The Mississippi Privatization Push
End public schools, just give parents cash and see what happens
Peter Greene takes a look at proponents of school privatization in Mississippi:
Here are some highlights:
Caswell explains how choice would work, and provides some specific answers. Particularly notable is his explanation of how choice wouldn’t lead to overcrowding:
Under our proposal, schools would get to set capacity limits and decline additional students if full. Schools could also reject students with significant disciplinary issues, maintaining safe and focused learning environments.
This is remarkably frank; school choice would be the school’s choice. “We’re just too full,” they could say. Or “We think your child would be detrimental to our school’s learning environment.” Which seems fine, because exclusionary education has never been a problem in Mississippi in the past, right? Not that I should pick on Mississippi-- virtually every taxpayer-funded voucher program includes provisions that allow private schools to exclude whatever students they want to exclude. School choice is school’s choice.
The ultimate goal:
Caswell asserts that school choice works. It’s pretty to think so, but that’s not what the evidence says. But for an outfit that would like to do away from any instruments that require taxpayers to support education for other peoples’ children, a voucher system that pays parents to give up their right to a free guaranteed education is just the thing.
As Greene notes, the arguments advanced by privatization proponents in the Magnolia State are not new - but they rarely are laid out so clearly.
The goal: No more public schools. None. States would just send money to parents who would then do whatever with it - as long as it was vaguely education-related.
Like in Arizona:
12 News’ Craig Harris requested reports of all of the reimbursements being approved by Supt. Horne’s ADE, and the laundry list of fraud, waste, and abuse is shocking. The investigation found that private school parents using ESA vouchers for their kids “bought diamond rings and necklaces, Kenmore appliances, and even lingerie with education tax dollars… more than 200 Apple iPhones, more than 50 smart TVs, dozens of gift cards worth up to $500 — all since last November when the [ADE] began automatically approving all ESA [voucher] requests.”
And, vouchers kill state budgets - though, if the goal is ending public schools, a voucher scheme may be a fast way to make that happen:
Florida relies on two official student counts each year — one in October and another in February — to allocate funding to school districts through the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP). But after the October 2024 Count, major red flags appeared. Nearly 30,000 students (at an estimated cost of almost $250 million) were identified as both receiving a voucher and attending a public school. In some districts, almost all (more than all in one district) of their state funding had been absorbed by voucher payouts.
But maybe the ultimate goal is not only no schools, but also schools without any human teachers:
