Ripples of damage form when tax dollars pay for private school

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 | 2 a.m.

Facing a challenge of historic proportions to educate students while protecting them from the coronavirus, America’s public schools need all the help they can get going into the 2020-21 school year.

But instead, President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are scheming to undercut public schools with a plan that would divert billions of dollars in K-12 pandemic relief funding to private schools.

The weapon for Trump and DeVos is a proposal calling for 10% of the amount that Congress approves for state and local educational agencies to go into so-called educational scholarships that pay for tuition at private schools. The administration further wants to create $5 billion in tax credits for businesses and individuals who donate to such scholarships.

The proposal would apply to a $105 billion aid package for K-12 and higher education, with the bulk of that going to K-12 schools. The administration said the private school element would allow parents to move children out of schools that weren’t able to reopen safely.

This idea has two outcomes, both dangerous. One, it’s a loaded gun to the head of public schools to either reopen with in-person instruction or face the loss of funding, which could force some schools into taking undue health risks via in-person instruction.

The other outcome would be the diversion of public funds to private schools, which would weaken K-12 schools and hurt students, families and entire communities.

Trump and public school opponents would have you believe that the proposal is designed to benefit low-income families. Don’t believe it. It’s aimed squarely at benefiting affluent Americans and allowing them to pull up the ladder behind them.

The fact is that education vouchers and other forms of government funding for private schools may help some lower-income families get their children into private schools, but not all. Vouchers often don’t cover the full cost of tuition at private schools, so many families struggling financially can’t make up the difference. Transportation barriers also prevent many families from sending their children to private institutions outside their neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, vouchers sap funding from K-12 schools while also tending to siphon off high-achieving students, which increases the challenge of maintaining the student-achievement metrics on which further funding is based. With that, a downward spiral begins. The students left behind suffer not only through a reduction of resources, but because they lose the benefits of studying alongside high-achieving peers.

The effects of a struggling school ripple throughout communities and beyond. Schools have a harder time attracting high-quality teachers and administrators, fewer families are attracted to neighborhoods, property values decline, businesses pass over those areas in favor of places with higher-performing schools, the education gap between affluent and lower-income children expands wider, and income inequality grows.

Further, vouchers are based on a false premise that children receive a better education in private school than in the public K-12 system. While it’s true that the overall student population in private schools tends to outperform public school students on standardized tests, the difference is negligible when demographic factors such as household income and the level of parental education are thrown in. In other words, kids from similar households and backgrounds tend to perform about the same whether they’re in public schools or private schools.

With the pandemic raging, public schools need greater investment, not less.

Getting students back into classrooms full-time in the fall is a noble goal, but it can’t be done while robbing K-12 schools of funding. It will require that many districts find new facilities where the number of students in each classroom can be kept to a minimum, hire more teachers to assign to those new classrooms, and steer more resources to keeping all areas safe for students and staff.

And if that can’t be done, schools will need help to ensure that students get the computers, internet connectivity and other technological means they need to learn remotely. While there’s no firm data on how many students face this so-called “technology gap,” the number has been reliably estimated at 3 million.

Trump and DeVos aren’t focused on those students, of course, but rather on salvaging Trump’s reelection campaign. They want students back in classrooms, regardless of the threat level, to appease right-wing voters — including evangelicals who support religious schools — and restore normalcy.

For DeVos, this is another example of why she has no business deciding national education policy. She’s an enemy of public schools whose family spent millions promoting education privatization schemes before Trump made her one of several foxes guarding henhouses in his administration. She’s repeatedly undermined public schools during his administration.

But investment in public schools is exactly what America needs. It would allow parents to refocus on their work without having to double as educators, would help get the economy going again and would keep students on track.

Hijacking funding from K-12 education is a self-inflicted wound. We trust that Nevada’s leaders in Washington will do all they can to prevent Trump and DeVos from carrying it out.