Oregon Allows Teens To Have Sex Changes, But Not #SchoolChoice

A BETTER EDUCATION OR A SEX CHANGE?: While
Oregon allows 15-year-olds to get sex change surgery
without parental awareness, the state remains resistant to
school choice measures.  Photo by Tyler Olson /Shutterstock

by Dr. Chana Cox: As news broke of Oregon allowing 15-year-olds to receive tax-payer funded sex change surgery without parental notification, school choice still remains a controversial issue in the state.

In Oregon this year, school choice advocates introduced Educational Savings Account (ESA) legislation, which failed to get out of committee. If Senate Bill 562 had passed, the state would have made public funds available to parents of disabled or poor children, to be used to pay for educational products and services for their children.

In a July 6 US News and World Report article on Nevada’s new ESA law, which allows almost every Nevada student access to an education program of their choice, Progressive Policy Institute’s David Osborne claimed that ESAs were not needed because public charter schools have proven very effective in reducing educational inequality, and that ESAs would increase educational inequality between minorities and middle-class white students.

How would Osborne’s criticisms apply to Oregon’s SB 562?

In cities like New York, Washington, DC, and New Orleans where tens of thousands of students are enrolled in charter schools like KIPP and Success Academies, more options greatly reduce educational inequality. Comparatively, charters are not an option in the Portland Public School district, because the educational establishment is almost always successful in blocking their creation and expansion. The very few charter schools in the greater Portland metropolitan area are vastly oversubscribed.

Osborne’s argument that the Nevada’s ESAs would increase rather than decrease educational inequality may have some merit. While ESAs expands choice for low-income students, the rich would still have far more choices. Throughout history, the rich and or the politically powerful have had choices that others have not had.

In a Watchdog Arena interview, Cascade Policy Institute’s Senior Policy Analyst Steve Buckstein, one of the drafters of the proposed Oregon ESA legislation, claimed that Oregon’s ESAs would actually decrease inequality. Buckstein explained that the Oregon bill was modeled on the Arizona law, not the Nevada law, so it would be restricted to students with special needs and low-income students. Those families would have far more educational choices than they now have.

Buckstein objected to Osborne’s referring to an ESA as a voucher. He claims it should be thought of as analogous to a rolling Health Savings Account. Parents and students would not simply be given a fixed sum which must be paid in tuition the current year. They could shop around and save ESA funding for future educational expenses. By giving the consumer the power of the purse, Oregon’s ESAs would lead to increased competition in the education market and thus tend to lower costs and increase the quality of education.

Osborne had also argued that since Nevada’s ESA “voucher” would not pay full private school tuition, the poor would still not have access to private schools. The amount of the proposed Oregon ESA would have been $5,100 – $5,700 per student. In Portland, the elite schools charge upwards of $20,000 a year, but there are excellent Catholic and Christian schools which charge $5,000 – $5,600 — less than half the amount spent per student in persistently failing schools in low-income Portland neighborhoods.

Oregon already has at least one privately funded tuition subsidy program for low-income families. According to Cascade’s Kathryn Hickok, the director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund (CSF), the program has always insisted that families pay at least $500 of their tuition themselves. Most Portland CSF families pay significantly more than that.

“This minimum financial requirement is a way to ensure that parents are invested in the choices they are making for their children’s education,” said Hickok. When parents with very little room in their family’s budget are dedicating their own money to tuition, Hickok claims students have a better understanding of the value of the gift they are receiving from their parents and their benefactors. “This whole combination fosters hope, motivation, gratitude, and the desire to succeed and to give to others when they become adults.”

In 2009, House Bill 2754 would have allowed a tax credit for up to $1,000 for individuals and $8000 per business for donations to privately managed scholarship programs for low-income students. Such programs have been successful in other states. As reported by Watchdog, Arizona business people have already met this year’s targets for such voluntary contributions to scholarship programs for low income students.

Some states in the forefront of educational reform have charters, ESAs, tax credits, and even vouchers for the needy. Neither ESA nor tax credit legislation has ever made it to a vote in the Oregon Legislature.
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Chana Cox is a Lewis and Clark Senior Lecturer, Emerita. She received her B.A. from Reed College in mathematics, and her Ph.D. from Columbia University in the history of the philosophy of science. She is a scholar of Leibniz and of 17th century philosophy of science, but has also taught courses in political theory, business, intellectual history, the classics, and the American Founding. Article first shared on WatchDog published by The Franklin Center for Government & Public Integrity.

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