Education

Greg Anrig says conservatives have essentially abandoned their pursuit of private-school vouchers. Good article overall, but an inaccurate account of what happened in Utah last year:

In 2000, both California and Michigan offered referendums on voucher programs for all children in the state. The initiatives were defeated by margins of forty-two and thirty-eight points, respectively. Voucher supporters like to blame the defeats on well-funded teachers unions, but the law professors James E. Ryan and Michael Heise found that voucher supporters had outspent the opposition in Michigan, and both sides had spent about the same amount of money in California. They concluded that the decisive resistance to vouchers had come from suburban voters who feared that the programs would take money away from local schools and worried about the arrival of lower-income and minority students in their children's classrooms. And last year, in the conservative, predominantly white state of Utah, the Republican legislature put a November referendum for a voucher program on the state ballot, which Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne and his family supported with about $4 million. It lost by 62 percent to 38 percent — the eighth decisive loss for a statewide voucher ballot initiative. There have not been any victories.

Letter in Friday's Salt Lake Tribune about Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com and financier of the pro-voucher forces in Utah:

Being a financial analyst and an MBA grad, I will try to use my low Utah IQ to figure things out. Overstock.com, Mr. Byrne's company, has been in business since 1997 and to this date has yet to earn a profit. [...]

I may have a low Utah IQ, but I do know one thing: Mr. Byrne obviously has no idea about how to run a successful business. Why would anyone think he has a clue about how to spend my tax dollars? Frankly, I am glad his opinion on school vouchers differs from mine. I would be worried if I actually agreed with the guy.

Ryan Judkins
Salt Lake City

But don't blame Byrne for his company's $100-million loss in 2006 — blame the Sith Lord. (Is Patrick Byrne related to "Super" Dell?)

I think Glenden Brown at OneUtah gets it exactly right:

Using tax dollars to pay for private schools will be back. Proponents of voucher schemes don't have any choice but to bring them back — first because they are ideologues who are convinced their ideas are inherently good and when 62% of the people vote against them, the problem is bad communication or flawed implementation or lies spread by some conservative bugabear (think Unions) rather than the possibility that people simply rejected the concept itself. Second because they are trapped in their ideology and that ideology leads to a single conclusion: Privatization.

Conservatives have spent decades convincing themselves that only private entities are efficient, effective and valuable while any government entity is inherently corrupt, inefficient and ineffective. Challenged to improve public schools, they will be ideologically blind to any options other than privatization in some form or another. Vouchers are a back door form of privatization. Expect the next variation to be even less open about the actual goals.

Steve Olsen at Utah Amicus:

I think most pro-voucher proponents are sincerely concerned about Utah's children. Hopefully, now that Utah's citizens have spoken, these concerned parents can join the rest of us in channeling the energy that has been generated in a concerted effort to improve public education for all Utah's children. The vote was a affirmation from Utahns that they support their public schools, which have worked miracles the last few decades with minimal resources. I couldn't disagree more with Patrick Byrne, whose petulant reaction to the loss of his pet project was to predict Utah's future would resemble Albania's because of our supposed failed education system. The end product of Utah's public schools — well-educated young adults who are the key ingredient in attracting the influx of business that has fueled Utah's impressive economic growth — is conclusive proof Byrne's pessimism is simply wrong.

That's the way the cookie crumbles.

(Yes, I've been waiting to use that line for months.)

Glenden Brown at OneUtah:

First, the surprise inside the not-so-surprising voucher vote. I expected vouchers would win somewhere in the state. Vouchers didn't win in a single county in the state. Not one. Think about that — in the most conservative, Republican state in the nation, after spending millions of dollars of Patrick Byrne's money and piles of out-of-state money from the Amway and WalMart families, vouchers didn't carry a single county. [...]

Broadly speaking, I expected vouchers to win at least one place (I was betting on Utah County) to provide voucher supporters rhetorical cover for a 2008 Voucher Bill. This issue isn't dead — it will come back, folks. Parents for Choice in Education has invested way too much money buying out legislators to let this issue go away. If you want it gone, vote for the Democratic candidate in next year's legislative races.

Salt Lake Tribune:

The Republican legislative leadership would have you believe that the voucher law on Tuesday's ballot is a solution to the problems plaguing education in Utah. It is not. Rather, it is a product of right-wing ideologues far from Utah who would like nothing better than to take education out of the hands of the taxpaying Americans who pay for it and turn it over to private interests.

These adherents to the philosophy of the late economist Milton Friedman have tried for years not just to undermine public schools, but eventually to eliminate them. In Utah, they have found an array of acolytes willing to ignore the will of the people and strong-arm enough of their colleagues to get the nation's first universal voucher program written into law — by a single vote.

Way to call a spade a spade, Trib.

Hilarious mailer from Parents for Choice in Education (via One Utah; click for the full image):

As Richard Warnick says, PCE has run out of actual arguments — all they have left is tribalism.

Salt Lake Tribune:

A new Salt Lake Tribune poll finds little chance that voters will approve Utah's education voucher program in Tuesday's referendum.

Fifty-six percent of likely voters polled said they would vote against the voucher program to 36 percent who said they support the state subsidies to private schools. Only 8 percent remained undecided. [...]

But [Lisa] Johnson [of Utahns for Public Schools] said the poll shows voters apparently like reforms — merit pay, open enrollment and charter schools — that are undertaken within the public school system.

"These are things we can do through the public schools that would serve all students and wouldn't create a second education system to be supported by taxpayers," Johnson said.

Deseret News:

Pro-voucher ads urge voters not to let a national teachers union tell them how to vote next Tuesday, yet the pro-voucher movement itself is receiving three-fourths of its funds from one man — Park City millionaire Patrick Byrne. [...]

The new reports show that Byrne, president and chairman of the board of Overstock.com, a Web-based retail buying operation, has donated, along with his family, $2.9 million to PCE. That donation is 78 percent of the [political issue committee's] overall contributions. [...]

The pro-voucher money comes from Byrne, his immediate family and the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation, a foundation where Byrne is a member of the board of directors. Friedman, now dead, was a famous free-market economist who advocated public support for private schools back in the 1950s.

"It is interesting to compare reports and see that we have 2,500 individual contributors," said Lisa Johnson, Utahns for Public Schools spokeswoman. "Most of (PCE) money comes from the Byrne family, and the others are large checks from a special-interest niche rather than broad-based support across the state."