South Dakota has a stealth voucher program that launders public tax dollars through tax rebates to insurers who give out scholarships to private schools. Like so many other Republican policies, school voucher programs tend to redistribute wealth from the public at large to Republicans’ well-off friends:
The important thing to understand about school vouchers is that they’re a redistribution of wealth to people with enough money to already be sending their children to private schools.
When Arizona started offering “universal” vouchers, where everyone qualifies, regardless of income, 78 percent of the students who applied in the program’s inaugural year were already not enrolled in public schools. That’s a similar percentage relative to both Wisconsin and New Hampshire but is blown out of the water by Arkansas. There, during the first year of the program, 95 percent of the participants hadn’t attended public schools the year before. In other words, the vast majority of the money went to people already paying for private schools, not parents who longed to send their kids to private schools but could not afford it. Vouchers do not exist to increase school choice for students from lower-income families; they exist to ensure that people who already send their children to private schools get taxpayer dollars to do so [Lisa Needham, “School Vouchers Are Even Worse Than You Think,” Public Notice, 2023.10.18].
It’s too bad we can’t get Republicans to treat private schools the way they used to treat abortion: you can choose private school if you want, but you don’t get to spend any public dollars on it.
Public schools are a public good that serves to keep society working for everyone’s benefit. You don’t get to check out of paying for public schools just because you send your kids to private school.
Think of public schools like snowplows: you are welcome to buy yourself a skid steer or a full-size plow to clear your driveway and maybe punch a path down the alley or out to the county oil while the city or county plows are still busy with the main routes. But you don’t get to stop chipping in for the city and county plows that ensure everyone can get to the grocery store and the courthouse and work and school after a blizzard and which will still come plow your alley or county road if your plow breaks down or you find you can’t afford to maintain it any more.
And we sure as heck ought not give you a tax rebate to help you buy and maintain the snowplow you were probably going to buy anyway when most of the public still relies on the public plows that guarantee their public good to everyone.
Seven mountains, the John Birch Society and incrementalism, Cory. It’s just that simple.
Yup. These programs are often called “school choice.” They ain’t. Taxpayer money mostly goes to the students whose parents are able to afford the private school tuition, and have already made the “choice” to attend private school. The “school choice” programs are simply welfare programs that allows Republicans to funnel tax money to themselves. Taxpayers get to fund two school systems instead of one, while Republicans walk off with the welfare dollars they don’t need.
As an expat living in a town that doesn’t have or need snowplows, I find your analogy excellent.
Wisconsin is dealing with it, too.
https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2023/10/16/voucher-lawsuit-takes-on-privatization-of-wisconsin-schools/
My opinion on vouchers is the same as my opinion on homeschooling:
Neither are necessary 99.999% of the time.
The observation that vouchers are a way for the wealthy to funnel public funds to the wealthy is one of the motivations conservatives have for their undermining public education. Private schools for the most part do not provide an advantage in education outcomes compared to public schools, so conservatives have been on a mission to undermine public schools. “Accountability” measures like No Child Left Behind that are impossible to meet, draining funds, and culture wars all serve to undermine the private schools’ competition. Absent a villain, public schools cannot be the savior. The effect has been the destruction of one of this nations finest institutions and generations of children suffering for being used as pawns in a greedy money grab.
The final rub is that often these private schools exclude students, students who have the greatest need of strong public education.
There are 88 private schools in South Dakota, serving13,681 students. Most of those are in Sioux Falls, Aberdeen, Rapid City, Watertown, Brookings, etc. The rest are scattered – 1 per county over 11 counties, 2 per county over 6 counties, and the rest of South Dakota has none. So… most students in South Dakota don’t have access to any private schools without long bus trips or basically relocating for the school year with the Grandma and Grandpa, who’ve retired to town. In other words, rural students will get none of this money. And people who live in the big cities of South Dakota can afford the private tuition. Yes, it’s welfare for the rich, Republican’s favorite kind.
https://www.privateschoolreview.com/south-dakota
I would also add that if a private school wants to go public, by that I mean accept public funds, then require that school to play by the public school rules: 1) accept EVERY student who wants in, 2) the voucher must cover the WHOLE cost of any student’s education, 3) any and all rules and regulations that apply to public schools also apply to any school accepting public funds including representation on boards and open records for public scrutiny of how public funds are budgeted and spent. With those conditions I would welcome to public education our new providers.
It is also a form of segregation. Some buttholes don’t want their kid attending school next to ‘those people’. It’s another creative way of ‘othering’ in order to maintain hierarchy. White Christian patriarchal affluent supremacy. At all cost. I’m kidding. At no cost. Well, at the cost of ‘the others’.
The wealthy are suffering, suffering I say, from unfair, egregious taxation. They have needs as well that need to be met by the government, like private education, segregated from the poor, for their children. It’s that simple. The Republican Party must respond.
Another Zitt-less comment free day?
spot-on, Cory, as usual!