School Vouchers Fail in Utah
The 2007 Utah Ballot Referendum Lost by a Wide Margin
A referendum to create a comprehensive statewide school voucher program was on the ballot for November 6, 2007 in conservative Utah. State residents voted no...
The November 6, 2007 election was a showdown of sorts on a simmering issue in American politics: school vouchers.
Background: the Battle Lines
The lines in this fight have been fairly clear for some time now. The fight is between the mostly Republican school choice advocates who want to see tuition vouchers instituted to help families pay for private school tuition and the largely Democratic professional education establishment that is against using public money to pay private, often religious schools.
Proponents of school vouchers see America's public schools as failing and want to help parents pay to put their children in private schools. Opponents of vouchers see the movement as an effort to break down the separation of church and state in American and insert a religious component into education by turning it over to church run schools. Opponents also see vouchers as an effort to further weaken public education (because most money for voucher programs would be taken out of existing education funding) and as an effort to reinstate segregation in America (because minorities tend to be under represented in private schools).
The Bill
The initiative in Utah would have paid families between $500 and $3,000 (depending on family income) if they chose to send their child to a private school. The fact that any child could obtain a voucher made the Utah proposal one of the most comprehensive ever proposed.
The Scene: America's Most Conservative State
Utah was picked for this fight because Republicans who favor school vouchers thought that the issue would receive a favorable hearing in that conservative state. Utah's GOP-control legislature passed a voucher bill in February, but it never became law because opponents gathered more than the required 120,000 signatures necessary to turn the new law into a state ballot referendum.
In retrospect, Utah presents problems for school voucher advocates. Perhaps the biggest problem was that Utah’s rural landscape means that many residents don't live with 50 miles of a private school - so school vouchers seem irrelevant to them.
The Fight
The two sides spent millions of dollars in the months leading up to this vote - much of it on television advertising. The National Education Association alone spent nearly $3.2 million on the campaign against vouchers.
Proponents of the measure were led by Patrick Byrne, the founder and CEO of Overstock.com. He donated almost $3 million to a group called Parents for Choice in Education. That organization raised and spent almost $4 million in the effort to pass the school voucher initiative. Over the last few years the pro-voucher fight in Utah has also received help from the founding families of Wal-Mart and Amway, funding that was used to help elect pro-voucher legislators in Utah.
Many of those opposed to the voucher bill argued that more money needed to be put into public education in the state. Utah has the largest class size of any state and spends less per students than any other state. Lawmakers in Utah increased funding for public education by about $500 million last year. Utah's voucher bill was funded out of general fund money so that opponents could not argue that it was taking money away from public education.
One key player in the fight was Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman. Huntsman gained the GOP nomination for governor by supporting vouchers, signed the bill into law, but then backed away from support for vouchers when it became a referendum because polls showed it wasn't popular with voters.
While there have been 10 state referendums on school vouchers in America since 1972, the Utah vote was the first referendum since 2000. Vouchers have never been voted into law in any state and on average about 69% of voters vote against school tuition vouchers in those referendums. Utah's election followed that patter: 62% of Utah's voters voted against this referendum.
After the referendum, the National Associations of State Boards of Education released a statement that included this quote: "Whenever the issue of vouchers has been put before the public for a vote, vouchers have lost overwhelmingly. The public—in states ranging from California to Michigan and now Utah—inherently understands the community benefits of public education."
