January 2016

Parents are outraged that legislators are pushing school choice policies that will leave Mississippi children to fend for themselves in a system where schools get to choose which students to educate. Hear Tupelo moms Kate Farabaugh and Vonda Burroughs explain that the real message of school choice is you’re on your own. Our state Legislature has an obligation

“Don’t we want ALL of our children to grow up to be productive members of society?” Listen as Pascagoula mom Myya Robinson urges legislators to support all Mississippi students, not just a chosen few. While state leaders and legislators have claimed that they can’t afford to provide adequate funding to public schools, some are now beating the

Hear Ridgeland mom Jan Richardson explain how vouchers will allow private schools to “shop” for students with our tax dollars. When it comes to school choice, parents don’t get to choose, the private schools do. Private schools admit the children who are a good fit for their schools and deny admission to those who aren’t. While private

The Parents’ Campaign agrees with our state constitution: our public tax dollars should support an education system that welcomes all children. Funding schools that refuse to educate some students is not an appropriate use of public dollars. The Lie of School Choice When it comes to school choice (vouchers for private school tuition), it isn’t

Vouchers use public tax dollars to pay tuition at private schools, reducing the dollars that are available to fund public schools. Wendy Rogers of Wiggins, Mississippi, tells us here how the ESA voucher program hurts the more than 50,000 children with special needs who are being educated in public schools. Public tax dollars are intended for the public

School choice may sound good on the surface, but, as this mom warns, it’s really “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Hear Robin Boswell of Ocean Springs explain it  here. How has the private school “choice” voucher program worked for our neighbor, Louisiana? Despite cherry-picking their students, Louisiana private schools’ voucher students lost ground in math, reading, science, and social studies and

When the facts are inconvenient, the “school choice” crowd makes up its own. A promotional piece placed on legislators’ desks by a private school group pushing tax credit scholarships (vouchers) is filled with false and misleading information. The real facts are here. In states with voucher programs, voucher students in private schools perform about the same

Across the U.S. and in Mississippi, voucher programs have been a failure and a massive waste of taxpayer dollars. Nationally, research shows that children receiving vouchers to attend private schools perform no better than, and often worse than, their peers in public schools while diminishing resources for children being educated in public schools. The net