Mountain States Policy Center recently published an article boasting that private and homeschool families saved Idaho taxpayers $310 million over the most recent school year. The numbers seem impressive. Their math goes something like this:

Idaho pays an average of $8,472 per student for public education (this does not include the amounts covered by federal dollars and local bonds and levies). Mountain States asserts that there are 36,645 students in Idaho that attend private or homeschools. A little quick multiplication and it is easy to see how they came up with their total savings of $310 million. They then proceed to work the math for Washington, Montana, and Wyoming. All this number crunching isn’t just a fun 2nd grade math exercise. It is the foundation for a problematic conclusion.

Mountain States argues that the “savings” offered to the state by families who do not take advantage of the public K-12 schools in Idaho should in turn be used to fund school choice legislation for those families. After all, they are paying for a system they aren’t using and they deserve to get some of those savings in the form of cash, right? It is kind of like arguing that the public should help pay for car drivers’ gas because if they didn’t drive, they might use public transportation instead, which would be a cost to taxpayers. The article is largely an emotional appeal playing loose with the “data.” Let’s take a closer look at each point, in no particular order.

First, it is worth noting that the Idaho Department of Education does not keep track of children attending private schools or homeschools, so Mountain States Policy Center relies on census data and Department of Education enrollment information to come up with their numbers. While the numbers may be reasonable, they are merely estimates and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Second, one of the most egregious flaws in school choice rhetoric is the complaint that when private and homeschool families choose an alternative form of education, they are essentially paying twice for a system they don’t use.

Nobody likes paying for things they don’t use, but to be honest, we do it all the time as taxpayers. Families who choose to use private schools or to homeschool are not the only ones paying for an education system they don’t use. People without kids, parents whose kids are grown, singles, businesses, developers, the elderly, and property owners, pay taxes that, at least in part, pay for public schools. And it isn’t just the public school system that taxpayers fund whether or not they personally use the services. Our tax dollars fund jails that most of us aren’t in, maintain roads that we don’t all drive on, fund parks we don’t all play in, fund welfare services most of us don’t utilize – the list is endless. The simple fact that our tax dollars are used for things that don’t seem to directly benefit us personally isn’t necessarily an indication that something is amiss. It seems a little disingenuous to turn a blind eye to all these other instances of “paying” for things we don’t use to justify new spending because, well, it’s education.

Mountain States’ conclusion also glosses over how public schools are funded. It is certainly complex, but even a cursory examination reveals some basic components: it can be divided into two broad categories—funding to support day-to-day school operations and funding to support capital expenditures for school facilities. Idaho provides school funding for operations through three funding streams, approximately 86% of which are based on a formula driven by the number of students served by a district. In other words, public schools are largely funded based on average daily attendance, not based on the number of children who are eligible to attend. Children who are being educated somewhere other than a public school are not counted for funding purposes. So, while we concur that private and homeschoolers can reduce the amount of funding needed for public education (kind of like the public transportation example above), they are in fact not actually paying for their own children to not be there. Homeschoolers do not pay twice. They pay for what every other taxpayer pays for: a free, uniform system of public schools as mandated by the Idaho State Constitution.

Now that we are clear that private and homeschoolers aren’t burdened by public school costs any more than any other taxpayer, let’s take another look at that “saved” money: these dollars do not actually exist anywhere but on paper. There isn’t a $310 million pot of unspent money, squirreled away to be spent on some future school choice bill. No amount of 2nd grade math can conjure these savings into real dollars to spend. The fact is, school choice legislation, no matter the form it takes, always constitutes a new budget expenditure. Giving the impression that these “savings” are real dollars and will somehow offset a potential $50-90 million school choice tax credit is misleading at best.

The final major assertion made in Mountain States’ article is that families looking to homeschool or send their children to private schools are being “forced into financial difficulty.” This appeal to pity is a gross overstatement of what could be said of virtually any financial difficulty that the government chooses not to pay for. The public school option may not be considered an ideal option, but not paying for the cost of private and homeschool education does not constitute the state “creating hardship”. Further, it isn’t the government’s job to rescue everyone from whatever self-imposed “financial difficulty” they may face, especially when a publicly funded alternative is already available. Publicly funded resources already exist to help students who need flexibility in their educational setting (e.g. Idaho Home Learning Academy is a charter school bridge program run by the Oneida school district that enables enrolled students to receive public funding for educational materials while being educated at home). Public funding of private and homeschools, in all its forms, amounts to public funding of preferences and wants.

Mountain States Policy Center asserts that arguments against school choice shouldn’t be centered on the fiscal impact of such legislation, all the while making a fiscal argument in support of it. It is simply naive not to account for the financial impact of all legislation, but worse, fiscal arguments for school choice perpetuate the myth that the solution to every problem is money.

Frankly, the school choice movement has misdiagnosed the success of homeschooling as a product of funding (only wealthy families can afford it). For decades, the homeschool movement has proven that money is neither the problem nor the solution when it comes to a quality education. Rather, the greatest predictor of homeschool success is conviction and willingness to do the hard thing. And that cannot be bought or paid for. Private and homeschool families, as the Mountain States Policy Center rightfully acknowledges, have chosen a good, hard thing. And they have succeeded beautifully, year after year – without government oversight or a government handout.

To learn more about school choice, go to homeschoolidaho.org/schoolchoice.

Audra Talley is a Homeschool Idaho board member.