Local opinion: The hidden agenda of vouchers

The Arizona Republican Party has instituted universal education vouchers open to every family in the state. Republican supporters continually repeat that they support universal vouchers because they believe parents are best able to decide what type of education their children should receive.

This argument is deliberately deceptive and covers up the real agenda behind vouchers. At present, Arizona parents can adopt any homeschooling package they want, and Arizona will pay for it. In addition, homeschooled students and those in private schools are not subject to the same standardized tests used to measure the academic performance of public school students. Arizona is now paying for students to use unvetted homeschooling programs and attend schools that do not measure academic achievement.

In Ohio, in 2023, the state government discovered that their vouchers were being used to purchase a homeschool package called “Dissident Homeschool,” which espouses neo-Nazism and is xenophobic, racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic. Arizona parents can use vouchers to purchase the same package to homeschool their children.

Arizona private schools can espouse many of these same ideas, as there are no restrictions on what schools are eligible for voucher funding. Public schools do not espouse such views. Some avid voucher supporters do not want their children to attend public schools for this reason.

The government does not interfere with what parents teach their children as long as they are not breaking the law. Until the passage of universal vouchers, Arizona parents who wanted to send their children to a private school that teaches their political, social, and religious views were perfectly free to do so as long as they paid for this education themselves.

Before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, public schools in many US states (including Arizona) were racially segregated. Such legally sanctioned discrimination is now banned, and public schools are integrated. After public school integration, white parents in many states established private schools to ensure that their children did not attend school with racial minorities. Parents favoring racial segregation are free to use vouchers to evade racially integrated schools.

Public schools accept any resident of the school district. Private schools, by contrast, can select which students to accept. While racial discrimination in school admissions is illegal, private schools can refuse to admit students on many different grounds. They can argue that a child is a behavioral problem, that their academic performance is not good enough, or that they do not have the resources to provide special education. By charging high fees, private schools can efficiently prevent low-income students from attending.

Religious schools can admit only students belonging to their particular religion or denomination. Martin Luther King Jr. described Sunday morning church services as “the most segregated hour in America.” We all know that many religious denominations are not ethnically or racially diverse and that potentially their schools will reflect this lack of diversity.

When Catholics began immigrating to the US in large numbers in the late 19th century, they often faced intensive discrimination from the Protestant majority. In response, Catholic parents established parochial schools and paid for their children to attend. Many Catholic children from low-income families were provided a first-class education in parochial schools. This success story has long been a source of pride for Catholic parents. Catholic schools have been self-funded for well over a century. What has changed? Why is it now essential for the Arizona government to provide public dollars to parents regardless of income?

The GOP says that the parents know best how to educate their children, but apparently this does not apply to Muslim parents. In Texas, the Republican state government has refused to provide vouchers to Muslim parents who want to send their children to Muslim schools. Will the Arizona Republican Party impose the same restriction in our state?