GOP Crony Capitalism Part III - School Vouchers

One of Betsy DeVos' pet projects is school vouchers. We all know the hype - give parents some money so they can have the "freedom" to go to whatever school they want, which really means whatever school they can still afford. Like charter schools, vouchers are just a way to take taxpayer dollars out of public education and funnel that money to private businesses and individuals. That does not mean that there aren't any good charter schools or that vouchers can really benefit some children. But the overriding goal of these efforts for their backers is to privatize the money that goes into public education. And, as with most government money that gets privatized, the possibility of graft and fraud and misuse of funds expands exponentially.

Studies have shown varying degrees of failure and success with both charter schools and with vouchers. But most recent studies of three states that adopted school vouchers show the program failing in a somewhat spectacular fashion. In Louisiana, students in the school voucher program actually lost ground in the first two years, with an average student dropping by 24 percentile in math and 8 percentile points in reading. In Ohio, a study found that voucher students "have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools…. Such impacts also appear to persist over time, suggesting that the results are not driven simply by the setbacks that typically accompany any change of school". You may remember that Ohio was the state where Education Secretary Betsy Devos blatantly and illegally ignored the state's campaign spending limits by over three-quarter of a billion dollars in order to push a school voucher referendum. In Indiana, another study found that "voucher students who transfer to private schools experience significant losses in mathematics achievement."

As the LA Times notes, one explanation for these poor results is "state authorities don’t do a good enough job of vetting the private schools that are accepting the vouchers". You think. But that's the whole point, not to get better educational outcomes but to funnel public money to their private cronies. For example, in Louisiana, that meant lots of religious schools, some of which taught creationism, were the beneficiaries.

Another classic example of the crony capitalism of the voucher system comes from Arizona. There, Steve Yarbrough is the president of the State Senate, one of the most powerful men in the state, and a proponent of something called a tax credit school voucher system in that state. Essentially, you get a tax break for giving to a non-profit educational facility and that gift is really in lieu of tuition. For Arizonans, it is providing a tax break for private tuition. Of course, one of the main reasons Yarbrough is such a big supporter of these tax credit vouchers is that he personally profits from them. According to the Times, "The Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization (Acsto) is one of the state’s largest voucher-granting groups...Arizona law allows the group to keep 10 percent of those donations to pay for overhead. In 2014, the group used that money to pay its executive director $125,000. His name? Steve Yarbrough. Forms filed by the organization with the I.R.S. declare that he worked an average of 40 hours per week on the job — in addition, presumably, to the hours he worked as president of the State Senate." I'm guessing they must not conduct much business in the State Senate in Arizona, barely even showing up or else Steve is a workaholic.

But it gets even better. Acsto outsources some of the bureaucratic overhead of running the organization to a company called HY Processing, paying that firm over $600,000 in 2104 alone. The owner of HY Processing? You guessed it, Steve Yarbrough. Acsto also pays rent to a landlord for the space it uses to run the business. The landlord, as you might have figured out, is Steve Yarbrough. What's incredible is that this egregious self dealing was made public way back in 2009 and Yarbrough is still there. And last year Yarbrough stated, "“It’s[the voucher program] been better and more successful than even those of us who were enthusiastic from the get-go imagined." I'm sure.

School vouchers are a double win in the attempt to privatize public education. First, it provides a way to provide taxpayer dollars to religious schools. And it provides legislators with a chance to funnel taxpayer dollars to either themselves or their donors. Remember that every dollar that Acsto spends, every dollar that Yarbrough pockets, comes out of money that could have been used to improve public schools. And these people have the nerve to complain about teachers salaries and the "educational bureaucracy". Read the whole article for all the horrific details.