Those of you who follow my blog know that I am against student vouchers, as more states use them our public schools are feeling the pinch. Take this with a grain of salt but there is some truth here.
School vouchers are being used mainly by families whose children are already in private school—and state budgets are being drained as a result.NEABy: Tim Walker, Senior WriterFebruary 2, 2024Key Takeaways:
- Since the enactment of universal school voucher programs, states are struggling with the programs’ cost and lack of transparency and accountability.
- Overwhelmingly, school vouchers are being used by families with children already in private school to subsidize their tuition.
- Voucher programs’ skyrocketing costs will divert funding not only from public schools, but also other critical public services.
In December 2022, Arizona became the first state in the nation to enact a universal school voucher program. The Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA), as it is called, provides roughly $7,000 of taxpayer dollars per child to cover a wide array of broadly defined “educational expenses,” including private school tuition, home-schooling, and other private expenses—with very few strings, if any, attached.Enrollment has skyrocketed, quickly surpassing 70,000 students by the beginning of 2024.While it may still be growing, Arizona’s ESA voucher program is also a fiasco. All the promises made over the past year by the law’s most zealous supporters have run aground amid reports detailing the program’s astronomical cost and lax accountability. Voucher laws generally do not require any sort of disclosure from private schools about their finances, how they operate, or how they measure student achievement. Arizona’s is one of the least accountable voucher programs in the nation.
I am totally against vouchers because it siphons funds from public education, because they cherry pick the best, and because they can discriminate and that is what makes this a trans issue, they can discriminate against us with impunity.
For school privatization advocates, the lack of oversight and other failings are a feature, not a bug.“These lawmakers don’t care about the strain on the budget or what this does to our schools and our communities,” says Michael McGowan, a high school teacher in Glendale. “It’s just an attack on public education. Taking money out of the system, draining resources, weakening our schools— that’s the point.”
I like the way Connecticut does it with magnet schools, private companies run what I call specialty, that have schools for the arts, sciences, etc. and they are open to all students. Some of the funding however does go to religious schools that can discriminate.
When it was being debated, educators and community organizations urged opposition to the program. They warned that far from serving lower income families, vouchers would serve private school families, siphon valuable funds from public schools, and disrupt and destabilize the state budget.All of that, and more, has happened across the state.
Those that were already sending their children to private schools continued sending them but with lower tuition. Meanwhile public schools funding went down with middle to lower income students.
This disturbing trend can be seen in other states that have enacted sweeping voucher laws. When Ohio expanded access to its "EdChoice" voucher program in 2020, the percentage of participating students who were already enrolled in private school jumped from 7 percent in 2019 to 55 percent in 2023. And new data from the Iowa Department of Education reveal that two-thirds of students in that state who received a voucher were, again, already enrolled in private school, and only about 13% of recipients had ever previously attended a public school.
This is just a subsidy for the rich while screwing the pour and at the same time cutting the safety net of WIC, SNAP, and other social programs.
The Republicans have cut the top income level brackets and putting the tax burden on the middle and low income workers.
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