A National School Voucher Scam
The founder of Trump University wants to get in the K-12 business
Yes, that guy.
Incoming President Donald Trump.
His campaign’s education policies can be distilled this way:
End the Department of Education
Privatize public schools
That’s it.
To put the smackdown on the DoE, he’s hired former WWE executive Linda McMahon.
She’s like Betsy DeVos but with body slam skills.
And to privatize public schools, Trump is backing something called the Educational Choice for Children Act.
It combines two the GOP’s favorite things: tax credits for rich people and private schools.
The ECCA is a tax credit scholarship program. Here’s how it would work.
Rich person gives money to a nonprofit that provides private school tuition to K-12 kids. Rich person gets a nice tax credit.
Nonprofits get some cash. Some of it, ostensibly, goes to provide vouchers to families for use at private schools.
As Peter Greene notes:
But this bill, probably aimed to slip through the reconciliation process, would quickly force taxpayer-funded school vouchers on every state in the union, whether they want them or not.
You see, it wouldn’t matter where you lived - you could access ECCA-funded vouchers in any state.
No matter that voters in red and blue states rejected vouchers - Trump will foist them on the country. Or, at least that’s his plan.
It’s not yet clear whether a closely divided Congress will want to take up the mantle of school privatization.
They could, of course, leave it to the states. And, in fact, states like Tennessee - whose Republican Gov. Bill Lee was called a RINO by Trump - are now moving aggressively to pass and implement a statewide school voucher program.
Exactly!