Voucher supporters are funny, they grasp onto any data no matter how tenuous and go, see I told you the program was amazing.
Take the recent study which said students that take vouchers from the same socio economic group as those that don't, were six percent more likely to attend not graduate college for that they were one percent more likely.
Six percent not sixty percent and attend not graduate not graduate mind you.
They don’t care that when students return or come from voucher schools they are often far behind. Well they were probably far behind before they left, they say in an attempt to explain it away.
I have included the study above so you can look at it. I would like to point out that they get a lot of the data from the study from Step up for Students, the states largest voucher provider.
Friends I guess we could debate on the education students are getting with vouchers but thanks to a new study we can’t debate the money we are spending, and Florida far outspends any other state in the nation
From the Washington Post,
In its latest ranking, published in January, EdChoice said Florida spent $969.6 million on educational savings accounts, vouchers and tax credit programs in 2016, the latest available data. That was 3.69 percent of the state’s combined program and public K-12 expenditures. EdChoice used state public expenditure data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2016 Public Elementary-Secondary Education Finance Data report.
New Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) just announced a tax credit program that would boost that spending significantly if the legislature, as expected, passes it. Florida has been at the top of the list for a number of years.
When looking at dollars spent, Ohio was second, spending $324.1 million, and Wisconsin was third, with $271.9 million. But Arizona was second in terms of percentage, at 2.83 percent of its total K-12 expenditures. Wisconsin was third, with 2.66 percent.
The tax credit program by the way is a program that is allowed to expand 20 percent a year which means we are undoubtedly well over a billion now and with DeSantis’s recent proposed expansion, rocketing towards two billion and more.
Friends, say the study is right and 6 percent more of the same economic group that takes vouchers does attend college, though the study also admits there are factors that they may not have taken into account that make their study moot, is it worth billions of dollars? Is it worth the destruction of our public education system? Should we give vouchers, public money to families that want a religious education, or who don't trust gov'ment schools?
This is the reality, schools that take vouchers, public money, billions in public money, don’t have to have recognized curriculums, can teach junk science and history, don’t have to have certified teachers or teachers with degrees, most don’t have to report how they spend the money and have none of the same accountability that Tallahassee says public schools must have and maybe just maybe all that would be okay if they were getting some great or even good results, but the reality is we aren’t. Which begs the question instead of expanding them, why aren't we scaling them back?
No comments:
Post a Comment