Jim Crow 2.0

School vouchers. Here in Connecticut we have Charter Schools instead of voucher they are public schools that operate independently from the traditional public school districts, with more flexibility in areas like curriculum, staffing, and scheduling. However, all laws apply to them. Including Title IX and the non-discrimination laws.

Billions in taxpayer dollars now go to religious schools via vouchers

The rapid expansion of state voucher programs follows court decisions that have eroded the separation between church and state.

The Washington Post

By Laura Meckler and Michelle Boorstein

June 3, 2024

Billions in taxpayer dollars are being used to pay tuition at religious schools throughout the country, as state voucher programs expand dramatically and the line separating public education and religion fades.

School vouchers can be used at almost any private school, but the vast majority of the money is being directed to religious schools, according to a Washington Post examination of the nation’s largest voucher programs.

Vouchers, government money that covers education costs for families outside the public schools, vary by state but offer up to $16,000 per student per year, and in many cases fully cover the cost of tuition at private schools. In some schools, a large share of the student body is benefiting from a voucher, meaning a significant portion of the school’s funding is coming directly from the government.

[…]

The programs, popular with conservatives, are rapidly growing in GOP-run states, with a total of 28 states plus D.C. operating some sort of voucher system. Eight states created or expanded voucher programs last year, and this year, Alabama, Georgia and Missouri have approved or expanded voucher-type programs. Some recently enacted plans are just starting to take effect or will be phased in over the next few years.

The question is why is are vouchers so popular with Republicans?

Could it be that the schools can discriminate? Jim Crow 2.0

This is an old article from 2016 but it still is true today.

Why Private School Vouchers Could Exacerbate School Segregation

The Century Project

Among the many concerning consequences of Donald Trump’s election is the very real threat that the American public education system, which has educated generations of school children, will be privatized.

Donald Trump campaigned on a program to employ $20 billion in federal funds to promote school choice, including private school vouchers. Mike Pence has a track record on the issue, having pushed for privatization of public education in Indiana. And Trump’s nominee for Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, has long championed private school vouchers throughout the country.

One of many causes for concern about private school vouchers—alongside questions of academic effectiveness, access, and funding—is the effect that such policies have on socioeconomic and racial segregation.

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As of 2012, 72 percent of students in private schools were white, compared to 52 percent of public school students. In forty-three out of fifty states, white students in private schools are more likely than those in public schools to attend schools with at least 90 percent white enrollment. In South Carolina, where the gap between public and private enrollment in over 90 percent white schools is greatest, 63 percent of white students in private schools attend such schools, compared to just 5 percent of white students in public schools. But it’s not just in the south where we see large disparities. In New Jersey, 45 percent of white private school students are in schools with at least 90 percent white enrollment, compared to just 15 percent of white public school students.

They disguise it as “Parental Choice” but in truth it is nothing more than racial segregation, private schools can kick out low achievers, LGBTQ+ students. And anyone else that they don’t like because they are exempt non-discrimination laws being a private institution. he National Coalition for Public Education writes,

Private schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers often deny admission to LGBTQ students and students with LGBTQ parents. In addition, many teach anti-LGBTQ curriculum. A 2013 study of a Georgia tuition tax credit program found that “at least 115 private schools [participating in the program] have explicit anti-gay policies or belong to associations that condemn homosexuality.”

In North Carolina, voucher programs also fund schools that have explicit anti-LGBT policies. For example, one school's handbook states that it will refuse to admit and will expel students that are "living in, condoning, or supporting any form of sexual immorality; practicing or promoting a homosexual lifestyle or alternative gender identity.”

I know many people who attend private schools, many of them are on scholarships for sports, most of the families are from upper middle class and upper class families because even with the vouchers many lower middle income families cannot afford private schools even with the vouchers. The Ohio Capitol Journal reports that,

Since the most recent voucher participation numbers were released, Dyer did his own analysis of the voucher program, finding “a very different goal” compared to when it began.

“It’s now going to wealthier, white families to subsidize the decisions they’d already made to send their kids to private schools,” Dyer told the OCJ.

In an analysis he posted to his blog, Dyer said ODE data showed nearly nine in 10 new applications to the voucher expansion went to white students, and more new vouchers for high schoolers went to families making more than $150,000 annually than went to families making less.

Dyer also makes an argument that has been made before by those opposing the voucher expansion: increasing private school voucher program causes “resegregation” in the public schools, with the number of white students who are leaving for private schools, vouchers in hand.

“It’s frankly a perversion of the idea behind a voucher, which was sold as allowing poor students, students of color, students who haven’t traditionally had access to private schools, to have access,” Dyer said in an OCJ interview.

The beginnings of Jim Crow 2.0, they are not even saying now “Separate but equal” they given up that lie altogether.

Always remember, that the goal of the Republican party is to do away with public education, their dream is to return public schools to Reading, Riting, and Rithmatic for the lower classes and private schools for the upper class. To criminalize all LGBTQ+ people, and keep women barefoot, in the kitchen, and pregnant.

Republicans Don’t Want to Reform Public Education. They Want to End It.

Florida’s recent struggles over masks in schools augur a terrifying shift in the right’s approach to education policy.

The New Republic

Kathryn Joyce

September 30, 2021

This May, in a speech at Michigan’s deeply conservative Hillsdale College, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran sketched out a few principles for Republicans to follow. Conservatives, he said, should no longer consider the primary purpose of school to be training students for employment; instead, they should see it as instilling moral values. When it comes to America’s bitterest ideological fights, “the war will be won in education.” And finally, while Republican education policies had played a vital role in advancing “school choice,” the next step was to get so many families to flee public schools that no future administration would be able to undo the damage.

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Democrats responded with an outcry: Conservatives were fulfilling their long quest to defund public education and redirect taxpayer money to private schools. Republicans said that they were merely defending parents’ rights. After all, DeSantis’s executive order, “Ensuring Parents’ Freedom to Choose,” was based on Florida’s new “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” passed this spring to enshrine parents’ right to direct their children’s health care, education, and moral upbringing. (The bill was co-authored by a Florida school board member who is both the wife of the Florida GOP’s vice chair and the co-founder of an anti–mask and vaccine mandate parents’ group that has been protesting school board meetings around the state.)

Vouchers Jim Crow Segregation 2.0 in the new South.