How many times have we heard the claim that “vouchers will save poor kids from failing public schools”? That claim is plainly false. As we have seen voucher programs scale up, it’s clear that the overwhelming majority of students who take vouchers never attended public schools.
Now, even Politico has noticed that the main beneficiaries of vouchers are rich kids. Maybe that was the goal all along. The headline of a piece Politico ran recently was: “GOP States Are Embracing Vouchers. Wealthy Parents Are Benefitting.”
In Arkansas, where vouchers were just initiated, 95% were claimed by students never in public school. Florida, with its long-established voucher program, recently made vouchers available to all, regardless of income. Only 13% of vouchers were claimed by public school students.
Those of us who follow education politics closely have known these facts for a long time. Veteran voucher researcher Josh Cowen of Michigan State University has broadcast this finding in TIME, in The Hechinger Report, in daily newspaper columns.
But when POLITICO notices that vouchers are subsidizing those who never attended public schools, it means that the news is spreading beyond the choir of voucher critics.
With enrollment surging in these programs — which Republicans say shows how desperate families are for more education choices — early data shows that students in some of these states aren’t leaving their public schools for private options. Instead, most scholarships are going to incoming kindergarteners and students already enrolled in private schools…
School choice expansions are fueled, in part, by groups like the American Federation for Children — founded by former Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — sending millions of dollars to candidates who support them. For the 2022 election cycle, the organization boasted donating $9 million to candidates backing school choice with reportedly solid success — winning 277 out of 368 races.
DeVos and the GOP are not known for their devotion to poor kids, unless you believe voucher propaganda.
More than half of the voucher funding in Arizona is going to students previously enrolled in private school, homeschooling or other non-public options, according to a memo circulated by the Hobbs administration. In 2022 in Arizona, 45 percent of scholarship applicants came from the wealthiest quarter of students in the state, according to an analysisfrom one think tank.
Vouchers divert funding from the public schools to pay the partial tuition of rich kids. We now know?
Was that the plan all along?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
To be clear, the claim that vouchers are designed to either help poor kids or raise achievement is a lie. In Orwellian terms, it’s akin to saying 2+2=5, and insisting that people should believe it if it is repeated often enough by people in power.
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In Ohio where top state elected government is Republican Catholic, the voucher goal of Gov. Voinovich was money for Catholic schools. The voucher expansion is consistently very beneficial to Catholic schools.
If public education advocates were willing, they could present findings about the elitism of Catholic school populations. As accompaniment, they could focus on the work study required in the urban school chain, Cristo Rey, which is a different model from the suburban religious schools. I would describe it as two-tier.
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Most privatization schemes result in getting the public to use tax funds to fund a private benefit regardless of the lame pretense they use to justify the transfer of funds. Sure, let’s “save poor kids from failing schools” sounds socially responsible, but it is a misleading marketing ploy. The objective is to compel working people to subsidize the education of affluent children. “Welfare for the well-to-to” is an apt slogan for the voucher bait and switch.
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The poor subsidize the wealthy in higher education in Tennessee through the Tennessee Promise, a program that is funded by the lottery, a numbers racket run by the state. I have never compared the income level of those who play the lottery with those who send their children to college, but everyone know how that would look. Nobody talks about it. Like the weird aunt who lives in the upstairs room, the lottery system for making state college affordable receives only positive publicity from the left wing media.
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Diane is correct about the word know spreading beyond those of us who question the purpose of vouchers. When I saw the headline from Politico, that was my first thought.
And once again, I still haven’t had any response on other forums about how vouchers aren’t the worst kind of socialism. It is a redistribution of wealth that truly removes rights from those of us who have never had children. I have no say, in any capacity, with how my tax money is spent.
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Of course vouchers go to the kids of the wealthy. Political payments for votes come in all forms.
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Vouchers ensure that the voices of the not so wealthy are marginalized in our democracy. They are anti-American.
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Living in a discriminatory society, Black families should be forewarned that private education institutions will refuse to listen to their concerns. Private schools for Black families with the schools led by a White elite and a board distant from the community (hedge funders)- what could possibly go wrong? It’s a repeat of the “Indian schools” in Canadian and U.S. history.
Exploiters exploit.
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