Senator Lamar Alexander likes to say that vouchers for religious and private schools are akin to a “GI Bill of Rights for Children,” a transfer of public funds to be spent anywhere.
But this reader is a beneficiary of the actual GI Bill and he says the analogy is wrong:
“I felt compelled to write this today after seeing Senator Alexander’s efforts to normalize Betsy Devos’ extreme ideas about public education.
“Dear Senator Lamar Alexander. STOP COMPARING SCHOOL VOUCHERS TO THE GI BILL.
“You are defending Betsy Devos and her goal to change public education into a system of private vouchers by saying that school vouchers are just like the GI BILL.
“The GI bill was a special benefit to support veterans returning to civilian life. I know, because the GI bill made it possible for me to make it through college after the Vietnam war. This one time benefit for soldiers is far different than our public responsibility to provide for the education of the children in our communities. Each state’s constitution defines this public responsibility to provide for and oversee the compulsory education of the children in their state.
“Our public responsibility to educate our youth is not the same thing as going to the grocery store to buy groceries. It is not about consumer choice. It’s about responsibility. Each community has the responsibility to create an equitable, safe, quality education for all of the children in their community. This responsibility includes providing an education that will enable students to become proficient in basic skills as well as to develop the habits and citizenship skills necessary to participate in our diverse democracy.
“The entire public contributes to the common good for the children of the state, even if they have no children. Along with this responsibility is the expectation that students will receive a quality public education. I am contributing my public tax dollars to public education, not so a family down the street can feel entitled to send their child to private or religious school because the local school is not to their liking. If they are unhappy with their public schools, they can work with their locally elected officials. They can also choose to provide their own private school or home school their child. That’s their job and responsibility. In my community our school board offers both traditional as well as alternative schools and resources for home school families.
“The choice movement wants to take away this public responsibility and oversight. All they want from the public is their tax dollars. They want private choice, not public choice, and they want you to pay for it.
“Senator Alexander and Betsy Devos do not understand this sacred responsibility.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I hope the writer will submit this as an op-ed, especially if he or she lives in Tennessee. Good talking points for those of you contacting your senators.
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Well said Dr. Ravitch. Would that common sense, truth, scholarship were a part of the Trump philosophy.
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Top 13% of earners receiving 2/3rds of Wisconsin’s private school subsidy benefit:
http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/top-percent-of-earners-receiving-two-thirds-of-private-school/article_351e9c72-fc0a-573f-b075-52d82f0a0aff.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=user-share
Boy, this was a genius idea out of ed reform. They’re taking funding from public schools and subsidizing private school for people who are well-off.
It’s a double whammy for public schools. The better-off will all end up in private schools leaving public schools with the kids who need the most. But of course this is ed reform, so the effect on public schools wasn’t even considered.
This movement is anti-public schools. Everything they do harms kids in existing schools. I don’t know if it’s deliberate or just due to the fact that public schools are excluded from all ed reform decisions, but every one of their bold ideas ends up as a net loss for kids in public schools.
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Many thanks to this veteran for providing Senator Alexander with some reeducation about the responsibility of the government to provide free public schools. “Reform” is rife with false analogies and unsupported statements. Public education is a keystone of a democratic society. It is not a commodity to be bought and sold on the open market. Our way of life depends on our common schools providing a common belief that our society will be better off with informed, responsible participation of the electorate. With charters and backpack vouchers there is no system in place to ensure students have an adequate understanding the principles of a democratic society. I agree with this vet. It is anti-democratic to expect public dollars to pay for some students’ private education, particularly if the result is weakened common schools for the greater good.
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Exactly right, retired teacher.
We even have charters run by foreign nationals from no democratic societies
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I’m old enough to remember when ed reform was sold to the public as “improving public schools” – remember that? They were all DEVOTED to public education- they just wanted to improve it!
What a lie that was, huh? They don’t even bother to mention public schools anymore. It’s just full time charter and voucher promotion now.
Public schools get about 7 days of coverage a year- the week test scores come out. As long as public school parents delivered our kids for 5 days of testing and reported data I don’t think any of these people would notice if every public school in the country simply stopped operating. The schools are really amazingly resilient. They’re battered by every politician and lobbyist with access to a microphone but they’re still reliably providing services to the vast majority of US children. My growing impression is most of what ed reform is entirely irrelevant to the vast majority of schools. It simply doesn’t matter if they “support” our schools or not, which makes me think they’re not as vital as they think they are.
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Many years ago Bill Raspberry, then a columnist with the Washington Post, made the same argument about vouchers being like the GI Bill. I pointed out, and the Post ran my response, why that was not true. The GI Bill benefits were deferred compensation for servicemen, that belonged to them, and thus a very different thing than a voucher which is NOT earned by previous work.
