Vouchers Are For Dodging Regulations

This week, we saw the story of a charter school in North Carolina that, having been ordered to shut down, reimagined itself as a private school.

Expect to see versions of this story over and over again. Charter schools mostly require some sort of authorizer to sign off on their ability to function, and those authorizers are backstopped by the state. Meaning that even in a state like North Carolina, a charter school can be a big enough mess to get itself shut down.

Charter schools in some states have barely minimal accountability and oversight. But "minimal" is still more than "none," and "none" is what most states have in place for school vouchers.

For instance, in West Virginia, where someone just noticed that at least one microschool is failing miserably, the rules for getting voucher monies look like this:

The state doesn’t ask potential vendors to submit a business or education plan up front. Anyone who wants to be an authorized Hope “service provider,” including a microschool, must sign a contract agreeing to get criminal background checks on staff working with students and to notify districts when they enroll. To receive funds, vendors need only submit a W-9, a tax form for an independent contractor, and document the Hope funds they receive from parents.

That's typical. In most voucher states, all you have to do to be a voucher "vendor" is just say so. And it's not just that voucher laws lack any sort of oversight or accountability mechanisms--most of the recent voucher laws or law expansions very specifically forbid oversight or accountability.

This has happened even as voucher fans have retired the talking point that vouchers allow students to get a better education. Fact is, most voucher laws are carefully designed in such a way that we have no idea what quality education students are getting.

Why are we here? It's simple.

Voucher programs are not about giving students access to quality education. Vouchers are about giving churches and businesses access to taxpayer dollars.

The less oversight and accountability, the more access to those taxpayer dollars. If that costs some students a few years of their education, oh well. They are not the priority.