An important question this article ignores, is why private school vouchers are chosen over public schools?
Taxpayer money should only be used for public schools.
Vouchers and the illusion of choice are simply there to defund the public school system and remove choice for big swatches of people that can’t afford private school.
I think if you do want to send your kids to a private school it should be with your own money.
How do you figure vouchers are the “illusion” of choice? Do they not provide real, actual choice?
Disagree. Vouchers are the future.
What happens when all schools are more expensive then the vouchers? We saw that happen with higher education, where reducing the state funded option has put the cost of college out of reach for many. Is the idea going forward that education will not be guaranteed?
If the private schools outpaced the public then people would still have the public option. The voucher programs I’ve seen suggested are based on the spending in a public school which is often double to triple of a private school.
These aren’t closed systems. If private schools become more expensive (because vouchers will work like student loans), it will make the cost of schooling in general more expensive (faculty wages, materials, supplies, etc.).
Hell, just look at Arizona and you can see that there is a serve lack of understanding of the cost impact vouchers will have. They originally expected it to save money, now it’s half of their budget’s deficit. https://azmirror.com/2024/06/06/it-costs-arizona-332m-to-pay-for-vouchers-subsidizing-private-school-tuition-homeschooling/
What? A real world example of school vouchers in action?
the program takes money away from the district schools that educate 90% of Arizona’s K-12 students and that universal vouchers are essentially a subsidy for wealthy parents who were already sending their children to private schools before vouchers were available to them.
How is this more choice? Seems like less.
“Failure to rein in these costs means critical areas of state government expenditures will be cut to balance the budget,”
So the actual result is a huge state budget deficit and less services for everyone. Huh. So why would anyone want this?
They won’t work like student loans. There is no debt other than what the government borrows. All they have to do is cap the vouchers at the price public schools pay per student and the locks the cost. Right now private schools are cheaper in 43 out of 50 states.
You should really read up more about how student loans caused the cost of college to grow so fast.
In simple terms, they pumped more money into the system. For grade school, if private schools can charge families 10k per student, if you introduce 7k vouchers, then the schools know they can charge closer to 17k. It would be silly to not leverage the vouchers as a means to siphon government money
Students loans are separate issue unrelated to school vouchers. Since you can borrow almost unlimited funds, schools went to town hiring more unneeded positions and increased the cost
Student vouchers are limited in value. A school would only be able to charge the value of the voucher or the parent would choose public school.
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There is no irony. Vouchers are the future
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Are you implying that only those who attend private school are the future, and public school attendees are not?
Eventually we will eliminate the public school system with a variety of choices.
Such as?
Private schools.
Instead of government funding the education of the population (the current quality being a different topic) you would prefer all education to be privately paid for? In effect removing all education from everyone except those who can afford it?
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“a variety of choices” is just “private schools”?
Not sure you understand what a voucher is. Do you understand how vouchers work?
Why do you want to defund public schools instead of improving them?
The cost per pupil for a k-12 education is almost twice as much in public schools vs private. Twice the money and half the results.
Why do you want to waste money on a failing system?
Do you have a source to back up this claim because it’s completely reversed from anything I’ve seen and I’d like to understand it better.
Ohio cost per pupil in 2020 $13,027
Average Ohio private school cost $7,929 2024.
I thought you said average prices, not one state four years ago.
Edit to add: 2020 doesn’t compare to 2024 prices. This is an apples and oranges comparison.
Here is 43 states.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/42-states-where-private-school-180007815.html
Ohio is spending more per pupil in 2024, they are above $14,000 but I’m having trouble finding the report. The trend is still the same it’s significantly more to educate a kid in public school.
What is insane is the left says we should be more like Sweden. When you agree and say we should do vouchers, they melt down. We spend way too much money on education with poor results. Too much ideology in public schools and not enough education. Back when my kid was in high school; they kept going on about sex , gender and how republicans are bad. The school academics were horrible. We pulled her out and put her in a private school. Her standardized testing scores sky rocketed up. Best thing we ever did.
Who has spoken about Sweden besides you?
My kids spend more time with me then at school and they have a solid foundation and an ability to think critically, I’m not afraid of any scary knowledge they might learn from school, friends, the internet or any other source that I wouldn’t be able to control the rest of their lives and wouldn’t want to anyways.
The left never says we should be more like Sweden?
Who said anything about scary knowledge? It’s the lack of focus on academics.
It’s really hard to have a conversation with you when you skip past anything I say.
They don’t teach that Republicans are bad. They figure that out for themselves using critical thinking since they’re not indoctrinated with all that “god” bs in school.
Not that was an actual class lesson. Packed her ass up and sent her to a private school.
No it wasn’t. Just because you took offense to historical accuracy, doesn’t mean that there was some specific lesson plan to say Republicans are bad.
Providing consumers with choice improves offerings through competition.
If there isn’t a natural monopoly effect. Look at utilities or Healthcare. Things largely dictated by location (and/or job) can’t support multiple offerings.
How are parents who can’t drive their kids to school everyday going to take advantage of these choices? Vouchers/private schools will create a two tiered system.
Public school have become indoctrination centers for anti-American ideology. They focus less on education and more of incorrect ideology.
Parents need a choice to get schools to focus more on education and not on unpopular ideology.
What stops many people from sending their kids to a private school is lack of money. Vouchers will fix that problem.
That’s why I sent my kid to private school.
You sent your kids to private school so that they can “learn” that earth is 6000 years old, and the creation myth. Hindering their chances at any future.
No I didn’t and that’s weird to think.
You skipped right past my question instead of answering it.
I clearly explained why and how to fix them.
I asked you why you want to defund them and not improve them.
Is your answer because you don’t agree with them and don’t like them, so you want to cancel them?
I clearly explained that. Which part of competing with other schools for student would force them improve confused you ?
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You should really read up more about how student loans caused the cost of college to grow so fast.
In simple terms, they pumped more money into the system. For grade school, if private schools can charge families 10k per student, if you introduce 7k vouchers, then the schools know they can charge closer to 17k. It would be silly to not leverage the vouchers as a means to siphon government money.
It’s partly a push to privatize all schools and partly a tactic to get public funding for religious schools. Why should a secular government pay for religious schooling? Mostly it’s about privitizing.
School privitization is a purely ideological fever dream of Milton Friedman who believed that profit driven free markets are the most efficient at doing everything, and that the only social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. This makes sense for widget factories and pottery barns, but not public services, not childcare and not the education of a nation’s citizens. Efficiency is not the most important metric of success if it means making services unaffordable or unavailable to portions of the public. A profit seeking school could deny service to learning disabled or neurodivergent children. Trying to make a profit in cases like this would probably mean more government intervention, and the results are usually less beneficial to the public than the government services provided in the first place. Anyway, private schools aren’t any better than public schools. https://www.jacksonville.com/story/special/special-sections/2018/07/27/study-private-schools-not-better-at-educating-kids/11260129007/
Our socialist friends don’t understand shopping reduces prices and increases quality through competition. There is no socialist solution to fix bureaucracy.
