School choice critics’ glaring double standard

OPINION:

The knives are out for Arizona’s universal school choice program.

A recent media report is making waves in the Grand Canyon State. It claims that 20% of spending from Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, which parents are supposed to use for their children’s education, went to unauthorized items such as dirt bikes and luxury hotels.

This assertion was made amid an ongoing campaign by activists and politicians to roll back or repeal the program. As one prominent critic said in response to the report, “Arizona taxpayers deserve to know whether Arizona kids are getting the education they need.”

Similar criticisms are leveled at similar programs in other states.

It is fair and proper to scrutinize school choice programs, but there are good reasons to doubt the criticisms. Most notably, Arizona’s education department says the 20% statistic is a misinterpretation of the facts and the real improper payments rate is less than 2%.

Yet even if you take the indictment of Arizona’s program at face value, it’s telling that liberal critics don’t show the same concern over much higher levels of waste, fraud and abuse in welfare programs.

If a 20% improper spending rate justifies rescinding a public program, then activists should train their fire at the earned income tax credit.

The program exists to assist low-income Americans who work. Yet somewhere between a quarter and one-third of payments go to households that aren’t eligible. Despite this fact, the program receives little skepticism from the left.

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High levels of waste, fraud and abuse are also endemic in food stamps, Medicaid and other welfare programs.

Improper payments are not the only complaint levied against the scholarship program. The report also found that Empowerment Scholarship Account families had $440 million in savings in scholarship accounts, indicating that parents may be stockpiling money instead of spending it on current educational needs.

This is a feature, not a flaw, because it lets families decide what is best for their own children, including saving for future needs. The same logic should apply to other welfare programs.

People can buy dry goods with long shelf lives using taxpayer-funded food stamps. They are never accused of stockpiling food. Why should parents be criticized for saving for their children’s education?

Others worry that the families are spending Empowerment Scholarship Account funds on travel and other unrelated spending. “Honestly, it’s shameful. I don’t know what else to say. These funds are being treated as a kind of a nice windfall,” a critic said.

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This attack is also odd because the defenders of welfare programs frequently tout the importance of letting families spend cash benefits on their highest priorities. Academics and foundations have started basic income experiments around the country where people receive cash with no strings attached. If that’s good for universal basic income, then why isn’t it good for school choice?

Finally, critics complain that Arizona’s education savings accounts sometimes go to wealthier households. The recent media report also found that participants were more likely to live in wealthier areas. Yet supporters of welfare programs regularly let benefits go to wealthy households. School lunch programs have long been means-tested, but President Biden opened eligibility to far more families, including wealthy ones.

“This is a core intervention to improve child hunger and health,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at the time.

Neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Vilsack raised any concerns about benefits going to wealthy households, nor have the many state officials who want to expand meal programs to children in no danger of missing a meal.

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Let’s review the complaints. The education scholarships should be rejected because they have high improper payments, can be used for future needs, can be spent on a wider variety of needs that families identify for themselves and go to people who could pay for alternative schooling on their own.

Yet, aside from the high levels of improper payments, these features have generally been seen as positive by those who want government in the welfare game. Even higher levels of improper payments have been treated by liberal advocates as a tolerable problem for well-meaning programs.

Critics of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts may want to consider whether they are reaching for convenient critiques that could be applied easily to programs they support. Such a discussion would be more than welcome. If only the welfare state received a fraction of the criticism leveled at school choice programs in Arizona and elsewhere.

School choice is less about transferring wealth than it is about giving parents better options. The welfare state, by contrast, is infamous for its complexity and contradictory incentives that often hold back beneficiaries.

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If the activists attacking school choice seriously care about its ostensible challenges, then they should be willing to reach across the aisle to reform welfare too.

• James M. Hohman is director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.