The School Voucher Scam

What is the school voucher program (aka the “voucher scam”) why should you care?  The school voucher scam only helps the wealthy pay tuition for their kids who are already enrolled in private schools, or who will be enrolled in private schools, even without vouchers.

A wise person once told me, “The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”  Like all scams, the school voucher scam sounds good at first.  But check the small print.  The school voucher scam gives tax dollars to parents to help parents pay for their children’s private school tuition.  The unspoken message here is that private school education is better than public school education and rather than fix our public schools, we should just fund the private school education for all who want a better education.  That’s the large print. 

The truth is, private school education is not available to all Tennesseans.  Private schools still get to pick and choose their students.  Private school tuition will likely still be out of reach for the majority of Tennesseans, even with school vouchers. The voucher scam takes tax dollars from our neighborhood public schools to pay for the private school education of the wealthy.  Simply put, the school voucher scam defunds public schools by funneling your tax dollars to private and religious schools. This allows for the religious indoctrination of children to be funded by you, the taxpayer.  That’s the small print.

The unspoken result of the school voucher scam is that our public school system will continue to be ranked in the bottom 10 in the nation.  Rather than taking money away from our public schools, which are already underfunded, we should be looking for ways to increase public school funding so that all of our children, not just the wealthy, have access to a better education.