Georgia should study states that don’t rely on vouchers

State Sen. Eric Johnson is abandoning his plan to ease Georgia into school vouchers. Instead, he wants the state to jump into the voucher pool with both feet.

In January, the Savannah Republican plans to introduce a voucher bill in the General Assembly that would give tax dollars to all parents to pay for all or part of their children’s private school tuition. Until now, Johnson relied on a piecemeal approach, first winning approval in 2007 for vouchers for students with special needs and then trying unsuccessfully this year to extend vouchers to kids whose schools lost accreditation or earned a repeated “needs improvement” rating.

Johnson is forsaking his slow march and racing ahead with a universal voucher bill. If he prevails, Georgia would offer the first statewide school voucher program open to all children, regardless of whether their parents drive a BMW or a bus. Utah almost held that distinction until its voters came to their senses last year and killed a voucher law enacted by their state Legislature nine months earlier. Unlike the voucher programs in Milwaukee and Cleveland that target low-income students, Utah’s program was open to all families. While the most a family could receive per child was a $3,000 voucher, even Utah’s richest households would have received at least $500. Despite the assumption that conservative Utah offered the ideal climate for vouchers, voters killed the program by a 62 percent to 38 percent margin. And those results mirror other national referendums. Voters in 11 states have turned down vouchers, doing so twice in Michigan, Colorado and California.

There’s no evidence that Georgians would be any more willing to subsidize private schools. Even those inclined to flee public schools realize that a $4,000 voucher would fall far short of the tuition at the top private schools. Those parents also know that it’s not quite true that students choose their schools under vouchers; in the competitive metro Atlanta market, it’s the private schools who get to choose.

Johnson would likely have a challenge convincing the Republicans in suburban Atlanta to join his crusade. Cobb, Gwinnett, Fulton, Forsyth and Fayette boast some of Georgia’s highest-performing schools. It’s hard to imagine those parents endorsing a voucher program that could undermine a Walton High School in east Cobb, a North Forsyth Middle in Cumming or a Riverside Elementary in Suwanee. Not all of the state’s 1.5 million students are as well-served in their schools, but the research doesn’t support the notion that they will do better with vouchers. At best, the findings are mixed that students in voucher programs fare any better academically than their peers in public schools. To combat the complaint that the research has been tainted by bias, the U.S. Department of Education —- which warmed to vouchers under its current leadership —- reviewed a federal voucher initiative in Washington, D.C., this summer and concluded that there was no significant improvement in student achievement. Proponents urge patience. They claim that if vouchers are in place long enough, students using them will show marked improvement. But why does Georgia have to wait for vouchers to prove themselves when there are reforms already yielding results that we have yet to try?

Johnson is looking to Milwaukee, where achievement still lags, when he should be studying Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut and North Carolina. Those states lead the nation in educational gains, and they’re doing so without razing the public school system in favor of vouchers. They are investing in preschool and teacher quality, raising rigor and adopting and sticking to whole school reform plans.

Let’s follow suit and see what happens before we dismantle our public schools in favor of the voucher pipe dream.

Learning Curve is a weekly column on education. Please send suggestions for topics or feedback to mdowney@ajc.com.