Opponents of school choice have long made the argument that measures such as the provisions of education vouchers or tuition tax credits to the parents of children who want to opt out of poor quality public schools would siphon funds from the public schools and erode the tax base they need to survive. Public schools, they argue, already suffer from inadequate spending and need every bit of support they can get. Despite the fact that millions of children across the nation are trapped in manifestly failing public schools, parents seeking an alternative for their children should still be required to pay entirely out of pocket for the privilege of opting out — in addition to the significant taxes they already fork over to support the local schools.
The hypocrisy of this argument (most often made by members of a monopolistic education establishment more interested in self-preservation than in the quality of education provided to our children) has just been laid bare by some of the best investigative reporting in recent memory. According to a recent series of articles in the Daily Caller, an astonishing number of the 88,000 children attending D.C. public and charter schools actually live in Maryland, and D.C. Public Schools officials are doing virtually nothing to enforce residency requirements for enrollment. The reporters found that as many as 40 percent of the cars observed dropping off and picking up students (DCPS only provides busing for children with special needs) had Maryland license plates. Follow up with publicly available records confirmed that the children resided with one or both parents outside D.C. public school boundaries in Maryland.
D.C. maintains a lottery system for admission to public and charter schools in the city; while residence within school boundaries ostensibly guarantees admission to non-charters, there is no such preference for D.C. charter schools (and a small number of “citywide schools”), only city residency is required. While enrollment in the D.C. Public Schools system plummeted in the 1980s and 90s, it is now exploding with the city’s revival, and waiting lists for good schools typically number in the hundreds. The waiting list for charter schools is about 19,000 names long. Unlike some surrounding jurisdictions, the District offers free pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds (with after-school programs), an attractive enticement for parents who work in D.C. and seek to avoid the costs of day care and fake their addresses. Graduates of D.C. Public Schools also get in-state tuition rates for any college in the United States.
Since D.C. public schools cost taxpayers almost $30,000 per child per year and families are paying exorbitant amounts of money to live in good school districts, one might think that sufficient incentives exist for enforcing requirements of residency and prosecuting the rampant fraud. In fact, due to the outcry from D.C. parents with children on those waiting lists, the D.C. Council passed anti-residency fraud laws over five years ago, but public school officials have crippled the measures through lack of resources and staffing.
DCPS assigned precisely one staff member to investigate residency fraud, and only one violator was identified in 2015. When the D.C. Council looked into enforcement several years ago, it found no evidence that even one fine had been levied. Former Council Chairman Kwame Brown acknowledged that “the reality is that there is no incentive for schools to pursue potential fraudulent activity, because if could [result in] a reduction in their enrollment” and subsequent reduction in funding.
When the subject is raised by frustrated parents with school administrators or DCPS officials, they are routinely told that “complex” family situations and extended families with relatives who live inside the District complicate attempts to determine residency. But clearly, eligibility for school attendance in the law is based on where the child resides, not on having relatives in D.C., and if reporters are able to use public records to figure this out in short order, so can DCPS officials. The truth is, DCPS has gutted enforcement capacity since the new laws were passed, terminating the contract of a firm hired to investigate in the wake of the Council’s push to crack down on fraudsters, and raising the threshold of proof required to pursue an investigation. Not that it matters that much: The fact that no fines have been levied means that those determined to flout residency requirements on the backs of D.C. taxpayers can rest assured that no action will be taken against them.
This blatant lack of serious intent in enforcing residency requirements, which costs D.C. taxpayers millions of dollars per year, makes a mockery of the oft-heard contention that allowing families more school choice would undermine the tax base for public education. D.C. public schools are costing the city’s taxpayers more, per pupil, than every other education system in the nation at almost $30,000 per year.
What makes it even more infuriating is that the District Department of Education under former Mayor Vincent Gray made a concerted effort to force special needs students who had been granted placements outside of the public school system (as a result of the manifest and well-documented inadequacy of DCPS special education) back into D.C. public schools in an effort to save money. The number of students funded for placements out of the DCPS system was cut from approximately 2,000 to around 800, and the effort to reduce spending on these students was undertaken quite blatantly on the basis of budget targets rather than their individual special education needs, as required by the law. In other words, DCPS officials made it a priority to reduce spending on children with special needs instead of targeting the obvious fraud engaged in by thousands of non-D.C. residents using false addresses to get a free ride for their children from D.C. taxpayers, resulting not only in the lengthy waiting lists for children residing in the city, but in overcrowded schools and a chronic scarcity of resources.
The jury is out on whether new D.C. school chancellor, to be appointed this fall, will deal more seriously with the problem of rampant fraud in order to protect D.C. taxpayers. But until school choice opponents grapple with the hypocrisy of the education establishment in cases like this — where public school officials and administrators act with blatant disregard for the interests of families and students in an effort to maximize their own budgets — we can take their protestations of concern for the vitality of public school systems with a large grain of salt.
Brian Robertson is CEO of Crispin Solutions, a public affairs and communications consulting firm, and co-founder of The Common Trust, a public policy group. Thinking of submitting an op-ed to the Washington Examiner? Be sure to read our guidelines on submissions.
