Of Louisiana’s 700,000 public school students back in class, 7,000—1%—are attending private or church schools on state-funded vouchers. The proportion suggests that for all the commotion, from the Legislature to the courts, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s scholarship program will do neither much good nor much harm to the great mass of schoolchildren. True, with applications exceeding available slots this year, the program is set to grow, if gradually. But bigger, faster moves are coming—critics call them moves on public dollars—which will dwarf the effect of vouchers. The 45,000 students in charter schools (publicly funded but independently operated) number six times those on vouchers, with a potentially big spurt in growth next year. The same law that expanded vouchers caused the state Department of Education to receive 26 new charter school applications, up from five last year. The change in law allows groups in school districts rated “D” or “F,” nearly 40% statewide, to apply directly to BESE, instead of first having to ask—and usually get rejected by—their local school boards, which stand to lose state and local education dollars with each new charter school approval. Many legislators did not know all that was in the 47-page bill at the heart of the governor’s agenda. That goes most of all for the new Course Choice program, which, starting next school year, will pay for students to take classes that they are not able or do not want to take at the public schools they attend. With this concept, Louisiana is well ahead of the rest of the country, which should give taxpayers pause. Read the full column here.
(John Maginnis publishes LaPolitics Weekly, a newsletter on Louisiana politics, at LaPolitics.com.)
