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MARYLAND GOVERNOR TRIES TO END SCHOOL CHOICE FOR LOW-INCOME FAMILIES

COMMENTARY Education


MARYLAND GOVERNOR TRIES TO END SCHOOL CHOICE FOR LOW-INCOME FAMILIES

Apr 17, 2023 4 min read
COMMENTARY BY
Delano Squires @DelanoSquires

Research Fellow, Richard and Helen DeVos Center

Delano is a Research Fellow in Heritage’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for
Life, Religion, and Family.
Maryland Governor Wes Moore speaks before U.S. President Joe Biden during the
annual House Democrats Issues Conference on March 1, 2023 in Baltimore,
Maryland. Drew Angerer / Getty Images


KEY TAKEAWAYS

Families and students in Maryland can breathe a sigh of relief after lawmakers
agreed to provide $9 million in funding for the state’s school
choice scholarship.

Moore and anti-school choice advocates claim public dollars should not go to
private schools. Yet they apply this stance only to K-12 education.

The politicians who try to convince you that they understand your plight because
you share the same skin tone often serve special interests instead.

Copied

Families and students in Maryland can breathe a sigh of relief after lawmakers
agreed to provide $9 million in funding for the state’s school
choice scholarship program for low-income families. The program was originally
on the new governor’s chopping block.

Gov. Wes Moore’s fiscal year 2024 budget called for a 20% cut to the state’s $10
million scholarship program. He also stated his desire to entirely phase out the
Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today, or BOOST, program, even
though its price tag is a pittance compared to the state’s record $8.8
billion in spending on K-12 public schools.

Lawmakers in Annapolis restored $1 million in cut funding and removed language
that would have eventually ended the program.

Moore’s initial plan to cut BOOST scholarships is a useful reminder that in
politics, historic “firsts” often help candidates more than their
constituents. Those constituents include many low-income students in Baltimore
who likely felt a rush of pride seeing a black man ascend to the state’s highest
office.

Moore himself stressed the historic nature of his gubernatorial victory. Indeed,
he was sworn in on the Bible once owned by Frederick Douglass.

While Moore paints himself as a proud son of Baltimore, he actually
attended Riverdale Country School, a tony private school with ivy-covered
buildings that sits on 27.5 acres in the Bronx, New York. Tuition and fees there
currently total $61,305 per year. The governor later graduated from another
private school, Valley Forge Military Academy and College, before enrolling at
Johns Hopkins University.

Moore’s early education surely fueled his long list of professional
accomplishments, so it is unlikely that he opposes private schools in principle.
It is hard to imagine him managing the state’s budget if he had attended one of
the 23 Baltimore schools that did not have a single student who was proficient
in math in 2022.

The parents working to save the BOOST program want the same fighting chance for
their children that the governor’s mother wanted for him.

BOOST is not perfect by any means. The average scholarship is less than $3,500,
a fact that likely explains why the program serves a disproportionate number of
students who were already enrolled in private schools. But the interest groups
and ideologues who want to shutter BOOST do not oppose it because it serves too
few families.

Moore and anti-school choice advocates claim public dollars should not go to
private schools. Yet they apply this stance only to K-12 education. No one has
ever called for restricting the use of publicly funded Pell grants only to
public universities. Perhaps that is because there is not a union for college
professors and university administrators that is as politically influential as
local and national teachers unions. Both oppose expanding charter schools and
any type of school choice voucher program. 

The same groups have encouraged the last two Democrats in the White House to cut
a similar program in Washington, D.C. Congress created the D.C. Opportunity
Scholarship Program in 2004 after local parents organized an effort to provide
education options for low-income students. One of Barack Obama’s first acts as
president was to try to axe the program. Ultimately, he was unsuccessful.

President Donald Trump increased funding for the program, but the political
football was tossed again in 2021, when the Biden administration took over. Much
to the delight of the National Education Association, the nation’s largest
teachers union, one of the first things the current administration did was move
to phase out the program. 

In Maryland, Moore’s initial plan to phase out the BOOST program would’ve meant
fewer chances for students from low-income families to get a good education.
Instead of pulling the plug, Maryland lawmakers should follow the example of
other states that have embraced innovative school choice policies.

Neighboring West Virginia, for example, is one of five states that have moved
to universal choice programs for all students that focus on funding students,
not systems. These states recognize that the funding source and beneficiaries in
a “public” education systemmatter more than the way it is delivered—public,
private, or home-school.

Seven other states have developed education savings accounts for specific
populations only, including low-income families and students with special
needs. 

These programs put the key decisions about a student’s academic future in the
hands of the people who care about them most—their parents.

What is happening in Maryland should be a cautionary tale to all voters. The
politicians who try to convince you that they understand your plight because you
share the same skin tone often serve special interests instead.

Any politician who opposes school choice should send their own children to
the low-performing public schools that they consign poor families to attend.

Progressives claim to work on behalf of the poor and middle class. But when it
comes to school choice, their message is clear: Teachers’ unions matter more
than students, and private schools are only for people who can afford them. 

This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal

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