School Voucher Math

To hear some voucher fans talk, they just want their own money back.

For instance, here's Julie Emerson, former legislator and now Louisiana Governor Jess Landry's chief of staff, explaining the LA GATOR taxpayer-funded voucher program.

It’s this basic principle of your tax dollars that you send to the government to educate your child, and we want you to have more flexibility in how those dollars are spent. You’re all sending your tax dollars to Baton Rouge, and you all want your child to be educated the best way that you see fit, and you would like to see those dollars follow your child into that education situation of choice, because every child learns differently.

Except that this is all a lie. Let's use Louisiana as an example.

According to tax-rates.org, the median property tax in Louisiana is $243 per year (that's on a house worth the median value of $135,400). Using census figures, worldpopulationreview.com figures the median property tax rate across all 64 counties is $732. If we go county by county, the lowest median property tax is $199 in West Carroll Parish and the top median rate is in Orleans Parish-- $2,428. 

For 2025-26, the GATOR program will provide the following amounts to families--

Up to $15,253 for IDEA students
$7,626 for students whose family have an income below 250% of federal poverty guidelines
$5,243 for other eligible students

The federal poverty guidelines say that 250% for a family of four is $80,375. 

So let's say Mr. and Mrs. Median live in a median home and pay $300 a year in property tax (I'm rounding up to make the math easier). Let's say they live in that house for fifty years. That's a grand total of $15,000 paid in taxes. Let's say they have two little median children. We'll even assume they are "other eligible." That means $5,243 per year per child for 13 years, or a grand total of $136,318. Even I do this math with the top median tax amount of $2,428 for fifty years, I get a total tax bill of 121,400. 

In other words, property tax costs do not cover the cost of vouchers. The voucher program is not simply letting taxpayers decide where their tax dollars go-- they also get to decide where their neighbors' tax dollars go. The only scenario in which this becomes true is a couple with a very expensive home and just one child. For all other parents, the more kids they have (and the more special needs those children have) the more necessary it is for "your tax dollars that you send to the government to educate your child" to be supplemented by your neighbors' tax dollars

This example was Louisiana, but the point holds true in virtually every voucher state. Voucher users are not simply getting to control their own tax dollars, but also the tax dollars of many, many other people.

Also, if we are going to adopt the legislative principle that taxpayers should get to decide exactly what their tax dollars are spent on, I have a few thoughts about my tax dollars and the US military. 

But that's not what's happening here. Voucher users are most definitely not just getting their own tax dollars handed back to them; they are getting to appropriate the dollars of many other taxpayers, whether those taxpayers like the idea or not. Arguments like Emerson's are dishonest, but too rarely called out.