Voucher pushers can’t seem to get their story straight. It began decades ago when the first wave of state-funded private school vouchers came in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. the Board of Education that public schools must integrate. Segregationists made no bones about the fact that “tuition grants” (vouchers) provided a way for white parents to evade integration.
Since then, elite billionaires pushing to fund private schools with public dollars have attempted to bury that ugly history, changing the voucher narrative repeatedly as they’ve struggled to find a storyline that holds water and is less offensive.
For decades these privatizers have poured money into efforts to move public school funding to private schools. And more often than not, they failed, including in Mississippi. With each setback, their propaganda and messaging evolved.
Voucher schemers assumed that if parents lost confidence in public schools, they would support vouchers as an alternative. They adopted the mantra: “Public schools are a failure, private schools are superior” and urged lawmakers to slash funding for public education. So confident were they that public schools were inferior to private that they agreed to test voucher students, but that accountability was short-lived. Voucher students fared poorly. Privatizers have been shocked by the data, which show that public schools outperform private schools.
So the “failing schools” message gave way to “Competition makes public schools better” – their claim that public schools produced good outcomes because of the competition that vouchers introduced.
When that, too, was proven erroneous, new messaging emerged: “Vouchers are a civil rights issue.” Suddenly, billionaire private school devotees claimed to be concerned about children living in poverty, asserting that they deserve the same private school choices that affluent children have. Only their legislation stated clearly that private voucher schools had no obligation to admit children they didn’t want to serve – or to provide transportation, school meals, and other services on which children in low-income households rely. The data are clear: most vouchers have gone to wealthier families whose children already were enrolled in private schools. The structure of voucher programs ensures that children in low-income households are the least likely to benefit from them. This is particularly true for tuition tax credits (private schools’ preferred means of receiving state-sponsored funds), which benefit those who already are enrolled in private school and already are paying tuition.
Plagued by criticism for their attacks on public schools, privatizers tried a new tack: Claiming to “support” public education. Their long history of undermining public schools made this newfound “support” a hard sell, particularly in light of their calls to strip public schools of federal funding.
The latest iteration from voucher spin doctors is “education freedom” – parents should be free to choose their children’s schools. Of course, parents can choose (to the degree that private schools are willing to admit their children), but taxpayers shouldn’t be obligated to bankroll every choice that a parent makes. And it’s important to note that “options” do not translate to rights. While children have a right to a quality public education, they have no rights where private schools are concerned.
You’ll hear voucher-promoters admonish legislators to facilitate this supposed freedom by “funding students, not systems.” But tax dollars are not intended to fund individuals. Imagine if we funded drivers, not roads; patients, not hospitals; houses, not fire stations. We wouldn’t have a safe and accessible system of roads available to all drivers. Or functional hospitals, or fire departments that serve all. The role of public education funds is not to cater to every individual’s whim, it is to provide good schools that are open to all children and that are accountable for the quality of the services they provide. Strong public schools are an investment in the public good. They yield stronger and safer communities, successful economic development, higher incomes, and a better quality of life for us all. Funding individuals provides none of that and leaves thousands of children behind.
You can do a very simple thing to help us ensure that Mississippi doesn’t fall victim to the ever-changing “school choice” narrative of billionaire privatizers: share this information and invite others to sign up for our notifications. And keep watching for more. Next up: the insidious influence of dark money in the voucher fight.
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