The Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Schools

https://www.propublica.org/article/school-vouchers-ohio-church-state-tax-dollars-private-religious

by rbanffy • 2 years ago

33 60 2 years ago

"That same year, a coalition of school districts, now numbering more than 200, filed suit against the voucher expansion."

In other word, a bunch of government employees used taxpayers' money to find legal action, with the aim of maintaining their local monopolies on the provision of taxpayer-funded education.

Pulcinella6• 2 years ago

Government entities use taxpayer money to fund legal action (and pretty much everything else they do) all the time. I am not a lawyer but I believe it is called “administrative law” and is completely normal. To think so otherwise is completely ahistorical and incorrect.

rahimnathwani7• 2 years ago

"Government entities use taxpayer money..."

Individual people - government employees - decided to do this.

They decided to use taxpayer funds (that were specifically allocated for educating students) to finance legal action aimed at preventing parents from choosing which schools would receive taxpayer funding to educate their children.

In other words, government employees spent public education money on litigation designed to keep money flowing into their own pockets, rather than allowing those funds to follow students to whatever educational environment their families determined would best serve them.

lenerdenator8• 2 years ago

It's supposed to be a monopoly. I don't pay property taxes to make some head of OmniCorp Education LLC a multimillionaire. I do it so that the kids in my neighborhood aren't dumber than rocks.

Your local school district is the default. If you want to do something else, you're free to. You can educate your child yourself, or pay another educational institution to do it for you. Is that too expensive? Maybe you should talk about that with the person who pays your salary.

rahimnathwani7• 2 years ago

"I don't pay property taxes to make some head of OmniCorp Education LLC a multimillionaire."

In my city, school district administrators are multimillionaires.

"It's supposed to be a monopoly."

Is that a good thing?

"Your local school district is the default."

Why ought that to be the case?

"You can educate your child yourself, or pay another educational institution to do it for you."

That's what I do, and the sticker price is less per year than the annual per-student opex of my local school district.

mmooss2• 2 years ago

The title is:

Inside the Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious Schools

It's about religious schools, which is a major omission from the title.

ourmandave• 2 years ago

Yeah, the Vouchers Hurt Ohio site says 90% of the schools receiving vouchers are religious.

bilbo0s4• 2 years ago

Gotta fund those Christian Madrasas!

On a more serious note, you have to wonder why religions are more overt about having the taxpayer foot their bills these days? I mean really, if you want Christian, Muslim or whatever religion schools, fine. No issue from me. But if the government compels me to fund the Madrasas, that's another thing entirely.

This is a genuine problem.

rbanffy3• 2 years ago

I toned down the title to prevent rage engagement on purpose. Didn't work that well - the post got flagged anyway, as it always happens when people forget how to disagree in civil ways.

That we on HN can't have a civil discussion on a divisive topic is deeply saddening to me. Se should be better than that.

mmooss2• 2 years ago

I admire the thinking; thanks.

That we on HN can't have a civil discussion on a divisive topic is deeply saddening to me. Se should be better than that.

Agreed.

Pulcinella6• 2 years ago

I do not wish for taxpayer dollars to fund private school (religious or otherwise) or homeschooling. One of the things I love most about this country is that America is a civic nation. This country is built on shared civic ideals, values, and vision. This country is not built on a specific racial, ethnic, or religious identity like many, many old-world Eurasian nations.

nine_zeros• 2 years ago

One of the things I love most about this country is that America is a civic nation

What are you a communist? /s

Jokes aside, with the recent election, the country has been sold to capitalists and oligarchs.

I genuinely wouldn't be surprised if the school system in some states is fed to vultures to suck money from.

You may think it is impossible in America but remember anything has been possible in America, including enslavement and redlining. Selling schools to vultures is not at all outside the realm of possibilities here.

rbanffy3• 2 years ago

Jokes aside, with the recent election, the country has been sold to capitalists and oligarchs.

My question is how long will it take for it to be reversed.

