Jay-Z’s Roc Nation has thrown its support behind a push for school vouchers in Pennsylvania — injecting star power into a campaign being resurrected by Republicans to designate millions of dollars in the state budget to pay for low-income students to attend private schools.
The voucher proposal, dubbed the Pennsylvania Award for Student Success (PASS), has been pitched by proponents as a way to help needy students escape failing schools. But it’s hugely controversial: Democrats and teachers’ unions say the state should instead be investing in its underresourced public education system, while experts say voucher programs don’t actually improve — and often hurt — academic performance.
Advertisem*nt
At an event Monday promoting PASS in North Philadelphia, Roc Nation’s managing director of philanthropy, Dania Diaz, said the program was “not anti-public education,” but “simply another avenue for students to access if they want to.”
Here’s what to know about the proposal and the rapper and entrepreneur’s involvement in the effort:
What is the PASS proposal?
The proposal would give scholarships ranging from $2,500 for a half-day kindergarten student up to $15,000 for a student with special needs to attend private school. In order to be eligible, a student would have to live within the attendance boundaries of the 15% lowest-achieving public schools in the state and live in a household with income below 250% of the federal poverty level. For a family of three, that’s $62,150.
Lawmakers last year proposed to spend $100 million on the program; Roc Nation is calling for $300 million to be spent statewide.
Who supports vouchers?
Vouchers and similar programs have been long favored by Republican lawmakers, who have been critical of poor-performing public schools and calls for increased funding from teachers’ unions. And some Democrats in urban areas like Philadelphia also support vouchers, saying disadvantaged children should have the same school choice as wealthier peers.
Over the years, school choice supporters have successfully negotiated funding increases to existing Pennsylvania programs that function similarly to vouchers, giving businesses tax credits for donating to organizations that provide scholarships for children attending private schools. Pennsylvania currently spends more than $470 million on those programs each year.
But the prospect of vouchers — which give money directly to families — gained new traction with the election of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who went against his labor allies, and supports them. A voucher proposal last year backed by Senate Republicans and Shapiro led to a budget stalemate with House Democrats; Shapiro ultimately vetoed the plan to pass the budget.
Pennsylvania has also been a top target for Jeffrey Yass, a billionaire and the state’s richest resident. He has spent millions of his personal wealth to try to implement voucher programs and is linked to organizations behind many of the efforts to create a PASS initiative in this year’s budget deal.
Why did Jay-Z get involved?
Diaz, Roc Nation’s philanthropy director, said the company has been engaged in Philadelphia through the Made in America Festival and the REFORM Alliance, a group also backed by Philadelphia rapper Meek Mill that advocates for criminal justice reform.
Jay-Z also has a scholarship fund, Diaz said, calling education “an important pillar for us.”
But this is the first time Roc Nation has waded into state politics around school vouchers, Diaz said. She didn’t comment on who specifically brought the issue to the company’s attention. “We looked at the stats,” Diaz said, referring to low academic proficiency rates among Philadelphia public school students. According to state standardized test results, just over 34% of third through eighth graders in the Philadelphia school district scored proficient or above last year in English language arts; just over 20% scored proficient or above in math.
Seeing that students “are struggling in the public education system, within the lowest-performing schools, we wanted to do something to help the community,” Diaz said.
Why are vouchers controversial?
Critics, however, say the proposal is misguided and will hurt students.
“I want people and parents to know the truth, that vouchers put public money in the pockets of rich while draining resources from public schools and our communities,” said Philadelphia City Councilmember Kendra Brooks at a Monday rally against school vouchers outside the state Capitol building.
“I don’t give a damn what Jay-Z said, or Meek Mill,” Brooks added. “I am a Philadelphia public school parent with proud children, nieces, and grandchildren who attend Philadelphia public schools from K to 12.”
Joshua Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who has studied voucher programs nationally, said initiatives like PASS that Jay-Z is pushing overwhelmingly aren’t successful.
Cowen, who testified before Pennsylvania lawmakers last year, said research has found that voucher programs in other states have resulted in the “largest academic declines ... we’ve seen in the history of education research.”
“This is predatory lending,” Cowen added. “This is pitching a solution to some real problems, but a solution that does not work.”
The problem, he said, is that voucher recipients often end up in poor-quality “pop-up schools, and the subprime schools they bail out.” And around one-quarter of students receiving vouchers “churn out” each year, Cowen said, leaving the private school they attended with the scholarship.
“That is not the recipe for helping at-risk children,” he said. “You can say that and still acknowledge some of the deep systemic failures in the public school sector.”
Diaz said she hasn’t studied other states’ programs. But “we do know this is a program that has very specific criteria, and it’s targeting those who are in greatest need,” she said.
What happens now?
The Pennsylvania Senate is expected to again advance legislation to create the voucher program in the coming weeks, and GOP leaders will try to negotiate it into a final budget deal. Pennsylvania’s state budget is due by June 30, and disagreement over school vouchers last year held up a final budget deal for more than a month.
Until then, advocates on both sides of the issue — including Roc Nation — will be spending millions of dollars trying to influence lawmakers and raise awareness.
The company hosted a “Dine and Learn” session at the Esperanza Community Center on Monday, in the first of a series of events scheduled over the next two weeks. People in PASS T-shirts — volunteers who Diaz said were receiving stipends from Roc Nation — greeted visitors and directed them upstairs to a room featuring a buffet lunch of chicken, rice, and salad, and posters reading that PASS wouldn’t take away money from public schools.
A handful of parents trickled in over the lunch hour, including Waseme Wilson, 48, who lives in Crescentville and was looking for a new school for her son.
“The community I currently own a home in, the school is no good,” said Wilson, who said her older children — who are 28 and 21 — were part of a program that bussed students to different parts of the city.
While her 8-year-old attends a private Christian school with a scholarship, the private school isn’t the right fit, either, she said, and the scholarship doesn’t cover her costs.
Diaz said Roc Nation hopes to reach more parents like Wilson and will be using billboards and digital trucks to further push its campaign.
