Our reader Laura Chapman explains what the phrase “the money follows the child” really means. It’s another way of saying that every child should have “a backpack full of cash” strapped on them, to be spent anywhere. Another way to see it is as a jackhammer to destroy our democratically-controlled system of public schools and turn children over to the tender mercies of the free market. The billionaires—the Waltons, Bloomberg, Koch, Gates, Broad, Hastings, Anschutz, Sinquefeld—love the free market. They think it’s best for everyone.
Chapman writes:
The new phrase for money-follows-the-child policies favored by those who want privatized education is this:
We have a “pluralistic system of education.” That phrase is already being used in promote subsidized choice, with everyone eligible for federal funds and expansion of state-level choice programs.
Pluralistic education means that the great American way to educate children will support–
homeschoolers,
free-lance education service providers,
charter schools,
private schools,
religious schools,
traditional public schools,
online instructional delivery,
pay-for-success ventures,
specialty programs for the talented and those in need of therapeutic support (whether in homes, commercial facilities, or brick and mortar schools).
and other possibilities.
In this pluralistic system, market forces and innovative forms of instruction flourish, unimpeded by regulation. Federal subsidies are “fair” when money follows the student.
Proponents claim that all of these flavors of education can and should be subsidized with public funds, eithe in proportion to their market share or their performance on the optional “normative pluralistic standards and curriculum.”
Examples of optional “normative pluralistic standards” are those present in current federal and state legislation, in national campaigns for standards and tests such as those launched to support the “Common Core State Standards,” and the proliferation of rating schemes such as those at GreatSchools.org, US News and World Reports, and EdWeek’s “Chance of Success” reports.
This Pluralism R-US meme is being promoted by EdChoice, the organization once known as the Milton & Rose Friedman Foundation, also Jeb Bush and his Chiefs for Change organization, and scholars.
Key scholars are at the Walton funded University of Arkansas Department of Education Reform; Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes; the University of Washington Bothell’s Center on Reinventing Public Education; Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy and Governance; and Johns Hopkins School of Education Institute for Education Policy.
For a brief look at the rationale for this meme and the policy agenda see
“Pluralism in American School Systems,” https://edpolicy.education.jhu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/PluralismBrief-Jan2018.pdf
For a look at other promotions, see this recent 74 Million.org call for the use of stimulus money for “all types of schools.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Often the “backpack full of cash” is inadequate to pay for the needs of students that needs specialized services such as special education or ESL. That is why these students cannot fairly compete when they are tossed into the market. Private charters know these students require more intensive, specialized instruction which makes them more expensive to educate. That is why there is an under representation of these students in private charters. The schools avoid selecting these more expensive students, and they may only accept a few of them that are already higher performing. The more money they spend on education reduces their profit margin.
when “profit” is the underlying agenda, actual education is secondary
Exactly. When the “money follows the child” to a voucher school or a charter school, any of that money that is not spent on the kid goes into private profits. So, the incentive built into such a system is to spend as little as possible on the student and school. No theatre, no gym, no athletic fields, no art or science supplies, no library, no librarian, no nurse, no classroom novels, low teacher pay, cheap (and dangerous) furnishings. Cars and planes and fancy offices and high salaries for the owner and his or her ne’er-do-well cousins, golfing buddies, mistresses or misters, etc.
Why do all of the “public school advocates” lump Magnet School with “traditional public schools”? They are public choice!!! see http://www.magnet.edu