I have a deep respect for the ideals upon which the US was founded, but it's getting increasingly hard to respect the ground truth of what the country has become.

ActionHank• 2 years ago

That's weird, I could've sworn America was a capitalist oligarchy working to drive down education to produce a cheaper and less educated labour force.

vinyl7• 2 years ago

This country is built on shared civic ideals, values, and vision.

Sadly I think that died many decades ago and now we're just an economic zone

econ40432• 2 years ago

Harvard was given public money in 1636. It was a religious school and trained clergy.

bilbo0s4• 2 years ago

Britain, had no separation of church and state.

People who objected had no right to express their displeasure.

And the United States was a twinkle in the eye of men who wouldn't be born for like 70 years. In other words, non-existent.

Nowadays, we have the right to ask for something back if we give universities money man.

locopati• 2 years ago

"This country is not built on a specific racial, ethnic, or religious identity like many, many old-world Eurasian nations."

I know there's an ideal of what America should be, but don't muddle the reality. America was built on whiteness (whose definition shifted over time) and class identity.

rbanffy3• 2 years ago

It's true, but that's not a reason to dump the ideals. Quite the contrary, that's a reason to embrace the ideals even more.

A professor once taught me that the law is not meant to represent the people, but to frame the ideal we want to be.

snapplebobapple• 2 years ago

Really? I think taxpayer dollars should be focused on an outcome (creating a cohesive society of high performance critical thinkers able to solve problems independently and in groups would be my outcome measure). With that being said, I see quite a lot of problems with the public system (suboptimal teacher provision partially driven by union pushing for things that help their union members at the expense of students, weird administrator to infrastructure spending ratios, weird far left ideologies being pushed on kids that I think are far outside school responsibility into parent responsibility, etc) and vouchers seem like a reasonable way to address this by taking funding out of the system to places that can perform better.

To me, it seems more like a failure of voucher design than anything. The solution is probably to make the voucher worth up to 80 or 90% of what it costs to teach the kid in the public system (because if it doesn't cost less why are we doing it?) and force any school receiving a voucher to not charge more than a small amount more than the voucher, make the same restrictions on religion present in public enforced in private, etc.

Declining public enrollment is a problem for crappy teachers and their union more than anything, it's not something to be concerned about. Fire the unneeded teachers and administrators to save costs and it should sort itself out medium term.

Eumenes3• 2 years ago

I'd love to redirect my property/state taxes away from my local failing public school system to the private school I send my kids.

jameskilton• 2 years ago

This is the whole problem. That money (and more!) should be going to public schools to fix them. We should all want great public schools everywhere. An educated populace is the only way we as a country can grow and improve.

Eumenes3• 2 years ago

My local school district pays $17k/year per student ... how much more money do they need?

tempworkac2• 2 years ago

is there actually any evidence more money would fix public schools? Urban school districts as far as I know have more money than the suburbs and worse outcomes as reflected in standardized test scores.

bilbo0s4• 2 years ago

That's not even the problem.

The problem is Eumenes wants his school to be funded by everyone else's property tax.

When did this entitlement mindset grip this country so much that people openly ask for handouts like that? I know I will sound old now, but back in the 70's and 80's welfare was a bad thing. Now, everyone from corporations to private schools openly demand it.

burningChrome3• 2 years ago

While I agree, the rot in the metro area schools runs so deep its going to take decades to get the progressive ideology out of them. My kids have gone to public schools their whole lives, but we live in the suburbs where the focus has always been on preparing kids for higher education and being prepare to find a successful career after college.

Public schools? When the cost per student is double that of my kids school and their graduation rate is hovering in the 60% range with less than 50% attending college? THAT is a huge problem. And what happens every year? Those same schools cry and whine they need MORE money to fix the problem. And every year the state allocates MORE money to them and every year NOTHING improves. And yet, its a constant cycle while the suburban schools continue to thrive while those metro area schools and their residents? They're trapped, like my sister and her three kids were.

