The Bill Is Amended…

Because of its cost, the bill was amended to remove the $2500 deduction for parents of privately schooled children. It retained the $550 tax credit for each home-schooled child and the $500 tax credit for contributions to scholarships. The scholarships, of up to $3,100 annually per child, were for children of both low-income and non-low income households.

And Amended Again

Two more amendments were added on the House floor. One required all private and home-school teachers to administer the Standards of Learning (SOL) tests, and another limited the scholarships to low-income students. Both Delegate Black and Delegate May voted against these amendments.

The bill's sponsor (Del. Katzen), was so unhappy with these last amendments, he pulled his bill, requesting that it be carried over.

The government relations director of the Family Foundation also objected to the amendments, saying that private Christian schools offer a Christian-based curriculum, and the SOLs would force teachers to adopt the standard Virginia curriculum.

She did not explain how meeting the SOLs and including Christian-based concepts are mutually exclusive. However, we assume students who are taught that creationism is a fact and that the United States was founded as a Christian country may have some problems with the science and history SOLs.

The withdrawal of the amended bill indicates first, that its supporters do not believe private schools receiving public monies should be held to the same standards as public schools, and second, that aiding poor children apparently was not an important goal.

Amended or not, problems still remained.

The only difference between vouchers and tax credits is that vouchers route the money for private schools through the government while tax credits don't. A $500 voucher or a $500 tax credit both reduce the general fund by $500.

MORE VOUCHER LEGISLATION IN 2001

Besides the tuition tax credit bill, Delegate Robert Marshall introduced HJ561 Study: School Vouchers and Tuition Tax Credits and Deductions. Delegate William Robinson introduced HB 2498 Education Certificate Act, which seeks to create a local option voucher system to provide choice in education for children in grades K-12 eligible for free or reduced lunch (Tabled).

Voucher referenda in California and Michigan were soundly defeated in November's election. Cleveland's school voucher program was struck down by the courts. Poll after poll shows citizens do not support vouchers and prefer investing in our public schools. Yet, a vocal minority in Virginia's assembly continue their attempts to divert tax dollars from needy public schools to private schools.

COSTS

The Family Foundation's Fuzzy Math

Robin DeJarnette, a lobbyist for the socially conservative Family Foundation which has pushed hard for tuition tax credits the last two years, had promised to return this year, saying, "Never, never, never will we give up."

DeJarnette acknowledged that the tax credits would cost the state $460 million annually, but insists that decreased enrollment in public schools would save the state $319 million a year in education funding. Her figures are based on the dubious assumption that the public schools eventually would lose about 8.1 percent of their enrollment (about 91,000 students) if this legislation passed and by erroneously calculating as profit the full per pupil cost for every pupil who will supposedly leave the public school system. (Many costs remain the same--building maintenance, buses, teacher--despite a drop in enrollment. The departure of 90,000 students would decrease a class of 30 to 27.)

Besides the tremendous cost to the taxpayers of Virginia, this legislation ensures that higher-income families would benefit disproportionately compared to lower-income families who pay little or no taxes.

Opponents of the bill disputed claims that the measure would make private education accessible to low-income families. A financial analysis prepared by People for the American Way (PFAW) concluded that 55 percent of the tax credit benefits would be paid to Virginia families earning more than $100,000 a year. "This bill is Robin Hood in reverse," said Delisa Saunders, a deputy director of PFAW. "It takes from the poor to give to the rich."

Read about the myths vs. reality of this bill and other "tax credit" schemes.

Gilmore's Endorsement

Without endorsing any specific voucher plan, Virginia's Governor Gilmore has "issued his strongest statement to date in favor of creating a school voucher plan, saying today that a statewide program could give parents more choice about where to educate their children....he said parents should have options to homeschool their children or perhaps get support in sending them to private school." (Washington Post, May 21, 1999)

In January, 2000, Gilmore shifted his stance. He stated he would not take sides in the debate this year.

Religious right activists are now linking voucher/tax credit bills to the SOLs (Standards of Learning). They are saying that if a school fails the SOLs, the state should provide funds to help those parents send their children to private schools. Of course, the majority of students would still remain in the now under-funded public school.

Ironically, the religious right organizations that have so vigorously pushed for SOL's in the public schools do not want private schools that receive public funds to be held to the same standards. Delegate Phillip Hamilton (R-Newport News) has said he would not support tuition tax credits unless their recipients take the same SOLs required of public schools. But Martin Brown, executive director of The Family Foundation (TFF), said his organization would strongly oppose linking the credits with testing requirements. (The Virginia-Pilot, 1/9/00)

This opposition is even more interesting, since, according to the July 1995 TFF newsletter, "TFF worked hard to offer maximum input into the drafting of the SOLs. At one point we had only days to make our suggestions. Walt Barbee, our President, prepared several pages of superb suggestions in a short time for which we received a lot of positive feedback." Former Governor George Allen has praised TFF for its help in drawing up the new SOLs, saying they would not have been possible without the grass-roots help of the foundation's members. At the same time, Allen urged TFF to keep the pressure on the State Board of Education and local school boards to maintain the SOLs at their current level. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, 2/25/00)

Does TFF fear that SOL results would be similar to other tests which have shown little or no difference between private and public school scores, undermining a basic argument used by tuition tax credit proponents?

A Brief History of SOLs

When the SOLs were first introduced, Governor Allen's Commission had so significantly altered the drafts of the expert Language Arts and Social Studies writing teams, that they were met with a barrage of complaints. [Some examples: the heavy emphasis on rote memorization with minimal requirements to analyze, compare and contrast; age-inappropriate content in history; the downplaying of slavery--slaves were called "Black settlers"; lack of appreciation of literature and creative writing; no reasonable sequence; stress on writing mechanics but not planning or revising.] The SOLs were subsequently altered to eliminate the most glaring omissions/errors, although many critics maintain they are still rife with problems.

Two Recent Studies Highlight Problems with SOLs

The first study, conducted by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy, a conservative Fairfax think tank that strongly supports the goal of holding schools more accountable, argues that the current goal is unrealistically high and that the assessment system does not truly measure the quality of instruction taking place at a school.

The second study, a position paper from the faculty of the Graduate School of Education at George Mason University, faults the SOLs for their over emphasis on low-level factual information insufficient emphasis on using facts to reason and solve problems. It also criticizes the current plan to use the SOL tests as the sole criterion for earning a high school diploma and accrediting a school, recommending a broad spectrum of measures be used instead. The study concludes that "By setting the passing scores at the high end of the range, the Board of Education has ensured substantial numbers of students and schools will never meet the standards."

Education professionals, who supported high standards but understood the intent of the original SOLs, correctly predicted that the SOLs would ultimately be used by religious right activists to discredit public schools in order to promote vouchers. The proposed solution of sending a handful a students to private schools rather than improving the public schools, to the benefit of all the students, suggests that the funding of private schools may indeed be a major goal.

For more information on the problems with SOLs, visit the Web page of Parents United Across Virginia to Reform SOLs.