and her minions at the Capitol last year with the passage of Arkansas LEARNS.

She recently took to social media to share some calculations that show how much of a ruse the whole thing is.

Proponents of vouchers tried to sell us all on the idea that “school choice” levels the playing field and provides equal opportunities for all students. The gates to fancy private schools would be opened to all children, they said. There are several holes in this argument. One is that private schools don’t have to let in the unwashed masses.

Arkansas LEARNS cleared the way for the state to pay nearly $7,000 per child to families who want to send their children to private schools. In the first year, Noland calculated that the majority of LEARNS vouchers went to students in schools with tuition thousands of dollars more than the voucher amount. This means that families with thousands to spare will primarily benefit from this welfare program for the rich.

The five Arkansas private schools that accept the most voucher students in LEARNS’ first year (2023-24) are charging thousands of dollars above the voucher amount, leaving families to make up the difference.

“This means your tax dollars will subsidize private school tuition for relatively wealthy families who can afford to pay an average of $8,060 per child for private school tuition in excess of the voucher amount,” Noland wrote. (Disclaimer: Noland is a personal friend and occasional collaborator of the Arkansas Times.)

So far, Noland said, these vouchers have proven to be little more than taxpayer-funded discount vouchers for wealthy families in Little Rock and northwest Arkansas.

The Arkansas Department of Education has not yet released its annual report for the current school year, which is expected to include information about the schools best collecting vouchers for the 2024-25 period.

Last year’s report was wild, revealing that a whopping 95% of students who received vouchers in the first year of LEARNS had not attended public schools the previous year. Many of these students were kindergarten students and completely new to school. But most of those first-year vouchers, valued at $6,672 apiece, appear to have been subsidized to families who were so well off financially that they had already paid private school tuition themselves.

“This fits the clear pattern seen in other states that are adopting voucher programs to spend public money on private schools,” reporter David Ramsey wrote last year. “This money tends to pad the bank accounts of families who have never participated in the public school system.”

Here is Noland’s post and some of the materials she cites, reproduced here with her permission:

We told you the taxpayer-funded voucher money would go to relatively wealthy families in Little Rock. Now there is the proof.

The Arkansas voucher amount is $6,856 per child. The top five schools on this list charge an average of $14,916 in high school tuition (see attached photos; tuition ranges from $10,750 at Shiloh Christian to $18,980 at Episcopal Collegiate). That means your tax dollars subsidize private school tuition for relatively wealthy families who can afford to pay an average of $8,060 per child for private school tuition in excess of the voucher amount. Add to this the need to provide your own transportation (or pay extra), the additional cost of uniforms and supplies, the fact that they do not offer free and reduced lunch, and the fact that these schools are not required to Hosting SPED students or offering SPED services, and now you get the picture. Arkansas spends millions upon millions of taxpayer dollars to provide financial relief to the relatively small number of families (this chart shows $12 million spent on 1,832 children) who are privileged and fortunate enough to spend nearly $10,000 a year per child for private school lessons. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income in Arkansas is $58,700 per year. When politicians tell you that vouchers “give every family the same educational opportunities that rich families have always had,” remember that they expect the average Arkansas family with two children to pay 28% of their annual income to make up the difference to balance between that and that voucher offers and what the private schools charge in terms of tuition and fees. Most families can’t afford this!

These vouchers only help those families who are wealthy enough to pay the difference between the voucher and tuition, whose children do not have special needs, AND who live in large urban areas where private school options exist. And the rest of Arkansas pays millions of dollars in tax dollars to give these families a discount.