Public schools have been starved for funds for three generations. Vouchers have been "sold" as the racist dogwhistle alternative for anti-integration/anti-immigration racists. Vouchers fit into the four-step privatization formula:
1. Defund
2. Deform (disguised as Reform)
3. Stigmatize
4. Privatize
Objectively, vouchers undermine the powerhouse Return On Investment (ROI = $7:$1) in America's public schools. There is no other industry on Earth that provides that ROI level.
That ROI has produced our presidents, astronauts, scientists, mathematicians, architects, skilled workers, engineers, artists, film makers, musicians, computer technologists and university leaders. No other industry has improved America like public education.
States are the providers of public schools. The U.S. Constitution never made education a fundamental right. And so providing education was up to the states. If it weren't for the Reconstruction Period, southern states would never have instituted public schools; all they had were private schools.
And so here we are with the "all politics is yokel" crowd, deciding that their provincial outlook will decide what future generations learn.
I've argued for the proper funding of public schools on social media for years. I'll say it again:
1. Teachers' working conditions ARE students' learning conditions.
Pensions are dangled before teachers to "compensate" for lower salaries in contract after contract.
Even then, teaching professionals still PAY into their pensions.
2. If Americans want a good future, don't diss your children's EDUCATION conditions OR their teachers.
Neither one has created the problems of education funding, even as they suffer from it -- every generation.
Don’t use your kids’ teachers as your scapegoats when you know who’s to blame for what they and your kids endure.
Destabilize teachers' standing as committed professionals for a community, and you destabilize your children's learning conditions.
3A. No study in the last century has yet to disprove studies showing that the top two predictors of student achievement are
First -- socioeconomic status of students’ parents;
Second -- the Teacher.
3B. No studies in the last century have disproven Time-On-Task studies that correlate with lower class size.
4. You want good teachers, but you don't want to have to pay? Or lower their class sizes? Or offer them tenure?
Did the rich -- or homeschoolers -- tell you that you could get something for nothing?
Did you forget the American work ethic that claims that the highest achievements come with focused, systematic study, effort and yes, sometimes a bit of sacrifice by the family?
Did the rich reveal to you that they don't consider any amount too much to spend on THEIR kids? That THEY pay their teachers top dollar? That they LUV tenure?
Now you know why their schools are so expensive. The rich believe You. Get. What. You. Pay. For.
Have the rich ever told the public that no amount of money is too much for their children's private educations?
No? Know why they don't tell you? They don't want competition for the mediocre snowflakes they have -- the Trumps, Mercers, Thiels, DeVoses, or other rich doofuses of the world.
5. Human development is THE single greatest asset to any country. All of America's NATO & other Western allies, South Korea and Japan know this. Their schools show it.
6. The U.S. once had the arts, vocational training, civics, home economics, full range of gymnastics and sports, computer labs and after school arts and sciences projects in our schools.
Why? Because our parents and rich leaders had the matching opinion that American future generations were worth it!
When did they part ways? That’s a history lesson. Read Jonathan Kozol’s “Shame of The Nation” for the full story.
7. . But some Americans DO still have that full-on education system.
Know who they are?
America’s private preparatory schools!
The kids of the rich!
https://www.niche.com/k12/search/best-private-high-schools/
For decades, the rich have lied to Americans about the worth of public education. They scapegoat the rest of the country's schools and teachers now.
8. In policy, investment and public discourse, act as if you care about this country's greatest asset -- the American people -- the way your communities' teaching professionals do.
Americans need to knock off their groomed distrust and vastly ignorant hate of what they're told is the bureaucracy of public schools.
Tenured teaching professionals -- like the seniority status of legal and medical professions that do not ROI at $7:$1 -- are America's best investment.
Yet, Republicans apply twisted and distorted market values to the last standing Jeffersonian, democratizing institution of human development for this country. Republicans value babysitters more than teaching professionals, which is why babysitters make more than teachers.
When Americans don't think things through for the benefit of their kids, just mostly themselves and the added babysitting convenience, Americans do not support those dedicated to human development, this country's most valuable asset.
But the rich do. The rich don't tell.
And DeSantis, patron saint of pandering to the worst among us, is right here to help his rich donors.
The problem with vouchers is that states never provide vouchers at the equivalent of per-pupil-per-year state expenditures.
Besides the general lack of results, critics of school vouchers argue that vouchers will lead to segregation. Empirical studies show that there is some evidence that school vouchers can lead to racial or income segregation.[26] However research on this topic is inconclusive, as there is also valid research that shows under certain circumstances, income and racial segregation can be reduced indirectly by increasing school choice.[27]
Additionally, since school vouchers are funded by the government, the implementation could cause the funds for public schools to be reduced. Private-school vouchers affect government budgets through two channels: additional direct voucher expenditures, and public school cost savings from lower enrollments.[28] Voucher programs would be paid for by the government's education budget, which would be subtracted from the public school's budget. This might affect the public school system by giving them less to spend and use for their student's education.[28]
A 2018 study by Abdulkadiroğlu et al. found that disadvantaged students who won a lottery (the Louisiana Scholarship Program) to get vouchers to attend private schools had worse education outcomes than disadvantaged students who did not win vouchers: "LSP participation lowers math scores by 0.4 standard deviations and also reduces achievement in reading, science, and social studies. These effects may be due in part to selection of low-quality private schools into the program".[29]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_voucher
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