West Virginia Watch, Times West Virginian – When the Hope Scholarship, West Virginia’s school voucher program, was enacted, proponents framed the program as one of choice — a way to provide alternative education options to families who could not otherwise afford it. Now, on the eve of the program’s expansion — set to double or even triple in annual cost amid unprecedented public school closures across the state — lawmakers will have the opportunity to decide the best way to allocate budget dollars to ensure West Virginia students receive an accountable, high-quality education.
Read the full op-ed.
In 2021, our state lawmakers placed a ticking time bomb in the Hope Scholarship bill that simultaneously made the program less about expanding choice and far more expensive, and now we’ve reached the point where it’s going to explode. That bomb was a trigger provision to make the program “universal” next school year. This was not to give more children “choice” at all but to subsidize the private school tuition of families who are already in — and can already afford — private school. Proponents can no longer argue this is simply money following the student from public schools to private schools — it’s nine figures in new taxpayer funds lawmakers have to squeeze into an already shrinking budget for families who were never in the public school system to begin with.
And as program officials recently admitted, this is nothing new for the Hope Scholarship. Ninety percent of the vouchers have gone to students who “would have done alternative education without Hope.” This is a damning admission that the program has not achieved its supposed purpose of providing choice to families who could not afford it.
