Will Virginia's new GOP majority use its power for school choice?

Human Events, Dec 3, 1999 by Holland, Robert

In states that are in the vanguard of the school-choice movement, Republican governors have not feared the wrath of the education monopolists.

Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson advocated extending Milwaukee vouchers to parochial schools. Ohio's George Voinovich championed Cleveland's voucher experiment. Florida's Jeb Bush initiated statewide vouchers for children in failing public schools. And New Mexico's Gary Johnson is fighting to award $3,300 vouchers to all of his state's 330,000 school-age children.

Tuition tax credits-as enacted recently in Arizona and lllinois-have also been important instruments in expanding school choice.

With Jim Gilmore now the first Republican governor of Virginia to have a GOP majority to work with in both legislative chambers, will the Old Dominion likewise become a leader in market-based education reform?

One can hope, but the early signs are not encouraging. Post-election, Gilmore said Virginia parents already have options (which is true at least for the countryclub set), and added that, "My philosophy has been to make public schools the best choice I can make them."

Gilmore polished his conservative credentials by terminating the hated car tax, but his K- 12 education program has been pretty much business as usual. He supports the idea that government-set academic standards can, in and of themselves, bring about excellent public schools. And he's channeling state tax money into reducing class size, despite reams of research showing that expensive action doesn't yield higher achievement.

Perhaps the new legislative majority in Richmond will take the initiative on school choice, and Gilmore eventually will join the bandwagon. If the Virginia GOP forfeits this opportunity to give K-12 education a needed injection of consumer choice and competition, it won't be for a lack of well-thought-out plans already available to them.

Last winter, Northern Virginia GOP Delegate Jay Katzen and the Virginia Family Foundation proposed a tax credit for tuition-payers and for donors that pick up the tuition tab for needy students. Gilmore didn't lift a hand to help, and the proposal died in committee. But now the Virginia Institute for Public Policy has stirred the pot with a Universal Tuition Tax Credit (UTTC) that tosses some added intellectual ingredients in the stew.

It's a thoughtful design by some of Virginia's best economic minds-but hardly an elitist one. Imagine a scheme that allows Virginians of modest income to wipe out their state tax liability entirely by paying tuition to put their children through a private school. That's the UTTC. Or envision a corporation getting a dollar-for-dollar tax credit (a 100% credit, no limits)-and a public-relations windfall besides-by donating big money for scholarships to help poor folks have a free choice of school just as rich folks always have.

That is also the UTTC. And middle-income and well-off families who pay tuition would get a break on their taxes, too-as well they should. This plan does not pander to practitioners of class warfare.

The individual credit could not exceed one-half of the average per-pupil expenditure in Virginia public schools. (That would have amounted to a tax credit of $3,097 per student in 1997-98, when the statewide per-pupil expenditure was $6,194.) There is one other limitation: The UTTC could not exceed 80% of tuition payments. That's so parents of modest means would retain a financial a stake in how the schools of choice were run.

So suppose a mother and father in Annandale wanted to send their two kids to a Christian school charging $3,000 per student. Say the couple had a state tax liability of $2,200. Their credit would wipe that out.

Suppose an inner-city Mom in Norfolk wanted to get her two children out of public schools, where they were not doing well, and into a parochial school around the corner. A local corporation pays the parochial-school tuition, $2,000 for each child, and receives a $4,000 credit on its Virginia income taxes.

Suppose a wealthy couple in McLean sends its only child to an academy with tuition of $12,000 a year. That family would take a credit of $3,097, thus reducing its effective after-tax tuition to $8,903.

Winners and losers? Losers: Teachers union bosses, state education bureaucrats and control-freak politicians. The UTTC would result in an exodus to private and home schools of about 10% of the current public-school population, and would mean "lost revenues" of $638 million for the state treasury.

Winners: Virginia parents, who would have a much freer choice of.schools; teachers, who would have an expanded market for their services; children in the public schools, which would be pushed by the competition to do better by their customers; and state and local governments, which would save $656 million by having 112,420 fewer students to warehouse and train in the public schools. (That's right: There would be a net $18 million savings for public coffers, plus uncounted millions in construction cost savings.)