Nov. 1—FARGO — An education policy professor says North Dakota is “ready to pop” when it comes to adopting a private “school choice” program.
Patrick Wolf, from the University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform, spoke on “School Choice in North Dakota” at North Dakota State University on Friday, November 1.
He was a guest at the Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth as part of a fall speaker 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’s a bit of a donut hole,” Wolf told the crowd, pointing to a map on a projected screen.
But he predicts the state won’t be an “outlier” for long.
The North Dakota House introduced a bill in 2023 to offset the costs of private school education.
but Governor Doug Burgum vetoed it and an attempt to override the veto failed.
House Bill 1532 would have set aside $10 million from the state’s general fund for an education reimbursement program.
Wolf said Burgum’s inability to get a school choice program during his eight years as governor of a red state hurt the governor’s efforts to become presidential candidate Donald Trump’s choice for vice president.
“That was an attack on him,” Wolf said of the governor.
In Burgum’s veto message at the time, he said that while his administration supports school choice, the bill was not the comprehensive solution needed and especially fell short in rural areas far from existing non-public schools.
When they opposed the bill at the time,
Nick Archuleta, President of North Dakota United,
said it was about using taxpayer money to give private schools the ability to choose the students they want to educate.
He also said rural schools would ultimately “subsidize 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 with the North Dakota Monitor last month.
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 exchanges, with the latter also offering ESAs, while Minnesota has an individual tax credit for parents who self-fund their child’s private education, Wolf said.
Tax credit grants were developed, he said, because some states have constitutional bans against the government directly supporting religious organizations.
An ESA system, similar to a health savings account, would be a best fit in North Dakota, he said, because of its flexibility.
“They can accommodate rural areas that do not have such a critical mass of students to attend a traditional private school, as well as accommodate the existing private schools,” he added.
Wolf advocated for school choice, saying that while the government has a responsibility to support every child’s education, it does not have to control education as a result.
He compared North Dakota to West Virginia, another rural state with a handful of mid-sized cities, which adopted an ESA program three years ago.
Based on the agreements between the states, he said North Dakota is estimated to have about 1,100 participants in an ESA program in the first year, about 2,700 in the second year and just under 5,000 in the third year.
There would be a net cost to the state for the first two years, but by the third year the state would get back $1.11 in savings for every dollar spent, according to Wolf.
He also maintains his research and that of colleagues shows that private school choice programs can increase high school graduation rates, leading to lifelong income and health benefits for those individuals and communities as a whole.
He also said research shows that student test scores in public schools rise when those public schools are pressured by the launch of a school choice program.
Two private school leaders attended Wolf’s presentation.
“He has a lot of evidence to undercut some of the fears, misconceptions and stereotypes about 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 the statement.
“What I think we heard from Dr. Wolf today is that there has been actual research done. It’s not just about a feeling about what people have,” he said.
