Or is it?
The former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos pushed private schools at the determent of pubic schools and the Republicans are pushing voucher in their states along with “parental rights” both are catchphrases for discrimination.
Here are the facts that Idaho school voucher supporters don’t want you to know | Opinion
By The Editorial Board
February 1, 2023
The Idaho Senate Education Committee on Tuesday agreed to print a bill that would bring school vouchers to Idaho. Idaho Sen. Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton, introduced the bill, the “Freedom In Education Savings Accounts,” which would allow Idaho families to collect taxpayer dollars to use for private school tuition. It’s cut-and-paste legislation from the American Legislative Exchange Council. If approved, Idaho wouldn’t be the first state to have vouchers. Other states, such as Wisconsin, Indiana and Arizona, have had vouchers for several years. Utah legislators are considering a school voucher system.
Ask yourself why do Republicans want school vouchers so bad?
During DeVos’s term she pushed vouchers costing funding to be diverted from to public schools to private schools.
In November, the Grand Canyon Institute analyzed the zip code distribution of applications for Arizona’s new universal Empowerment Scholarship Account voucher program. The centrist think tank found:
- High-income zip codes are overrepresented in voucher applications, and low-income zip codes are underrepresented. While only 11% of Arizona’s students live in zip codes with median incomes of more than $100,000, those students made up nearly 20% of the voucher applicants. Meanwhile, more than half of Arizona’s students live in zip codes with median incomes less than $60,000, but those students made up only 32% of the applicants.
- Nearly half (45%) of the applicants came from the wealthiest quarter of students in the state, living in zip codes where the median household income is $80,000 or more.
- 80% of the applicants were not in public school, meaning these students were already attending private schools, being home schooled or are just entering schooling — not being “rescued” from a “failing” school.
- Only 3.5% of all applicants came from zip codes that qualified for the earlier version of school vouchers that sought to help kids living in failing districts.
- Arizona is unable to measure academic impacts of the voucher program because there were no accountability measures in the legislation.
- A school voucher is worth $7,000, but the average private school tuition is over $10,000.
- Private schools can accept or reject students as they choose.
- Total private school subsidies in Arizona have now reached $600 million.
That is 600 million dollars that is no longer going to public schools!
That money is now in the hand of private schools that lower income patents cannot afford even with the vouchers. And it is even worst for religious schools, they can deny anyone who doesn’t follow their religious tenants, they can ban Jews, Muslims, and anyone else not of their faith. They also can ban LGBTQ students and families.
At least three of those reasons — overcrowding, teacher wages and staffing shortages — are direct results of underfunding public education, and perhaps more students would meet grade-level benchmarks, such as third-grade reading, if Nichols hadn’t led the charge to kill a $6 million early childhood literacy grant two years ago. If school voucher advocates are not willing to discuss the negative impacts of school vouchers or come up with solutions to avoid these problems, then we know that this is not a serious proposal, rather an exercise in ideological pandering.
Public education is the bane of the conservatives! They only want the bourgeoisie to have an education, peons only need three Rs skills; "reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic".
The dumbing-down of America, keeping them stupid and give them a scapegoat to blame their troubles on.
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The polls show that the people are behind us but the Republicans don’t care what the people think. CNN wrote in the article “Republicans build momentum as they drive anti-LGBTQ legislation nationwide”…
Much of the recent polling, particularly on transgender issues, has shown conflicting results that are swayed depending on how pollsters framed the issue. For instance, a 2021 Gallup poll showed a majority of Americans believed transgender athletes should only compete on sports teams that match their birth gender. But a 2021 NBC/PBS/Marist poll showed that most Americans were not supportive of legislation that banned transgender athletes from joining sports teams matching their gender identity.
Still, Republican lawmakers, strategists and activists insist that they’ve attracted supporters from beyond the GOP base. They said their conversations have drawn in parents who have concerns about racial or gendered elements in their children’s curriculum after the Covid-19 shutdowns and Americans who have taken notice of prominent transgender women competing on women’s athletic teams and come away with concerns that cisgender women could find themselves at a disadvantage.
The Michigan Gander Newsroom wrote,
EXCLUSIVE POLL: Americans Reject GOP’s Attacks Targeting Teachers and LGBTQ People as ‘Groomers,’ Oppose Anti-LGBTQ Policies
By Keya Vakil
April 21, 202
“People who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape after decades of disinvestment or that health care costs are too high, or that teachers are leaving the profession,” Michigan State Sen. Mallory McMorrow said during a speech on the Senate floor this week.Need to Know
- Voters overwhelmingly reject groups or individuals that describe teachers and LGBTQ people as “groomers.” They also broadly oppose politicians’ most extreme anti-trans measures.
- However, Republican lawmakers have introduced more than 300 bills nationwide targeting LGBTQ individuals.
- 88% of likely voters believe the government “should not have a say in personal matters like a person’s sexual preference or gender identity.”
[...]
When asked about whether they generally support or oppose the laws, 48% of respondents— mainly Democrats and independents—said they opposed them. Forty-two percent of respondents, including 63% of those who identify as Republicans, said they supported such legislation.
And that my friends is it in a nut shell, for the Republicans it is not all about right or wrong but votes.
Update 2/1/23 8:50 PM
Down in Florida they also have vouchers and they have the same problem. The Palm Beach Post had an editorial:
The perceived benefits only go so far. The typical $7,000-plus vouchers won't cover most private school costs. In Florida, according to Private School Review, a website that focuses on private school education trends, costs can range from $9,864 a year in elementary school to $11,079 annually for high school. Worse, the state's voucher program history is littered with private schools that fail to meet minimal academic standards or lack the financial resources to operate, forcing frustrated parents and students to return to their neighborhood public schools.
State leaders have a choice: revitalize public schools, or dilute public school resources by pouring money into two distinct school systems. School-choice supporters will insist the latter constitutes public education. It doesn't. At the moment, lawmakers are tilting toward the wrong option.
Just like the other states, the school voucher program is designed to cripple public schools.
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