How Vouchers Kill Local Public Schools
The voucher budget always wins - and kids and communities lose
As if we needed even more evidence that vouchers are a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad policy idea - Public Funds for Public Schools is out with a new policy brief that includes case studies focused on the financial impact of school voucher schemes.
The bottom line: Voucher budgets suck limited funds out of education funding allocations and the result leaves public schools behind.
This is bad, sure. But, what if funding vouchers actually lead to better student outcomes?
Well, it doesn’t.
Consider from Ohio:
Students are LOSING ground academically after taking vouchers.
Put another way, the voucher students’ first-year scores would rank in the top 1/4 of all Ohio Public School Districts; their third-year scores would rank in the bottom 1/5 of all Ohio Public School Districts.
So, vouchers lead to negative academic outcomes. They hurt kids.
AND, the PFPS brief is yet another piece of evidence telling us vouchers cost a lot. And harm our public schools.
“Well-resourced neighborhood public schools create vibrant communities. But too often, lawmakers divert limited taxpayer dollars away from local public schools and into unaccountable private school voucher schemes – leading to public school closures. As a result, students experience devastating academic, attendance, behavioral, and economic consequences; families lose access to critical services; and entire neighborhoods and communities are left behind,” said Adaku Onyeka-Crawford from Advancement Project.
As noted in a piece about Florida’s wildly expensive voucher program, the voucher budget always wins:
Cottle also wants to point out another factor. Florida used to run a huge budget surplus, but now it's running a deficit. Cottle and others are trying to raise an alarm about math instruction and the need to improve math instruction, particularly by recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers. But the "still-growing budget for school choice vouchers is surely competing for money with ideas for initiatives to improve student learning, and the voucher budget is winning."
Privatizers win, kids and communities lose.
Again and again and again.
Still, states with GOP leadership tend to move toward vouchers - and President Trump also pushes them as key to his education agenda.
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It is profoundly unfortunate that more people don’t know this information. Anything that weakens public education, weakens democracy itself. Thanks for this post.