I hate the voucher system for all the reasons mentioned. And I didn’t even realize the rich were using them too.

discount. That's all the voucher is, a coupon to get money off the total bill.


I would always ask parents who thought it wS a good idea" if the school you chose charged 10 grand a semester and your voucher was for 3 grand, would you be able to come up with the other 7 grand?" Then I asked "then what would you do if the public schools were all closed due to lack of funding?" This year along 4 schools have been closed and 2 torn down. People would look like something was happening in their brains. Like they were getting it.

These are supposed to pay private school tuition, but since private schools can legally charge whatever the market will bear there's no reason why they can't raise their tuition by whatever the voucher is. Like, if you have a school that charges $6000 per year and the voucher is for $5000, they can legally raise their tuition to $11,000. The parents currently enrolled won't notice since the increase equals the government check, but the "children of the working poor who deserve a quality education" still aren't getting in.

OTOH, a voucher program would encourage churches to convert their basements into schools to an even greater extent than they're already doing it. So now you've diverted a bunch of public school kids into Christian madrassas. (Which is one of the hard right's goals.)