Idaho’s voucher results are as expected. It’s Robin Hood in reverse | Opinion
The easiest way to predict what effects a program will have is to see what the effects have been in other places. As Idaho considered implementing school vouchers, that’s what skeptics of the program did.
There were a few central predictions based on the track record of states like Arizona. 1. Vouchers will disproportionately benefit relatively high-income families. 2. Vouchers will disproportionately go to families who are already enrolled in private schools, effectively subsidizing the choices they’re already making. 3. Vouchers will be subject to high levels of fraud.
We now have a single point of data to evaluate: 55% of applicants come from families making over 300% of the federal poverty line, as the Statesman’s Becca Savransky reported. This strongly suggests that the first prediction is coming true.
That’s why voucher advocates went into Tasmanian-Devil-level spin mode this week trying to turn bad news good.
“Early data obtained by MSPC shows that nearly half of participating families are lower-income or working-class,” Chris Cargill of Mountain States Policy Center wrote.
“When nearly half of the families using the credit are lower-income or working class, it challenges a long-standing assumption — that programs like this primarily serve those who already have resources,” Cargill further asserted.
I have no idea what Cargill means by lower-income or working class, but one commonly used definition of low-income is a family making less than 150% of the federal poverty level — $49,500 for a family of four. There is absolutely no data on how many of these families, if any, have received vouchers, though there are lots of them in Idaho.
The single data point we have is that 55% of applicants make more than 300% of the federal poverty level, or about $96,000 for a family of four. This figure was presumably tracked closely because the voucher law requires prioritizing families who make less than that over families who make more.
This isn’t surprising because private school is generally very expensive, generally very unaffordable for an actual low-income family. A few thousand dollars a year doesn’t change that.
We don’t know the typical size of the families applying for vouchers, but two parents plus two kids is a reasonable estimate until we get more precise data. This suggests that the median income — the income right in the middle, with half of households earning more, half less — for a household in this program is substantially higher than $96,000.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates Idaho’s median household income at a bit under $82,000. So the typical applicant for vouchers certainly has far more income than the typical Idaho family.
So, exactly as expected, it seems this program is Robin Hood in reverse, a program that redistributes income from Idaho families disproportionately to those on the higher end of the income spectrum. None of that is surprising because it’s what’s happened in other states that built out similar voucher programs.
What was found in many of those places is that vouchers were disproportionately going to families that already had their children enrolled in private schools and were already paying for it out of pocket — in other words, they are largely providing a subsidy for higher income families to continue their private choices, but now with a public subsidy.
The Tax Commission told Idaho Ed News that those figures aren’t currently available for Idaho, but the reasons to expect that many of the recipients will be existing private school students remain the same: It’s what happened elsewhere, and in many large areas of Idaho there are no private schools, so adoption of vouchers will be concentrated where private schools are available, which means where private school students are also concentrated.
This leaves one more expectation based on past experience that’s yet to be fulfilled: pervasive fraud — claims for children people don’t have or schools that don’t exist or education necessities like flat screen TVs. Guess we’ll just have to wait a bit longer for that to materialize.
Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman.