The Texas Monthly asks the question: Why is Governor Greg Abbott pitching vouchers only at private Christian schools? Could it be that he knows that vouchers are a subsidy for the tuition the family is already paying? If tuition is $12,500 per child, a voucher of $8,000 is a nice chunk of change. Maybe he knows that in other states, 75-80% of vouchers are used by students already enrolled in private schools. He knows this is a reward to his evangelical base. He doesn’t give a hoot about the 5.4 students in public schools, most of whom are not white. He cares a lot about the 300,000 kids in private schools. He criticizes public schools for “indoctrinating” students. What does he think happens in religious schools? It is spelled I-N-D-O-C-T-R-I-N-A-T-I-O-N.
Who would school vouchers really benefit?
Governor Greg Abbott is helping to answer that question, not so much through his rhetoric, which is relentlessly on-message (“educational freedom,” “parental rights,” “school choice”) as through his actions. Over the last few months, the governor has been taking his case for school vouchers on the road, traveling around the state to talk up the benefits of education savings accounts, the wonky name for a program that would offer taxpayer dollars to parents who enroll their kids in private schools.
But it’s impossible not to notice that Abbott has only visited expensive private Christian institutions—all Protestant—in front of friendly audiences of parents who have opted out of public education. Of the seven schools the governor has visited on his “Parent Empowerment Tour,” not a single one has been a public school or a secular private school or a religious school affiliated with Catholicism, Islam, or Judaism. Not even a Montessori. If the goal was to reassure critics that Abbott’s embrace of vouchers wasn’t a recipe for draining the public school system while subsidizing the children of wealthy Christian conservatives in private schools of their choice, well, none of those critics were around to hear it. The governor was quite literally preaching to the choir.
A recent appearance, at Brazos Christian School in Bryan, is representative. Brazos Christian is a private school serving kids from prekindergarten through high school, whose mission is “training, equipping, and educating students to impact the world for Jesus.” Tuition costs more than $12,500 a year for high-school students. Applicants for seventh through twelfth grade at Brazos Christian “must evidence a relationship with Jesus Christ” and provide a reference from a pastor to have a shot at acceptance. When Abbott showed up in early March, he spoke at a dais emblazoned with a sign reading “Parents Matter,” the kind of focus-group-tested slogan beloved by politicians and marketers. Hovering behind the governor’s head was the school’s cross-centric emblem.
Imagine your tax dollars supporting a school that will not accept your child because he or she does not have a “relationship with Jesus Christ.”
Maybe off topic to some, but stay with me. It’s graduation season. Here’s a commencement speech to inspire teachers and students and expresses everything Abbott is against.
Abbott does not care that vouchers are a waste of public dollars. He is trolling for right wing Christian votes. Vouchers are a gift to all the white, right wing voters, and they are to the detriment of the public schools that serve lots of Black and Brown students whose parents do not vote for the GOP. Vouchers will not score him any points with taxpayers who are already overburdened by inflation and high property taxes in Texas. Vouchers would drive up taxes for working families, but I doubt that Abbott will try to squeeze any money out of his billionaire cronies.
That’s a good conceptual question to focus on in the central states.
Take out of the equation, the historical backing of Hispanic people (more Texan voters) for Democrats and does it answer the question for the lone star state? In places like Ohio and Pennsylvania, there were more visits by Republican politicians to Catholic schools. I don’t know what share DeVos’ visits were between Catholic and Christian.
In Texas, there are 71,149 and 74,406 students at Texas Catholic and Christian schools, respectively.
Are parents of students at Catholic schools known to have more of a desire to pay the entire bill for private educations than Christian school parents? Given, the decision by the Catholic majority on SCOTUS, it doesn’t appear so.
Abbott’s vouchers for those Christian schools (Christian in name only) means less money for public schools.
I think that reveals the unwritten and mostly unspoken final goal of those in power like Abbott who is doing the bidding of whoever owns him.
Destroy the public schools financially while only spending public money to fund private sector fundamentalist evangelical indoctrination schools using the public’s money through those vouchers.
Once the public schools are gone, the only schools left will be those indoctrination schools that whoever owns Abbott controls. Those schools will end up teaching only who they want to teach and program to be obedient to their billionaire overlords. Children who don’t get that programmed education will be crushed and controlled by the ruling classes drones, the ones selected for the programming.
There is more than one way to pull off a coup and destroy a democracy. This is one of them. It just takes more time, if the majority of voters do not wake up before it is too late.
Christian in name only is right. Robbing the poor seems to me entirely unChristian.
I assume Texas Monthly knows this is a rhetorical question. When any politician behaves, the purpose is gaining votes. In this case the politician is using bribery.
Vouchers are BAD!
from Economic Policy Institute (EPI):
State and local experience proves school vouchers are a failed policy that must be opposed
“Last week, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce Republicans held a congressional hearing on school vouchers. The hearing is part of a coordinated campaign to expand school vouchers, defund public schools, and privatize education.
“School vouchers—which include traditional private school subsidies, Education Savings Accounts, and private school tuition tax credits—divert public funds to private and religious schools and harm low-income and rural communities.
“In 2023, as of mid-April, universal voucher bills have passed in four states and failed in six states. As momentum builds around efforts to create or expand school vouchers in the states, state groups affiliated with EPI’s nationwide Economic Analysis and Research Network (EARN), teachers’ unions, and other public education advocates offer a model for opposing voucher bills and supporting investment in public education. Read the blog post.”
https://us4.campaign-archive.com/?u=ec2361f981a14ee1d45cccaa9&id=a114a24d46