“School choice” is a scam.
Let’s get that out of the way right at the top. It is theft of public school dollars by politicians who are in the pockets of private education corporations that stand to make billions by doing a poorer job educating your community’s children.
Alabama is giving away $7,000 per student ($2,000 for homeschooled students) for kids who are overwhelmingly already in private schools.
It is a testament to the powers of marketing and grift that such a scam is even remotely entertained, much less legalized, by lawmakers anywhere, or that any portion of a decent, civilized society would entertain such.
Just take a step back and look at it realistically. We’re going to take public tax dollars from public schools and give that money to private businesses that don’t face the same rigorous oversight or standards, don’t adhere to the same principles and are free to accept or deny any student for any reason. And we’re also not going to force those private businesses to meet the same curriculum requirements, nor will they be held to the same materials standards, allowing them to use taxpayer dollars to purchase textbooks that say people were roaming about with dinosaurs, if the dinosaurs were even real.
Come on, you know what this is. It’s a scam.
It’s a bunch of dudes in a smoke-filled backroom doling out sweaty wads of our cash to each other as they laugh about the rubes falling for this. It’s like something the mafia would come up with. Actually, it’s exactly like something the mafia came up with, only the mafia wasn’t bold enough to try it in education. They stopped at sanitation.
It should come as no surprise that some of Alabama’s “conservative” political organizations, including the ones that claim to be nonpartisan, are fully on board with “school choice.” These are mostly the same outfits that back the mafia-like operations of gambling in Alabama, where there are illegal casinos in every town and no real enforcement mechanisms to stop it. That’s gambling choice, I suppose.
There was great angst among these groups this week after some public school officials from north Alabama dared speak publicly about the realities that the scam is going to have on their districts. In particular, the superintendent of the Madison City school district—consistently one of the top districts in the nation and one of the economic drivers of this state—stated that the scam was going to cost his district and the surrounding districts roughly $100 million annually.
They’re not wrong about that.
When Alabama’s private school funding scam is fully implemented in a couple of years, it is projected to suck more than a half-billion dollars annually out of our public schools. It is going to be devastating. Unless, of course, you operate Tony’s Quick Lube, Auto Parts, Fishing Tackle, Chainsaws and Elementary School.
The conservative groups, of course, immediately focused on the $12 billion total of our annual education trust fund—the budget that provides funding for the schools that help educate the 715,000 students in public schools in this state. Only about $6.6 billion, though, is allocated to the operational funding of K-12 education. The rest is a mishmash of other expenditures, such as money for 2- and 4-year colleges, technology and infrastructure improvements and other funding.
Breaking down that total figure based on the population served, that’s roughly $8,400 per student.
That includes special needs students. That includes special education programs. That includes the personnel for assisting every student who walks through the doors—not the ones you pick and choose—to get education services that fits their needs. That includes providing transportation. That includes food.
I want you to sit back and consider the scope of all of that.
Taking on every single kid in a select geographical area, no matter what happened at their house, no matter what home training they did or didn’t receive, no matter the help they did or didn’t get on their ABCs or learning to write their name or even owning a book. No matter if their electricity was cut off for nonpayment last week. No matter if they’ve never had dial-up, much less high-speed internet. No matter if they ate at all yesterday, or over the entire weekend. No matter if they witnessed horrific violence in their neighborhood, or inside the walls of their home.
They take them all in. And for the holy-hell-unbelievable price of $8,400—or $700 per month—those public schools consistently do the best possible job churning out an educated populace. Study after study after study show this to be true—that no private school or charter school or home school has ever achieved the success rates of educating the full population of local students like our public schools.
I know you hear all the time about how we’re lagging behind other countries. We’re not. We get dinged as a country for the same reason our public schools get criticized—because we educate everyone and count all the scores in the average. But our top students compete with any other students in the world, and top to bottom, we beat ‘em all.
For some reason, though, we have been ultra mealy-mouthed in expressing these accomplishments. Especially in Alabama. For the life of me, I can’t comprehend how we’ve gone from the all powerful AEA to one that cowers in fear of even being mentioned. Or how any of us, particularly the education community, has allowed this slander of public education to reach this level—to the point where we’re not even fighting the theft of public school dollars.
It’s a disgrace.
Good teachers are going to lose their jobs. Good districts are going to suffer. Impoverished school districts are going to be decimated. Impoverished students are going to be screwed.
That is, unless a whole lot of people finally take a damn stand. School choice is a scam. The CHOOSE Act is theft. The funneling of public school dollars to private businesses is criminal negligence.
Take a stand for public education.
