Politics School's out forever: Arizona moves "to kill public education" with new universal voucher law

[tom_mai78101]

Past Friday, while the country reeled from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, Arizona made history of a different sort. Legislators in the Grand Canyon State passed a universal school voucher bill that, once signed by Gov. Doug Ducey, will become the most wide-reaching school privatization plan in the country.

In his January State of the State address, Ducey called on Arizona lawmakers to send him bills that would "expand school choice any way we can," and the Republican-dominated legislature obliged, delivering last Friday's bill, which will open a preexisting program for Empowerment Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) up to the entire state. In practice, the law will now give parents who opt out of public schools a debit card for roughly $7,000 per child that can be used to pay for private school tuition, but also for much more: for religious schools, homeschool expenses, tutoring, online classes, education supplies and fees associated with "microschools," in which small groups of parents pool resources to hire teachers.

Ducey said the law had "set the gold standard in educational freedom" in the country, and right-wing politicians and education activists quickly agreed. Corey DeAngelis, the research director of Betsy DeVos' school privatization lobby group American Federation for Children, declared on Twitter that Arizona "just took first place" when it comes to school choice. Anti-critical race theory activist Christopher Rufo — the Manhattan Institute fellow who this spring called for fostering "universal public school distrust" in order to build support for "universal school choice" — tweeted, "Every red state in the country should follow [Ducey's] lead," since the law "gives every family a right to exit any public school that fails to educate their children or reflect their values."

Arizona moves "to kill public education" with new voucher law

Families who bail on public school will get $7,000 per kid in GOP's new scheme: "Every red state" urged to follow

www.salon.com

 

[The Helper]

I had my oldest daughter in a Christian school for one year when I moved and was unable to get her into the public school I wanted and they were literally 2 years behind where she was in her previous school, taught using workbooks and handouts, and she was behind a year when I finally got her out of there. Something like this is just going to make anyone in Arizona who takes advantage of this kids dumber then they already would be LOL!

 

[Ghan]

School choice puts more control back in the hands of parents, where it should be. Still, there's something to be said about economies of scale in schooling just like anything else. The cost is worth it here though. Government schools are terrible and are a key contributor to the decline of the US.

 

[jonas]

School choice puts more control back in the hands of parents, where it should be. Still, there's something to be said about economies of scale in schooling just like anything else. The cost is worth it here though. Government schools are terrible and are a key contributor to the decline of the US.

Government schools *in US* are terrible. My sister went to school in Austin and Germany for a while and they were worlds apart.

The best case scenario I hope for here is that this puts more pessure on public schools to compete.

What I fear is that it will just increase the socio-economic wedge, leaving behind lots of gifted kids from poor backgrounds, whose parents don't know/care to give the appropriate chances to their kids; and that too will in the long term dimish the US' competitiveness in the marketplace of ideas.