U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon was in Arizona recently, pushing Gov. Hobbs to embrace Trump’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad voucher scheme.
“Governor Hobbs has vetoed three measures that would have allowed Arizona to participate in the Federal Education Freedom Tax Credit, holding Arizona families back from accessing these powerful opportunities expanding across the country,” McMahon told a Mesa audience Tuesday.
But, federal vouchers are still vouchers. And vouchers are little more than private school discount coupons. Coupons that funnel money from the working class to the wealthy in a perverse reverse Robinhood scheme.
Robert Kim of the Education Law Center writes that opting-in poses risks to state public education - from both a funding and student outcomes perspective.
Any claim that allowing public tax dollars to be redirected to school vouchers is “about putting students first,” as Duncan and Elzora say, is counterfactual. Students taking vouchers have worse educational outcomes. Private schools receiving public money are free to discriminate against students on the basis of race, ability, and/or LGBTQ+ identity. And waste, fraud, and abuse have always gone hand-in-hand with private school vouchers.
McMahon ignored these claims and kept pushing the line that the vouchers would help families - even though what she really means (as data from states like Tennessee shows) is that vouchers will benefit already wealthy families.