Voucher group buys full-page ads to counter News story

The main group promoting state vouchers to help pay private school tuition bought full-page newspaper ads Friday seeking to counter a Deseret Morning News story that evaluated whether vouchers would truly make tuition affordable.

The newspaper had reported Thursday that even if voters approve giving $3,000 a year per child in vouchers to non-wealthy families, they would still need on average another $4,800 or so per child to pay typical private school tuition in Utah.

Parents for Choice in Education bought full-page ads, costing $8,400, Friday in the News and Salt Lake Tribune complaining that the News included in its calculations "a few 'Mercedes' schools that cost more than $50,000" a year in tuition, which it said distorts how affordable tuition can be, "making it too high."

"It was a very biased article," said Parents for Choice in Education spokeswoman Leah Barker. "There is a lot of debate about whether vouchers would make private schools do-able for low-income families. We want to make sure they understand the answer is yes."

But Lisa Johnson, spokeswoman for the anti-voucher Utahns for Public Schools, said, "The Deseret News analysis is consistent with all other impartial analyses. Numbers from PCE are inconsistent, and they're the only ones with motivation to mislead voters about the true cost of tuition and the true cost of the voucher law."

The News developed its data by calling all private schools listed by the State Office of Education. Some refused data or did not respond. The newspaper also excluded from calculations many treatment centers for drugs and other problems where overall treatment costs (usually very high) did not break out tuition for schooling there.

The research resulted in a database of 64 private schools, in which more than 13,700 of the 16,000-plus private school students estimated by the state are enrolled. It included five expensive boarding schools because they could qualify for vouchers.

The weighted average for tuition (taking into account how many students pay tuition at different levels) at all 64 schools was $7,824.

If boarding schools are removed from calculations, the weighted average for tuition is still $6,935 — or more than double what a voucher could provide. (But that still includes seven schools with tuition higher than $10,000, including well-known Rowland Hall-St. Marks at $13,692 and the Waterford School at $13,906.)