Two useful things, but there’s no political incentive unfortunately. Education is usually the first thing to defund since you won’t deal with ramifications until long after your term ends. Only senetors and judicial last long enough and neither are responsible for budget… you just rarely get anyone trying.
States do even things out on their end, but same issue with terms. California for instance has a budget deficit and are cutting education budgets (albeit mostly with higher ed, iirc). That means more reliance on local funds, which ironically fuck rural voters most, aka Republican districts (funny enough, this distribution of funds to rural schools is a big reason DoE survived Reagan with GOP support).
School vouchers are actually terrible. They take funding from already struggling schools and give it to private institutions which already don’t have to follow many of the policies outlined above (they can discriminate in a lot of ways that public schools can’t). They also mostly end up being a subsidy for the wealthy.
Others already cut to the chase, but yeah. The long short of it is that’s just another move to siphon funds to the wealthy at the cost of the needy. I won’t say it could never work, but it would likely be less efficient if you managed the same coverage as public school.
You could draw analogies to healthcare. When healthcare is privatized, not only does everyone pay more, it also leaves a ton of people without coverage. Same for education, as every child has to be covered. The voucher system works similar to subsidized healthcare (e.g. Medicare) which kinda works but why convert a perfectly acceptable universal option with a more expensive, more complicated, and more unequal system? You just inflate costs and certain people make money while everyone else suffers… without even improving quality, no less.
That all said, I’m generally open minded. It’s frustrating knowing how much better private schools are vs public… when I attended UCLA, I was frequently surrounded by private school alumns because they had connections. They had counselors, AP courses, tutors, and here I was, a first generation who only got in because of community college. It’s very unfair as it is, and I fully understand the wishful thinking some (few) might have in a voucher system. But the research just isn’t behind it.
Yeah, I agree. Just trying to explore all viewpoints because I truly don’t get how people think defunding the DoE will fix things. The system has clear issues, but breaking it up and making it more expensive doesn’t seem like the answer either.
It’s probably mostly propaganda that gets most people, same with USAID. People have a poor grasp of what they do and higher ups know but they likely have an interest in it, like ties to the industry or are anti-science/pro-religion or simply hate a group they want to discriminate against. DoE protects and improves the social mobility of black and brown folk and that was good enough reason in the 80s for GOP to target it, after all.
Two useful things, but there’s no political incentive unfortunately. Education is usually the first thing to defund since you won’t deal with ramifications until long after your term ends. Only senetors and judicial last long enough and neither are responsible for budget… you just rarely get anyone trying.
States do even things out on their end, but same issue with terms. California for instance has a budget deficit and are cutting education budgets (albeit mostly with higher ed, iirc). That means more reliance on local funds, which ironically fuck rural voters most, aka Republican districts (funny enough, this distribution of funds to rural schools is a big reason DoE survived Reagan with GOP support).
Could school vouchers and tax credits work?
School vouchers are actually terrible. They take funding from already struggling schools and give it to private institutions which already don’t have to follow many of the policies outlined above (they can discriminate in a lot of ways that public schools can’t). They also mostly end up being a subsidy for the wealthy.
I assumed. That’s just the argument I always hear. If the IRS gets gutted it seems like the revenue wouldn’t be there to fund them anyway.
Others already cut to the chase, but yeah. The long short of it is that’s just another move to siphon funds to the wealthy at the cost of the needy. I won’t say it could never work, but it would likely be less efficient if you managed the same coverage as public school.
You could draw analogies to healthcare. When healthcare is privatized, not only does everyone pay more, it also leaves a ton of people without coverage. Same for education, as every child has to be covered. The voucher system works similar to subsidized healthcare (e.g. Medicare) which kinda works but why convert a perfectly acceptable universal option with a more expensive, more complicated, and more unequal system? You just inflate costs and certain people make money while everyone else suffers… without even improving quality, no less.
That all said, I’m generally open minded. It’s frustrating knowing how much better private schools are vs public… when I attended UCLA, I was frequently surrounded by private school alumns because they had connections. They had counselors, AP courses, tutors, and here I was, a first generation who only got in because of community college. It’s very unfair as it is, and I fully understand the wishful thinking some (few) might have in a voucher system. But the research just isn’t behind it.
Yeah, I agree. Just trying to explore all viewpoints because I truly don’t get how people think defunding the DoE will fix things. The system has clear issues, but breaking it up and making it more expensive doesn’t seem like the answer either.
It’s probably mostly propaganda that gets most people, same with USAID. People have a poor grasp of what they do and higher ups know but they likely have an interest in it, like ties to the industry or are anti-science/pro-religion or simply hate a group they want to discriminate against. DoE protects and improves the social mobility of black and brown folk and that was good enough reason in the 80s for GOP to target it, after all.