Forget all that rhetoric about “choice” to “save poor kids from failing public schools.” It is a rightwing ruse to siphon public money for private and religious schools.
Proof: in Indiana, voucher enrollments expanded by 50% this year. Fully half the voucher students never attended any public school.
These are not children who were “trapped in a failing school.” They are children whose parents want the state to pay their tuition at a nonpublic school.
“Students using the voucher program — the second largest and fastest-growing of its kind in the nation — now account for 2.6 percent of Indiana’s school system, according to the latest annual report released Monday by the Indiana Department of Education.
Vouchers, billed by the state as “choice scholarships,” funnel tax dollars to support student tuition at private schools. The program is controversial: Proponents say the program expands quality options for poor children, and opponents say the state shouldn’t use tax dollars to pay for religious education while draining the coffers of public schools.”
In a few short years, the program has changed as restrictions are dropped.
The president of the Indiana State Teachers Association said the voucher program “has become an entitlement program which in large part, now benefits middle class families who always intended to send their children to private (mostly religious) schools and taxpayers are footing the growing bill.”
“Several rules placed on the program at its infancy have since relaxed, including the enrollment cap in the first two years and a requirement that students must first try out a public school in their neighborhood before they used a scholarship. New rules last year also allowed siblings and students qualifying for special education services to use vouchers.
“The program has also become less racially diverse over time. This year 61 percent of students using vouchers are white, compared with 46 percent when it started. Just 14 percent of the students are black this year, compared with 24 percent in 2011-12. (Overall, 71 percent of Indiana students are white. About 12 percent are black.)”
This is not a bug or a glitch. This is exactly what voucher proponents like ALEC have wanted all along.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Exactly.
AND – we in Indiana are saddled with a legislature promoting this garbage. Worse than garbage.
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That has always been the ultimate goal of the voucher shills. All the talk about helping poor kids and “failing” public schools is just so much window dressing.
The sad thing is that the Indiana supreme court upheld this Daniels-Pence-GOP abomination despite Article I, Sections 4 and 6 of the state constitution.
As a former Indiana teacher I am ashamed of my native state. Too bad Ambrose Bierce, who went to school in Indiana, is not around to bash these nose-thumbing public school wreckers.
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Found two good Bierce quotes from “The Devil’s Dictionary” (you must get a copy):
“Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility.”
“Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”
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In order to form a better citizenry, Hoosier forefathers set up a system to ensure that every child was provided an education. Voucher advocates would have Hoosiers believe that vouchers are about liberating parents by offering choice. Given a voucher, many Hoosier children could either not afford or would not be accepted into many of these private schools. In essence, then, voucher advocates have perverted the education system so that they no longer have to ensure every child is provided a good education, but the masses who are taxed must pay part of the tuition for their children to go to exclusive schools.
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Having people attend the public school in their area is rediculous. Our local elementary is 99% black 1% other. My son is white. Not an option really. I have a feeling most middle class are taking advatage of it for reasons like mine. The public schools in their area are notoriously poor performing. It isn’t as nefarious as the article would lead you to believe.
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I do not feel my tax dollars should be used for your child to go to a charter school just because you don’t like the racial makeup of your community school.
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Do you feel the same way about government-backed mortgages and the mortgage-interest tax deduction? Trillions of taxpayer dollars have underwritten the flight of whites to other neighborhoods or to the suburbs because they didn’t like the racial makeup of their community schools.
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That’s different, because I personally benefit from it, so it goes in the “well, it’s complicated” category.
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“Having people attend the public school in their area is rediculous.”
YEP, sho is rediculous, or is that rheedickulous?
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Wow! I can’t believe that someone would be that open about racism!
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Wow! Openly racist. Why do you live there to begin with?
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Similar numbers in Racine, Wisconsin. About half of students on vouchers have never attended a RUSD school.
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The “choice” being exercised here is who voucher children get to go to school with and how much public funding can be used to pay for it. It was never about getting the poor into better schools. What a shame that people are willing to give up the perspective of a public school education to put their children in the narrow curricular and social perspective of a private church or charter school.
This whole voucher movement will continue to create greater educational and social inequities. While the students in my northern Indiana public school district continue to walk farther and farther to school in sub-zero temperatures, students in charter and private schools drive to school in nicer and newer cars. This is social injustice – it’s a moral issue and the private church schools and the churches that sponsor them SHOULD have a real issue with accepting this public money. You have a choice to a free public school education just like I do- if you choose otherwise you should pay for it!
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