West Virginia Authorizes Nation’s Broadest Voucher Program
On March 27th, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice signed into law House Bill 2013, which established the Hope Scholarship Program, “an education savings account (ESA) program that gives families taxpayer money earmarked for the public school the student would have attended,” reported Forbes. While similar ESA voucher programs in other states are limited to specific subsets of students or have caps on the number of recipients, West Virginia’s program “will be open to all K-12 students, including by offering money to families who already don’t use the public school system,” making it the broadest program in the nation, according to the West Virginia Gazette.
The bill provides for little oversight over how families spend the money allocated to them, as Hope voucher funds may be spent on an array of services, from a “complete course of study for a particular content area” to “transportation fees, therapy services, and anything else the state board supervising the program okays,” according to Forbes. Essentially, parents are free to cobble together any type of non-public education that meets a minimum set of state requirements, and “there are no provisions in the law for determining if the providers are competent or qualified to provide quality educational services,” Forbes continues. The law also exempts Hope Scholarship recipients from any compulsory school attendance requirements.
“Estimates from two state agencies projected that – aside from the roughly $22 million to $24 million in annual funding the program will shift from public schools to fund vouchers for students who are anticipated to leave public schools – the program’s biggest financial effect will be about $103 million annually in new state funding that will be required to subsidize those who weren’t going to public schools anyway,” says the Gazette. In effect, money allocated to public schools will be diverted to children who are currently outside of the public school system and therefore not factored into the school aid formula. This, according to the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy, results in “direct losses of public school funding for the majority of children who remain in public schools.” Furthermore, the total funding provided by the scholarship—$4,600 per student—does not cover West Virginia’s average private school tuition of $6,068, which means parents will have to top up or depend on financial aid.
Republican supermajorities passed House Bill 2013 without a single vote from a Democrat, and after rejecting several amendments that would have kept vouchers from wealthier families and provided protections for LGBTQ students, students of different religions, and disabled and special education students, according to the West Virginia Gazette.
In February, the Wall Street Journal lauded choice initiatives in six states, including Iowa, Florida, Arizona, New Hampshire, Missouri, and Nevada. However, West Virginia’s new law stands to be the most widely available choice program in the country, with no limits on household income to ensure that the funds are restricted to families who could not otherwise afford private school.