David DeMatthews and David S. Knight wrote in the San Antonio Express-News that Governor Greg Abbott’s voucher plan is “a terrible idea,” and they explain why. (Since I don’t have a subscription to the San Antonio Express-News, I am copying their tweet.)
David DeMatthews is an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at The University of Texas at Austin.
David S. Knight is the associate director of the Center for Education Research and Policy Studies and an assistant professor of educational leadership at The University of Texas at El Paso.
To summarize:
1. The vouchers don’t cover the cost of most private schools.
2. The money spent on vouchers will hurt public schools, which most students attend.
3. Budget cuts will force public schools to cut popular programs, like dual language education, STEM programs, and vocational training. These cuts will hit low-income districts the hardest.
4. Private schools that get vouchers are not held to the same standards of accountability as public schools, nor do they provide the same services to students with disabilities.
5. Studies of various voucher programs have consistently shown that they are no better than public schools and often worse.
6. Many voucher programs subsidize affluent students already attending private schools.
7. Texas already has one of the worst funded school systems in the nation, especially for children with disabilities. Vouchers will make it worse.
8. In rural communities, public schools are the hub of the community. They will be harmed by vouchers.
9. Vouchers are a terrible idea for Texas. The state needs well-funded schools staffed by high-quality teachers. Vouchers will undercut that goal.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Actually, any voucher plan is a terrible, destructive, selfish idea. And I’m being charitable with the word “idea” in this case. They are designed to kill public education, pure and simple.
LikeLike
Vouchers are simply bad policy for no actual educational benefit. The harm that they cause falls squarely on the shoulders of the public schools that already do the heavy lifting because they accept all students and do their best to serve a multitude of needs. So-called choice is an ideological nightmare. It allows unaccountable private schools to siphon funds out of public schools. Public schools are by far the most efficient and effective use of tax dollars to fund education. Privatization diminishes the capacity of public schools to do their best work.
Governors like Abbott and DeSantis and other members of the radical right seek to destroy a democratic public institution that has contributed a great deal to this nation. Vouchers give these demagogues the green light to transfer money out of public schools in order to undermine and destroy them.
LikeLike
Some people desire to destroy public education in order to more cheaply educate the small percentage of people they see as deserving of education. Others simply see a chance for a quick buck and could care less about whether any children even enroll.
Hard to imagine which attitude is worse.
LikeLike
Aka: segregation today is a mixture of racism and classism. I know many conservatives who are entirely at home with their racial opposites so long as they share ideas that make them feel safe—ideas like overt Christianity, homophobia, or the like. This allows modern conservatives to see themselves more as guardians of traditional values rather than overt racists. While others might argue that this is still fundamentally ethnocentric, their view of themselves does not accept this.
LikeLike
Part of the agenda is also segregation. In urban areas developers work to displace the poor from the central urban corridor and replace them with white families and a selective charter school in order to limit access to diverse students. Lots of private vouchers schools also discriminate against children of color.
LikeLike
BTW, In the Public Interest estimates that $1.3 billion dollars are being diverted into vouchers this year. That’s a lot of waste of tax dollars for sub par education.
LikeLike
Republicans haven’t supported the republic in fifty years. They’re libertarians. Vouchers for aid are simply a way of cutting services. Republicans have been dismantling Republican states to benefit a tiny minority.
LikeLike
Appalling stuff. Thanks to the reporters for the Express-News for exposing this subversion. I agree with LeftCoastTeacher that there’s precious little “republic” (from res publica, the things that pertain to the people) in today’s Republicans.
LikeLike
“9. Vouchers are a terrible idea for Texas. The state needs well-funded schools staffed by high-quality teachers. Vouchers will undercut that goal.”
No sense arguing with people who don’t share the same goals as you do. All of the previous eight arguments here are clear, well-stated, and pretty much inarguable. What I have to say is in no sense a dismissal of the importance of laying out clear and well-stated arguments for sound public policy, We have to believe that sense and reason will someday become important again in public discourse over public policy, so by all means plant the seeds for that future. Right now, though, sense and reason will be like water off a duck’s back to people who don’t give a damn about other people’s kids. Their goal is not quality education for all, it’s quality education for their kids.
However much these people may bray about their love of Texas, in their minds the interests of Texas extend no further than their own well-being and the well-being of people like them. It is in fact an extra benefit if the well-being of the wrong sort of people is hurt, because their love of Texas is deeply tied to their misremembering the Alamo as a valiant stand of Anglo heroes against the dark tide of a lesser race.
The genius of the Rs is that they have put together a coalition large enough to control state govt and get public policy put in place that hurts the state as a whole, and most of its people. They do this by means of ginning up culture wars that always have as their theme the supposed danger posed by all those urban voters and their woke progressive ways. Hell, when mention is made of “high-quality teachers” you might as well say “teachers who will ram CRT and LGBTQ tolerance down your kids’ throats” because that is all these folks will hear. They don’t want high-quality, really, even for their own kids, or at least they refuse to consider anything beyond reliable indoctrination with racism, misogyny, and homophobia as constituting high quality
LikeLike