A reader who signs as “Retired Teacher” posted this astute analysis of how vouchers work. Why are billionaires like Betsy DeVos, Charles Koch, the Waltons, etc. so enthusiastic about vouchers? No voucher will ever be large enough to send a child to the schools their children attend. Why do they want to defund public schools?
During the first phase of the privatization of education was the belief that the private sector can do everything better and more efficiently than the public sector. What ensued was trying to turn education into a commodity. Market based principles applied to education made everything so much worse including hiring the wrong people, endless testing, waste, fraud, firing legitimate teachers and closing public schools. The main goal of privatization has always been to gain access to public funds and transfer it into private pockets. The current interest in vouchers is an extension of this trend. It certainly is not about education as vouchers provide worse education.
Vouchers have always been the goal of DeVos, the 1% and right wing extremists. They are a way to scam the working class out of the public schools that protect their children’s rights and send them to valueless schools with zero accountability while teaching them religious dogma and almost anything else the school deems worthy for less cost. Unfortunately, the students are unlikely get a valid background in science, history, civics or the exposure to diverse students. Vouchers benefit the wealthy and affluent, and they are a losing proposition for the poor and working class.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The day that the voucher is big enough to pay for the expensive private schools for students with considerable disabilities, then I will start supporting vouchers. The tuition at these schools is in the tens of thousands of dollars.
The day that charter schools stop denying admission to disabled students, I will start supporting charter schools.
I’ll keep saying this til I’m blue in the face! 1)Get rid of the stupid Standardized testing and its evil twin the Common Bore curriculum and most everything will fall back into place. 2)Disclose the College Board for what it truly has become…..a for profit non-profit that is a marketing and testing gatekeeper keeping the college banking industry propped up by allowing colleges to continually raise price$$$.
Democrats have had the opportunity to do this and they fail miserably every single time!….in fact, Arne Duncan piled it on more than his predecessor. It just shows how the Dem party is well enmeshed in the “business” (free market…cottage industry) of education.
No one will want or have a need for Charter schools or Voucher $$$ if their children are happy and mentally/physically healthy in their locally zoned public school system.
Back in 2010, Charles Murray altered his argument for charters based on superior student outcomes (the outcomes he referred to were based on standardized test scores) to the argument that while charter students did no better than traditional public-school students, charters should be supported because parents want them, having a personal interest in sending their children to a certain type of school. There was something sought here other than strong student learning outcomes (however misconceived). We have had a pretty clear picture of what has been sought for some time by various groups of charter supporters and, of course, voucher supporters.
Clar: the sought-after goal: to get away from “those” kids
To fully understand vouchers we need to examine who benefits from them. The big winners in vouchers are the wealthy that want to undermine unions and public schools. Religious groups that want to use public tax dollars to indoctrinate young people into a particular belief system also benefit. Some feel they will save money, but this claim is misleading. In states that have universal vouchers like Florida or Arizona, the costs are much more than anticipated from several million to over a billion dollars each year.
The cost of vouchers represents reckless public policy that will result in higher state taxes, and it may drive a state into insolvency. Vouchers are a costly mistake that are politically and economically driven, but they do not improve education at all. In fact, recent studies have shown they provide a worse education than public schools while causing a great deal of unnecessary disruption.
The Guardian reports that one major city’s archbishop wants Catholic schools to pay the costs of the claims against the Church for priest abuse. His letter has become public.
Commenter Greg pointed out awhile ago, the dioceses filed for bankruptcy. Never the less, they have money to promote school choice and hire lobbyists. And, in Ohio, they had almost a $1,000,000 that they spent to get the anti-democracy Issue 1 enacted (on the ballot Aug. 8).
Reportedly, most of the expenditures by the archdioceses in the abuse scandals have gone to lawyers, some of whom are parishioners.
Voucher money provided by taxpayers funding the costs associated with priest abuse….
One of the greatest shames of Americans right now is their willful refusal to expose the Catholic church’s abuse of taxpayers and the Church’s threat to democracy.
Betsy Devos learned a great deal from her family’s grift we know as Amway. Just like the products that company promoted, charters aren’t about quality but quantity for the wealthy.