I do see your point that the vouchers don’t cover every aspect associated with making private school an option for everyone. As a family member of private school attendees, I can tell you not everyone attending comes from the either the middle or upper classes. Many come from families where both parents work (or single family households)…
I do see your point that the vouchers don’t cover every aspect associated with making private school an option for everyone. As a family member of private school attendees, I can tell you not everyone attending comes from the either the middle or upper classes. Many come from families where both parents work (or single family households) who have made financial and schedule sacrifices elsewhere to afford these opportunities to their children. Many have made these sacrifices in order to move away from the mandated curriculums in the public school system. While the vouchers don’t provide the entire answer, they aren’t merely a “discount” for who you refer to as least needing them.
I appreciate you sharing your personal experience with private schools. Many families make significant sacrifices to afford private education, and I apologize if my use of the word "discount" came across as dismissive of those sacrifices.
I think we need to look at this issue from two angles. First, there's the individual level - where we see families like those you describe making admirable sacrifices to access private education. Then there's the systemic level - where we can examine whether Arizona's voucher program is achieving its stated goal of expanding access to private education for lower-income families who previously couldn't afford it.
The data from Arizona's program implementation tells us that despite the stated intention of helping lower-income families access private education, the program hasn't significantly increased private school accessibility for this demographic. While some working-class families could benefit, most are sidelined by forces outside of their control while the overwhelming majority of voucher users are families who were already in the private school system.
I don't think anyone is expecting perfection from the system, but if its primary effect is to subsidize existing private school attendance rather than expanding access to new families, we should at least be honest about that reality. The organizations backing these initiatives should drop the BS about helping lower income people, acknowledge that they are actually trying to help higher income people, while still supporting the program for other reasons - such as curriculum choice, which you mentioned as an important factor for many families.
Side note, there are many taxpayers, like me, who believe that receiving a taxpayer-funded education should come from the public school system, where you might not agree with everything being taught, but that's a tradeoff you can expect when gathering hundreds or thousands of kids together efficiently. We can't afford to educate every child in tiny bubbles of their parents' choosing with taxpayer money; that's where the private money should come in. I believe that a voucher system ultimately deprives resources from children who have no other option but attend a public school. But that's not really the argument I was trying to make, my opinion matters just as much as yours. (And as a childless dog dad, you might want to weigh the opinions of parents of humans more than me.)
My main point is that the lobbyists/legislators are saying one thing and doing another, which is unacceptable.
I get where your coming from. I do think that just bc both parents work doesn’t mean a family isn’t middle class or even upper class. Also if a private school tuition is $40k a year and a voucher is for $10k, but you only make 50k. No amount of shifting budgets is going to allow you to send your kid to school there. You still need to pay for a roof over your kid’s head, utilities, food, clothing and necessities.
I do see your point that the vouchers don’t cover every aspect associated with making private school an option for everyone. As a family member of private school attendees, I can tell you not everyone attending comes from the either the middle or upper classes. Many come from families where both parents work (or single family households) who have made financial and schedule sacrifices elsewhere to afford these opportunities to their children. Many have made these sacrifices in order to move away from the mandated curriculums in the public school system. While the vouchers don’t provide the entire answer, they aren’t merely a “discount” for who you refer to as least needing them.
I appreciate you sharing your personal experience with private schools. Many families make significant sacrifices to afford private education, and I apologize if my use of the word "discount" came across as dismissive of those sacrifices.
I am basing my opinion on this investigation, and extrapolating that it will be common in areas other than Arizona if not enacted with a lot of changes outside of one piece of legislation: https://www.propublica.org/article/arizona-school-vouchers-esa-private-schools
I think we need to look at this issue from two angles. First, there's the individual level - where we see families like those you describe making admirable sacrifices to access private education. Then there's the systemic level - where we can examine whether Arizona's voucher program is achieving its stated goal of expanding access to private education for lower-income families who previously couldn't afford it.
The data from Arizona's program implementation tells us that despite the stated intention of helping lower-income families access private education, the program hasn't significantly increased private school accessibility for this demographic. While some working-class families could benefit, most are sidelined by forces outside of their control while the overwhelming majority of voucher users are families who were already in the private school system.
I don't think anyone is expecting perfection from the system, but if its primary effect is to subsidize existing private school attendance rather than expanding access to new families, we should at least be honest about that reality. The organizations backing these initiatives should drop the BS about helping lower income people, acknowledge that they are actually trying to help higher income people, while still supporting the program for other reasons - such as curriculum choice, which you mentioned as an important factor for many families.
Side note, there are many taxpayers, like me, who believe that receiving a taxpayer-funded education should come from the public school system, where you might not agree with everything being taught, but that's a tradeoff you can expect when gathering hundreds or thousands of kids together efficiently. We can't afford to educate every child in tiny bubbles of their parents' choosing with taxpayer money; that's where the private money should come in. I believe that a voucher system ultimately deprives resources from children who have no other option but attend a public school. But that's not really the argument I was trying to make, my opinion matters just as much as yours. (And as a childless dog dad, you might want to weigh the opinions of parents of humans more than me.)
My main point is that the lobbyists/legislators are saying one thing and doing another, which is unacceptable.
I get where your coming from. I do think that just bc both parents work doesn’t mean a family isn’t middle class or even upper class. Also if a private school tuition is $40k a year and a voucher is for $10k, but you only make 50k. No amount of shifting budgets is going to allow you to send your kid to school there. You still need to pay for a roof over your kid’s head, utilities, food, clothing and necessities.