Why the school choice movement is finally scoring breakthrough wins in the Biden era (www.vox.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The reform sweeping red America is slightly different from a voucher — it’s called an education savings account, or an ESA. In a voucher system, public funds go directly to schools. With ESAs, parents who opt out of the public school system get several thousand dollars in an account that they can use for private school tuition, homeschooling, or other education-related expenses.

But the biggest change is in who can use them: everyone. “It’s really hard to overstate how different from any kind of previous legislation these programs are.” said Liz Cohen, policy director for Georgetown University’s FutureEd think tank. “It’s not income-tested; it’s not about getting the lowest-income kids in the worst schools. Prior to three years ago, I would have bet a lot of money you would have never seen this happen.”

[...]

Critics of these changes argue they amount to a wealth transfer to families with kids in private schools, and they fear it will result in the weakening or even the eventual privatization of public school systems. They also voice concern over the separation of church and state, since many ESA funds will go toward sending children to religious education.

For many supporters, those are features, not bugs. They characterize the new ESA laws as letting parents take “their money” — the dollars that would have been used to educate their kids — out of public schools they have no interest in using. They call this “funding students instead of systems.” Their critics say it’s the destruction of the common good.

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[-] [email protected] 68 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Holy shit, ruining your country speed run.

Public education is the great equalizer which is why the people in power and the wealthy love these programs. Education should be uniform or else you erode any meritocracy imagined or real.

[-] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

Also why they love lower and middle classes having debt from higher education. They want the system to benefit them and bind everyone else.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

That's exactly what they want. Why do you think they're rolling back child labor laws? And people cheer it on.

this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023

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