State and local experience proves school vouchers are a failed policy that must be opposed

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Recently passed school voucher bills in four states are part of an extreme and unpopular campaign to defund and privatize public schools. As momentum builds around efforts to divert public funds to private schools, lawmakers and advocates should recommit to opposing harmful voucher bills and supporting greater investment in public education. Research and advocacy by educators and champions of public education in the states can serve as a guide.

On Tuesday, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce held a congressional hearing on voucher expansion featuring three voucher advocates and one opponent. The hearing comes amid an intense, coordinated push this year by anti-public school advocates who have long sought to privatize public education, in part through state-level efforts to enact private school voucher programs in state legislatures across the country.

School vouchers—which include traditional private school subsidies, Education Savings Accounts, and private school tuition tax credits—are diversions of public funds to private and religious schools. Efforts to implement and expand voucher programs in states across the country are key to the relentless and enduring campaign to defund and then privatize public education, a movement that also includes manufacturing mistrust in public schools and targeting educators and their unions.

Despite overwhelming evidence of the harms of voucher programs and the unpopularity of attacks on public education, right-wing anti-education privatization advocates have prioritized the creation or expansion of school voucher programs as a policy goal this year in statehouses across the country. As of March 2023, public education advocates are tracking voucher bills in at least 24 states. As of mid-April, universal voucher bills—which will allow all families, regardless of income, to use public funds to pay for private education—have passed in four states: Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, and Florida. Meanwhile, voucher expansion bills have failed in at least six states so far in 2023: Georgia, Texas, Idaho, Virginia, Kentucky, and South Dakota.

https://www.epi.org/blog/state-and-local-experience-proves-school-vouchers-are-a-failed-policy-that-must-be-opposed-as-voucher-expansion-bills-gain-momentum-look-to-public-school-advocates-for-guidance/

[live love laugh]

2. I agree wholeheartedly. Let public schools stay public. Period.

[Rebl2]

4. Absolutely

Even charter schools have been closed in our area because they don’t meet the state standards. Don’t they take money from districts leaving less for public schools?

[live love laugh]

5. Yes and now homeschooling qualifies making it even worse.

[Rebl2]

6. My sister

tried this at one time with her youngest daughter. It maybe lasted two quarters and then she was back in public school. Her daughter did not like being home schooled because she missed her friends and really, I doubt my sister was all that great at teaching. They live in CA and I am in the Midwest, so I doubt I got the whole story and I didn’t ask much. This daughter was like an only child because her siblings were out of the house doing their own thing in her later grade school years. I am glad she went back to public school. She graduated and became a teacher with a emphasis on English and art.

[yankee87]

3. Grifting

Just another way to grift money and pass along money to the Qpublican masters.