What about the students who do not get a choice?
While they have been hailed as a savior to minority students, school vouchers are nothing but a violation of separate but equal education and disenfranchise already marginalized Black and brown communities. Schools are funded on state levels and property taxes from the particular area where the school is zoned. If a school is zoned in a poor area, many times it receives less funding, but what does happen when those funds are allocated is that many districts will punish underperforming schools by not “rewarding” them or giving money to higher-performing schools or what has become even more popular the school voucher system.
School vouchers allow parents to receive up to a pre-set amount of money to send their children to private schools. This sounds like an amazing deal, but the program is so unsound that it will only fail marginalized communities even more.
There is a flawed logic in taking students from schools that are underperforming on standardized tests and putting them into schools that are not required to follow any federal or state educational guidelines. The automatic assumption that private schools are going to provide better educations for poor minority students, especially when the student is put in an environment where they do not easily relate to other students, and the teachers also show even less empathy, is unequivocally problematic, especially when it is at the downfall of the students who get literally, and somewhat figuratively left behind at public schools.
School vouchers take the money from already poor and marginalized communities and put it into the hands of already wealthy white people and religious institutions which do not pay taxes. There is also an additional ulterior motive; religious attendance has been in a steady decline, school vouchers are a way to force religion on marginalized students in the hopes that they receive a better education. The guise of vouchers is that marginalized communities are the ones that benefit the most, but just like affirmative action, the people who benefit the most are white, or in this case higher earning families. According to Politico, most of the school voucher money actually goes to wealthier parents because some states do not have income restrictions for taking part in programs; many parents use the program to subsidize the education of children who were already enrolled. “In Florida, 84,505, or 69 percent, of these new voucher recipients were already enrolled in private school. A much smaller group — 16,096, or 13 percent of voucher students — left their public schools to enter the program. Another 22,294 students began kindergarten with a scholarship.” And yes, it is about religion.
Republican lawmakers, in at least Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee who are more interested in shoving Christianity down the throats of others than actually being good and Christ-like people, found themselves flummoxed that Christianity is not the only religion and have expressed disproval of Muslims schools entering the chat. Again, further confirming that this is just another way to consolidate money and power into the right-wing, white, Christian hands.
This is not to say that there are not many private schools which can and do provide not only a quality but even better education than the average public school, but that is not always the case, especially when there have been many private schools just popping up, without having to have the same credentials for teachers and administration as public schools. Additionally, school vouchers only allow a limited amount of access to quality schools; voucher recipients are not being afforded education to the highest quality private institutions, that do provide life-changing educations. Even with the assistance of school vouchers, many schools’ tuition is much higher than the amount allocated for each voucher. This year, after multiple attempts, Georgia passed its school choice bill, allocating up to $6,500 for each voucher, however in 2024, the average amount of yearly tuition for a private school in Georgia is $11, 961. Furthermore, private schools in the state are not necessarily outperforming public schools by leaps and bounds, especially those that are more affordable. In 2023, the average SAT score for public schools in the state was 1045, but for private schools, it was 1149, with the vast majority of schools with the highest test scores priced outside the voucher range. According to the website Private School Review, which provides in-depth statistics on private schools around the country, there are less than ten private schools in the entire state of Georgia with SATS scores averaging above the public school level, which are affordable with school vouchers, and that includes those that provide additional financial assistance.
One of the schools is a homeschool with 35 students and most are located in the suburbs of Atlanta, but not in the city. Even in those suburban areas that are majority Black, the student body populations are overwhelmingly white, and the schools have a much smaller student population. The average private school in the state has about only 200 students. Additionally, private schools are not required to accept every student, and some even have higher tuitions for special needs students.
If public schools are so bad for students, there is no way that private schools will be able to mitigate the problem.
The math ain’t mathing.
As it stands, republican lawmakers are anti-science, anti-history and anti-math, there is no way that they can discern what a quality education, especially for the communities they have and do suppress, looks like.
