In a guest column, Stephen J. Owens, education director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, warns that the Georgia Legislature will likely seek to expand vouchers in the upcoming January session. Owens previously was a research and data analyst at the Georgia Department of Education. He holds a doctorate from the University of Georgia.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Get Schooled blog asked Georgia advocates for children and schools to explain what they would like to see state lawmakers tackle — or avoid — this upcoming legislative session. Rather than a laundry list, we asked for specific recommendations and advice that they believe will improve children’s lives or student outcomes. The columns will run in this space over the next two weeks.
By Stephen J. Owens
Georgia’s legislative session will begin in January, and sure to come with it is a new crop of voucher bills poised to divert public funds into private schools. Arizona is the latest state to dramatically expand vouchers despite the large and growing evidence showing misuse of funds, discrimination and negative academic results.
Georgians don’t have to look across the country to be wary of this policy — a lesson in our own history will show that vouchers continue a dangerous pattern of defunding public education in favor of discriminatory private schools. Our lawmakers should resist the temptation of vouchers in favor of proven investments for all children.
Credit: GBPI
Credit: GBPI
As the education director at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, I’ve written extensively about the state’s education budget and previous attempts to redirect millions of public dollars to private schools. Vouchers are not a new policy — economist Milton Friedman popularized the idea in 1955 as an attempt to prioritize competition in schooling. Three years prior, Georgia Gov. Herman Talmadge proposed the abolition of public education in favor of private school vouchers in his racist opposition to school integration.
Schools in Americus, Georgia, offer an illustrative example of the dangerous, continued pattern of public finances propping up failing private schools. Following the landmark Brown v. Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954, several private “desegregation academies” popped up across the state. Many of these schools are still in operation today.
A private Christian school in Americus, Southland Academy, started as a desegregation academy in 1966. The Sumter County school board aided the all-white private school by transferring a public school building to the new school and then selling school buses and furniture at a discount by declaring them “surplus.”
These efforts are best explained by the fact that, as late as 1979, six of the seven school board members and the district superintendent had children enrolled at Southland. Fast-forward to present day and Southland Academy is receiving public dollars through one of Georgia’s voucher programs: the Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit.
The Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit is a $120 million state voucher program where Georgians can elect to, instead of paying taxes, send money to “scholarship-granting organizations” that then pay tuition at private schools. A recent state audit of the voucher found that the program was vulnerable to fraud and waste due to weak transparency and accountability measures. Parents and students using the program are exposed as well — the state requires no reporting of student academic performance in private schools. High-quality studies of vouchers in other states suggest that learners are taking a large academic hit compared to their public school peers. Research on vouchers in Ohio and Louisiana shows the impact of vouchers on test scores is worse than the academic consequences of well-known disasters like Hurricane Katrina and COVID-19.
Fans of private school vouchers argue that the programs empower parents to do what’s best for their children; parents in communities like Americus might disagree. Even a parent comfortable with a school like Southland’s racist past could be surprised to learn that private schools are not held to federal protections for services provided for students with disabilities or those learning English. Taking a voucher is an agreement that parents are no longer guaranteed these rights for their children.
The “private” aspect of private schooling also undercuts any argument of educational freedom. Schools started with the express intent of excluding some types of students (either due to income, race, religion or ability) are hardly an avenue for parent empowerment.
The Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit is one of two state vouchers that have been started and expanded since 2008. Since then, the state has lost $1.3 billion to these programs while simultaneously cutting public school budgets by $8.2 billion. The story of Americus continues for many communities in Georgia as students remain in public schools with inadequate resources. Even today, Georgia public schools are not fully funded as the state has continued a cut to the sparsity grant, meant for low-wealth rural schools, to the tune of $20 million a year.
If and when the sparsity grant is funded, our schools continue to operate with shoestring budgets: Georgia teachers make less than college-educated counterparts in other professions; Georgia remains one of only six states without any funding to support students in poverty; our schools employ only one school counselor for every 422 students; and our school bus funding is woefully inadequate.
Lawmakers concerned about Georgia’s learners need to take a hard look at these expensive and unproven vouchers and decide whether we are the state that continues to prop up failing private schools or start a new era where we fund excellent and inclusive public schools.
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