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Good point, Ken. The GI Bill benefits were a thank you for service, not an entitlement.
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I also went to college on the GI Bill after serving in the Marine and Vietnam. The GI Bill wasn’t enough to pay for all of my living expenses while attending a local 2-year community college and later a 4-year (or more) state college, so I worked nights and weekends to make up the difference. I also took out student loans, and when I graduated with a BA in journalism in 1973, I owed almost $10,000 that I eventually paid off working two jobs an average of 80 hours (or more) a week for more than two years.
How much money will many American families owe if they end up sending their child to a private school and the voucher isn’t enough to cover the tuition?
There is a HUGE difference between an adult combat vet and a child with parents that probably don’t understand what this choice means. Combat vets earned the GI Bill by putting their lives on the line. Some vets paid a heavy price to earn that GI Bill.
The primary reason most parents send their children to private schools or home teach them is because of religious beliefs. I, as a tax payer, do not want to pay for someone else’s child going to a religoius school of their choice that I might not agree with. I certainly do not agree with Betsy DeVos’s religious views, and I don’t want her making decisions for the nation’s children because it is obvious that she is heavily biased because of her religious thinking.
If choice is such a good idea, then I want a choice to NOT pay taxes to fund vouchers used for school choice.
Betsy DeVos went to Holland Christian School, a private, religious school, and considering how ignorant she is about public education and everyone else’s children, I don’t think she received a good education. Her bias is obvious. For this job, she is incompetent and a danger to everyone else’s children.
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You and others are correct on the false analogy of vouchers/choice with the GI Bill. I too do not want tax dollars to flow to religious schools.
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If DeVos would like students to attend religious schools, she has the right to dig into her own deep pockets to fund scholarships for students to attend religious schools. Let the public schools to use their budgets for the students that attend them.
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In this respect the analogy is apt… because the vouchers being offered to “help disadvantaged children”— like the GI bill— are not enough to cover the real costs of any K-12 school… unless that K-12 school is a for-profit charter that employs non-union teachers. I daresay that while you were “working nights and weekends” and borrowing money to cover your costs there were many students from more affluent households who got multiple deferments and never worried about paying for college… come to think of it, one of them is now in the White House! If vouchers enabled a kid in the Bronx to attend Bronxville or an elite private school they might be a means of improving educational opportunity… but thanks to advocates like Diane Ravitch we know the real endgame of vouchers is to undercut funding for public schools everywhere and to support private, parochial, and ESPECIALLY privatized schools.
And here’s a Wikipedia paragraph that shows another way the GI Bill analogy is apt… in a bad way… and note the last sentence that refers to an Executive Order that is almost certainly going to be rescinded:
“During the 1940s, “fly-by-night” for-profit colleges sprang up to collect veterans’ education grants, because the program provided limited oversight.[8] Similarly, for-profit colleges and their lead generators[9] have taken advantage of the post-911 GI Bill to target veterans for subpar products and services.[10] The Veterans Administration, however, does have a GI Bill feedback form for recipients to address their complaints against colleges.[11] President Barack Obama also signed Executive Order 13607 which was to ensure that predatory colleges did not aggressively recruit vulnerable military service members, veterans, and their families.[12]”
The GI Bill analogy might backfire if your personal history and that of the 1940s is any indication!
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93% of charters are non-union
That’s why the Waltons love them
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Bravo to this veteran.
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As everyone above had pointed out, the GI bill was not the same as the commitment to educate everybody. But no one pointed out that the GI bill was instituted in a time when students of all kinds were far less encumbered by education costs. There are many reasons why education could be had at a lower cost, but one was that state universities were funded by tax dollars. The GI bill was over and above that.
If Alexander wants to help kids so much, why does he not fund vouchers over and above present expenditure? Fine with me. Let him spend an extra few dollars to send a kid to some other school, but do not take funding from the existing community school. The GI bill in no way took money from communities and from their schools. So the voucher, charter, or whatever else you call these schools should not take money from existing schools.
Of course this means you would be forced to raise tax revenue to fund it. While we will raise taxes to support the GI bill, and we should do so, we will not raise taxes to fund both charter and existing community schools. Opposition to taxation is pervasive in our countries. So you should not get it if you are not willing to pay for it. No to vouchers. No to charters. And No No to Alexander’s friends who want to earn money by selling ideas to schools.
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“The GI bill in no way took money from communities and from their schools. So the voucher, charter, or whatever else you call these schools should not take money from existing schools.”
Well said.
Don’t expect the pink-cotton-candy-for-hair crowd with little fingers to raise taxes to pay for anything. They will just add all the spending that goes into the bank accounts of bilioanres to the national debt and blame that debt on Obama and the Democratic Party. A century after Obama is dead and gone, they’ll still be blaming him for the national debt and the wars he didn’t start.
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