What's the solution for them? They yank their kids out and send them instead to a private school whose focus is education, not indoctrinating them into some progressive ideology. The other problem is families won't wait around for ten years and wait for the problem to be fixed. They have a very narrow window in which to change things for their kids. Like my sister did, they're going to find somewhere else to send their kids and do that.

I 100% agree with your comment, but I feel the metro area schools are so entrenched and so far beyond being repaired, the best course is to make private schools more affordable, as opposed to spending decades trying to undo what these schools have done.

lenerdenator8• 2 years ago

I don't know how things are funded in your neck of the woods, but if I were to take the county property tax that's allocated to my local school district and use it to pay for private schooling for a child, it probably wouldn't cover a quarter of classes, much less everything else involved in sending a child to a private school.

bilbo0s4• 2 years ago

Yeah, but it would bring HN User Eumenes' out of pocket cost down. Which is, probably at base, the only thing they care about.

tempworkac2• 2 years ago

Are residential tax exemptions also redirecting billions of taxpayer dollars to the "rich", by the same logic?

pasttense01• 2 years ago

I think there is a lot to be said for public schools to be eliminated, for all schools to be private schools with the government providing vouchers. So you would have some students going to a strong STEM school, others to schools with strong vocational education, etc--instead of students going to an average generic local public school. There is a lot to be said for freedom of choice.

mschild• 2 years ago

I think thats likely the worst outcome possible. The public school system needs reform not privatization.

Privatization of any vital public infrastructure has to my knowledge never led to a better result. Whether is public transport, medical care, or education. You can have a specialized public school system that allows for different life paths, but putting the education in the hands of private entities is going to degrade the education for most students.

jmclnx• 2 years ago

I agree with this, just look at privatized health care for were private schools will go.

It will be a money suck and kids will learn nothing.

moribvndvs• 2 years ago

What actually happens is children from impoverished/troubled families and bad neighborhoods get completely screwed over, exacerbating existing problems and creating new ones by burdening already vulnerable children with more difficult logistics and higher transport and general schooling costs across town. This isn’t even about “better educational outcomes”. That’s all very weak smoke and mirrors for the actual intent: for better off families to pull the ladder up behind them and kick struggling communities clinging to the edge into the abyss while funneling cash to ideological strongholds that desperately need new ways to regrow their dwindling congregations. That’s at best. At worst it’s reinventing classic racist policies.

unethical_ban• 2 years ago

Maybe.... MAYBE if the private schools were forced to teach the government curriculum.

There should not be freedom of choice when it comes to tracking fundamentals of arts and sciences and history.

Tell me, what happens when the education privateers decides it isn't profitable to operate in majority black neighborhoods? Rural towns with sparse population?

Pulcinella6• 2 years ago

You have rights with a public school system you don’t have with private school system. And not just “it’s a government run school so they have to follow the constitution.” You have explicit political rights. For example, you have the right to vote in school board elections and bonds. You don’t get to vote for the board of EduCorp LLC.

vaadu• 2 years ago

You can't reform a system that is broken by design. The teachers' unions have WAY too much power. More power than parents, which is wrong and corrupts the system. You can see this by comparing money and test scores over the past few decades. More money today and worse results.

Kids/parents should have a choice. Just like we have choices on android or iphone and Purdue or Ohio State. Why should it be different with the k-12 education? If some are religious, so what? Parents can send their kids to a non-religious or trade school or a STEM school.

Parents should have more choice than bureaucrats.

nojvek• 2 years ago

It's not as simple. Schools in my county are extremely selective even though they don't appear on outside. With arduous processes for application and applications only open for one day that only insiders know, or they extend application links to certain people with plausible denial that it's an open application through their arduous links.

Public schools on the other hand are straight forward. Once we move towards schools deciding who they want, it separates rich from poor students, white from colored students.

I already see it in chartered vs public schools in my county.

The Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Schools

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