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Tuesday, September 16, 2014

How much do voucher fans really care about poor and minority students? Hint, not much.

Voucher proponents lament all the time the fate of poor and mostly minority children but how much do they really care? I think I can make the case for not much.

You see at the same time they have been clamoring for more vouchers they have been utterly silent about the massive cuts and ratcheting up of the requirements to the Bright Future scholarship program.

The fact these changes to Bright Futures will disproportionately affect the futures of so many poor and mostly minority children has drawn a collective shrug from voucher supporters and that should really tell you all you need to know about how much they really care.

At the end of the day what would really happen if the voucher program went away. The students in question would be assimilated back into public schools which arguably as a group do just as good or better of a job educating our children. The cuts to Bright futures will however stop some children from going to college and saddle many of those that still do with debt.

Why are vouchers worth fighting for while at the same time they ignore the cuts to Bright Futures. I believe it's because they have such disdain for public schools often staffed by union teachers that they would do anything to hurt them even if that met sacrificing the futures of many poor and mostly minority children.

Finally I can think of numerous downsides to the states voucher program, it obliterates the first amendment, the program resists accountability and it drains resources from the states coffers among others but at the same time I can't think of a single downside to helping poor and mostly minority children who otherwise might not, go to college.  

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