Arkansas professor makes case for school choice in North Dakota

FARGO — A professor of education policy says North Dakota is “ready to pop” when it comes to adopting a private “school choice” program.

Patrick Wolf, with the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, spoke about “School Choice in North Dakota” at North Dakota State University on Friday, Nov. 1.

He was a guest of the Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth as part of a fall speakers series.

Wolf said 34 states have implemented some form of private school choice, including Montana, South Dakota and Minnesota.

“There’s one state there, North Dakota, that is a bit of a donut hole,” Wolf told the audience, as he referred to a map on a projected screen.

But he predicts the state won’t be an “outlier” for long.

The North Dakota House put forward a bill in 2023 to offset costs of private school tuition,

but Gov. Doug Burgum vetoed it and an attempt to overturn the veto failed.

House Bill 1532 would have set aside $10 million from the state’s general fund for an educational reimbursement program.

Wolf said Burgum’s inability to get a school choice program passed during his eight years as governor of a red state hurt the governor’s efforts to become presidential nominee Donald Trump’s choice as vice president.

“That was a strike against him,” Wolf said of the governor.

In Burgum’s veto message at the time, he said while his administration supports school choice, the bill was not the comprehensive solution needed and it fell short especially for rural areas far from any existing nonpublic schools.

In opposing the bill at the time,

Nick Archuleta, president of North Dakota United,

said it was about using taxpayer dollars to allow private schools to choose the students they want to educate.

He also said rural schools would end up “subsidizing private education for urban families.”

Kirsten Baesler, who is running for a fourth term as superintendent of public instruction, has said North Dakota should not fund school choice programs at the expense of public schools.

“This cannot be an either-or conversation,”

Baesler said in an interview last month with the North Dakota Monitor.

School choice programs come in four forms, Wolf said: school vouchers, tax credit scholarships, individual tax credits and education savings accounts, or ESAs.

South Dakota and Montana both have tax credit scholarships, with the latter also offering ESAs, while Minnesota has an individual tax credit to benefit parents who self-fund their child’s private schooling, according to Wolf.

Tax credit scholarships were developed, he said, because some states have constitutional prohibitions against the government directly supporting religious organizations.

An ESA system, similar to a health savings account, would fit best in North Dakota, he said, because of its flexibility.

“They can accommodate rural areas that wouldn’t have a critical mass of students to go to a traditional private school, but also accommodate the existing private schools,” he added.

Wolf made a case for school choice by saying while the government has a responsibility to support every child’s education, it doesn’t have to control the delivery of education as a result.

He compared North Dakota to West Virginia, also a rural state with a handful of medium size cities, where an ESA program was adopted three years ago.

Based on the states’ similarities, he said it’s estimated North Dakota would have approximately 1,100 participants in an ESA program the first year, about 2,700 the second year and a little less than 5,000 the third year.

There would be net costs to the state the first two years, but by year three, Wolf said the state would get back $1.11 in savings for every dollar spent.

He also maintains his research and that of colleagues shows private school choice programs can boost high school graduation rates, thus leading to lifetime income and health benefits for those individuals and communities as a whole.

He also said studies indicate test scores of public school students go up when those public schools are pressured by the launch of a school choice program.

Two private school leaders attended Wolf’s presentation.

“He’s got a lot of evidence to put to bed some of the fears and misconceptions, stereotypes, of why we can’t possibly do school choice,” said Mike Hagstrom, president of JPII Catholic Schools.

Bob Otterson, president of Oak Grove Lutheran School, echoed that statement.

“What I think we heard today from Dr. Wolf is there’s actual research. It’s not just a feeling about what people have,” he said.