When it comes to tuition tax credits, I'm having a hard time figuring out Gov. Mike Leavitt.
His staff posted a position paper on the governor's Web site that is supposed to go into a little more detail than he gave during his State of the State address last week. This is what it says: "Governor Leavitt is willing to participate in a discussion about tuition tax credits, but only when we have adequately funded public schools. Until then he supports creating educational choices by properly supporting public charter schools."
In Utah, the question of when public schools have been "adequately funded" is like deciding when the temperature in Antarctica is adequately warm to go outside. At least, that is how one side in this debate is likely to see it. Utah, as everyone knows by now, ranks dead last in per-pupil expenditures among the 50 states. How far up the ladder does the state have to climb before education is, in the governor's mind, adequately funded? Or does he realize, as has been demonstrated statistically, that per-pupil expenditures have little, if anything, to do with the way children are educated?
The "adequately funded" position does, of course, give Leavitt some much-needed wiggle room in the big tuition-tax-credit debate that looms at the Capitol. But it also implies that he doesn't buy into one of the chief arguments for a tax credit, which is that it would enhance funding for public education. Or, as a tax credit advocate would put it, public education will be adequately funded only when the people of Utah have true choice in education.
We in Utah are on the threshold of taking the first tentative baby steps down the path toward education choice. Certainly, other states have gone much farther. Other nations have gone farther yet. Sweden, for example, has had total choice in education for more than a decade now. That's plenty of time to study what has happened, which is exactly what two men with doctorate degrees in economics, Fredrik Bergstrom and Mikael Sandstrom, recently did. Granted, their study was funded by the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation, which exists to foster choice in education. But their results, and their methods, are worth a close look.
It is particularly interesting to note that Sweden, a traditionally socialist country, switched to school choice during a period when a more conservative government took over in the early '90s, and yet the Social Democrats, who had strongly opposed the move, made no attempt to reverse the decision when they regained power a few years later.
Sweden and Utah have some things in common. Both are made up of homogenous populations that are now straining to cope with large numbers of immigrants. Neither one had a lot of private schools in operation when it adopted school choice.
That changed quickly in Sweden. The number of private schools today is more than five times larger than it was in the early '90s. The market, as any red-blooded capitalist would tell you, rose up to meet the demand.
Perhaps the most interesting part of the report has to do with the effect competition has had on government schools in Sweden. The authors admit, as Utah educators have complained, that there is a chance all the good parents will remove their children from public schools if given a chance, leaving those schools with students who are unmotivated and who have uncaring parents.
In Sweden, however, this did not happen. The authors have tested more than 20,000 variations of the model they use to study the effects of school choice, taking into account all other variables from the income of parents to their immigrant status and the financial resources at their particular school. "In all cases," they wrote, "the results in the municipal (public) schools were better the larger the share of pupils attending independent schools."
Sweden's situation is unique. When the government there decentralized schools and allowed for choice, it required the government to pay the full cost of any child to attend any school, public or private, that the parents choose. To participate, a private school must meet certain requirements and operate within a broad national curriculum, and they can't discriminate against anyone who wants to attend.
Utah's tuition-tax-credit plan, as defined by a bill sponsored by Sen. Chris Buttars, doesn't go nearly that far. It would provide children with much, but not all, of the money needed to attend a private school. But the Swedish plan would have zero chance of passage here, where the education monopoly is so strong. Choice must come in small steps.
But right now, any step at all would be welcomed. I only hope, in the end, the governor decides to get on board.
Jay Evensen is editor of the Deseret News editorial page. E-mail: even@desnews.com.