This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Arizona’s voucher-light education tax credit program, essentially giving blessing to another form of school choice. While the ruling is largely a sensible one (one can take the position of justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia that such lawsuits shouldn’t be allowed in the first place because the Constitution doesn’t prohibit the use of state dollars for publicly funding all educational options), it is only one piece of an effort to expand choice and give parents the ability to do it for themselves when it comes to school reform.
Choice on its own isn’t a panacea. The need to develop robust ways for parents to exercise choice — even the choice to team up together and start their own schools — is still critical. As Dropout Nation pointed out in January, one way to expand choice is by finally completing the move away from local control and property tax-based funding of education. Thanks to decades of battles over equal funding of schools and efforts at property tax relief, states now provide the plurality of all school dollars, accounting for 48 percent of all school revenues nationwide (with Ohio providing a bit less — 45 percent — and New Jersey at the national average) — and this percentage will increase because adequacy and equity remain key issues in education, and because property tax relief still remains a goal in many states. Replacing all local funding with state dollars would certainly begin improving equity in education if done the right way: Essentially turning the dollars into vouchers that follow every child to whatever option families choose, be it public, private, parochial or even DIY and storefront schools.
Then there is the quality issue. As well as many charter schools are serving students, there are still far too many that aren’t doing the job; and authorizers in turn, aren’t shutting them down. As the Thomas B. Fordham Institute pointed out earlier this year, 72 percent of low-performing charters (along with nearly all traditional public schools) remained open five years later. It isn’t enough to offer choice; school operators of all kinds must also be subjected to robust accountability to make sure that they are improving student achievement. Improving school data and building networks of school information centers at the grassroots level (along with private-sector data efforts that would make school information a consumer good) would also help parents walk away from abysmal schools no matter what they are.
The tax credit plans blessed by the Supreme Court — including those on the table in states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania — are good steps. But they aren’t enough on their own to spur reform. This is no time for harrumphs from choice supporters. Our kids need more and deserve better than what we are giving them now.