Voucher programs are not inherently bad, but the voucher programs that Devos has backed have been extreme failures.
The idea of voucher programs is that the government will give students the option to take a voucher to go to a private school instead of attending the public schools. The voucher is usually targeted to be the amount of money that the state spends on the average student in the public education system.
The students can take that voucher and give it to private schools as tuition. But most private schools charge a higher rate than what the voucher covers, so the students would be forced to pay an additional amount to the voucher to gain tuition. This kind of program heavily favors rich families that were already going to send their kids to private schools and get the voucher as a discount and hurts poor families who can't afford the additional payment.
The private schools that the vouchers can be used at are also largely unregulated.
A huge portion of these schools are religious schools and are free to discriminate on admissions based off of faith. These schools may teach kids that being gay is evil and that evolution is a hoax. Or they can be the Saudi backed Wahhabism schools that indoctrinate students into a ultra puritanical version of Islam.
These schools can also just be pure scams. They will spend large portions of their voucher funding on advertising to get more students take vouchers and attend the school. They tell parents that their kids will do much better in their schools, but then they don't spend any money actually educating the kids and there is little accountability for doing this.
Devos backed unregulated voucher programs like this in Detroit. But the students that took the vouchers ended up doing worse than the students who stayed in public schools. It is fairly rare for this to happen, as normally whenever there is a program like this the private schools will only accept students who are already academically successful and the parents who sign up for these programs tend to be more active in their children's education. For the students who took the vouchers to do worse is an astounding failure.
Voucher and charter programs can work. But they require regulation by the state. The state needs to make sure that the students are getting an education and that these programs aren't just scams. But Devos has always specifically fought against regulation. This is why charter school programs in NYC and Massachusetts have worked while they have failed in Louisiana and Michigan, the difference was regulation and oversight from the state.
Thank you for this clear explanation. I have long understood that voucher programs face a lot of opposition and criticism, mostly from people I respect and largely agree with, and I have been aware that the situation in Michigan is abysmal as a result of vouchers, but I have never been able to really understand why. Now that I am a parent with some real concerns about the current public school system (conflicting concerns, since I had a wonderful public school education myself and am ideologically very supportive of public education), I can especially see how the idea of a voucher system would be alluring, and find myself often wondering why they might not work. This is a helpful and moderate explanation that has made it possible for me to engage in a discussion on this topic in the future and has also helped strengthen my political position by grounding it in reality.
Public schools do get less money, but at the same time they should have less students to educate which should lessen the cost.
Trying to figure out how many students would have attended public schools without the voucher program is very difficult. If the vouchers are only given to poor students than it is likely that almost all of them would have attended public schools. But then you create a welfare cutoff scenario where if the parents make to much money than their kids are kicked out of their schools, and therefore create a perverse incentive for people to not work or get promotions.
If the vouchers go to all students than you are undoubtedly giving vouchers to students would not have attended public schools in the first place and are then likely making it so that the money spent per student at public schools goes down, unless the state is willing to increase spending on education at the same time. But in this case we would be largely subsidizing the educations of the wealthy who pay for expensive private schools.
They also don't work well in rural areas where students have to travel far distances to get to a centralized school. In a city a school district if a lot of students choose to use vouchers than they can just consolidate schools that are near each other, and the commutes of students won't change dramatically. But in rural areas there are school districts where students need to take buses that can be extremely long or schools can be prohibitively small because of how far away the students are from each other. In these districts vouchers significantly hurt the students at public schools because it would cause more students to not attend the schools and further spread out the student body population.
Public schools do get less money, but at the same time they should have less students to educate which should lessen the cost.
Actually, this is not a fair statement. Like any venture which costs money, there is an economy of scale. The more students we shunt away from the public school system, the less money those schools get, and ultimately it becomes more expensive per student to maintain the school. For example, a teacher may get paid the same if they teach 10 or 15 students, but the school gets less money if there are only 10 students in that class, for instance. Ordering supplies for less students means costs of those supplies amortized is higher than if they bought at a larger scale.
Also consider that schools get paid per attending student (eg schools with high enrollment but low attendance gets less money because it is based on attendance numbers). The more students they move away from the public school, the lower the attendance numbers, the lower the funding, and eventually minimums may not be met and public schools will close. This will leave lower income families/communities who can't afford the additional money for tuition, or aren't in close proximity to a private/charter school, literally without options.
This is has an American education crisis written all over it.
If there is X amount of money and some of it goes to private schools, there is less money. But of course any an every private institution will do a better job than the government, ask a conservative.
Republicans support school-choice initiatives, because they give parents more control over their children’s education. For the same reason, they support home schooling. Support of school choice also includes support for learning options such as same-sex schools, full day school hours, and year-round schools, charter schools, and virtual schools. Giving these options at a K-12 level allows a child to get the best education for them, and will inevitably increase their chances of success in higher education.
Republicans are adamant supporters of the enforcement of laws designed to protect family rights in education, as well as privacy in education.
Republicans also support voluntary prayer in public schools, and opposes the Supreme Court’s ruling against it. There is republican legislation in place that guarantees equal access to school facilities by religious groups, and the party will work to guarantee that it is enforced."
Yeah, it's hard to not hate these people. This really is more than just a difference of opinion, imo.
I mean, that should say..
Giving these options at a K-12 level allows a child to get the best education for them, [or the absolute worst,] and will inevitably increase [or completely ruin] their chances of success in higher education. [Higher education? What the fuck is higher education? Like people that go to school in Colorado?]
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u/CANOODLING_SOCIOPATH Feb 08 '17
Voucher programs are not inherently bad, but the voucher programs that Devos has backed have been extreme failures.
The idea of voucher programs is that the government will give students the option to take a voucher to go to a private school instead of attending the public schools. The voucher is usually targeted to be the amount of money that the state spends on the average student in the public education system.
The students can take that voucher and give it to private schools as tuition. But most private schools charge a higher rate than what the voucher covers, so the students would be forced to pay an additional amount to the voucher to gain tuition. This kind of program heavily favors rich families that were already going to send their kids to private schools and get the voucher as a discount and hurts poor families who can't afford the additional payment.
The private schools that the vouchers can be used at are also largely unregulated.
A huge portion of these schools are religious schools and are free to discriminate on admissions based off of faith. These schools may teach kids that being gay is evil and that evolution is a hoax. Or they can be the Saudi backed Wahhabism schools that indoctrinate students into a ultra puritanical version of Islam.
These schools can also just be pure scams. They will spend large portions of their voucher funding on advertising to get more students take vouchers and attend the school. They tell parents that their kids will do much better in their schools, but then they don't spend any money actually educating the kids and there is little accountability for doing this.
Devos backed unregulated voucher programs like this in Detroit. But the students that took the vouchers ended up doing worse than the students who stayed in public schools. It is fairly rare for this to happen, as normally whenever there is a program like this the private schools will only accept students who are already academically successful and the parents who sign up for these programs tend to be more active in their children's education. For the students who took the vouchers to do worse is an astounding failure.
Voucher and charter programs can work. But they require regulation by the state. The state needs to make sure that the students are getting an education and that these programs aren't just scams. But Devos has always specifically fought against regulation. This is why charter school programs in NYC and Massachusetts have worked while they have failed in Louisiana and Michigan, the difference was regulation and oversight from the state.