Utah Voters Reject Voucher Plan

Winter 2007/2008

	Illustration: J.D. King

Voucher supporters have once again struck out, giving them a 0-8 record at the ballot box.

Utah voters resoundingly defeated a Nov. 6 referendum that would have instituted a statewide, universal plan to use public dollars to pay for tuition at private schools. There wasn't a single county that supported the voucher plan, a defeat all the more significant given Utah's conservative, highly Republican tradition. Statewide, 62 percent of voters opposed the voucher initiative.

"No matter what state, no matter what the plan looks like, voters... are against an unproven and unsound education policy," said Marc Egan of the National School Boards Association.

Overall, vouchers have been defeated in eight ballot measures across the country in recent decades, from Utah to California, Michigan, Colorado, Washington and Maryland. The only existing voucher programs have been set up through legislative votes, usually in Republican-dominated legislatures.

Utah's voucher program was placed on the ballot following a law last spring, which passed by a single vote, that would have given any public school student a voucher up to $3,000 to attend a private school. Utah allows a referendum on new legislation, and voucher opponents immediately mobilized to put vouchers to the test at the ballot box.

Some voucher supporters argued that the main lesson of the Utah defeat is to continue a strategy of limited programs, rather than moving immediately to universal vouchers.

"Most of our success over the last several years [has] been pursuant to what I would call the acorn strategy: small choice programs that grow and give rise to others," said Clint Bolick, a leading voucher supporter now with the Goldwater Institute in Phoenix.

Kristina Wilfore, head of the Washington-based Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, said the Utah vote will clearly make other state legislatures think twice about promoting voucher programs.

"It takes the wind out of the sails because no one wants to champion an issue that's a loser," she said of the Utah vote.

- Barbara Miner

Winter 2007/2008