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The drive to use public tax dollars for private schools is great when it is STEM. Seems good right? Charter Schools for STEM. Who could argue? People miss tha

The drive to use public tax dollars for private schools is great when it is STEM. Seems good right? Charter Schools for STEM. Who could argue? People miss that the primary interest groups that are lobbying for private schools, that are arguing against public schools, are for Religion. They want to be able to teach the bible as fact, not teach evolution, to allow prayer. By syphoning public dollars, into private schools, they are bypassing the separation of state-church. This then takes dollars away from public schools, which then struggle. Then the awful state of the public schools, is used as an argument for more private schools, and thus more religious schools. Eventually the population wont be able to think in scientific terms anymore, logical reasoning will be gone.

brightball 3y ago
My kids go to a private religious school in South Carolina. They are taught about world religions, evolution, have chapel twice a week and allow prayer. It’s also the best school in the entire state. My kids go there because it's a great school. There are a lot of anti religious scare tactics used to push people off of vouchers. The reality is that the only people with true choice in school selection have to either be able to afford private school, afford to move to a house zoned for a better school or afford to have parent who can facilitate a home school group. Voucher proponents want everybody to have all choices available.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  >"It’s also the best school in the entire state." That is the problem. Why not make public schools better? Why is everyone else at a disadvantage. If our focus was on putting funding into 'all' schools, not just 'rich geographic locations', then everyone could be educated. It isn't about 'Choice', it is about everyone getting a minimal education. If you want to 'choose' to indoctrinate your kids into your particular religion of 'choice', that can be done at home. But everyone should learn the old Reading/Writing/Arithmetic.
  - brightball 3y ago
    > That is the problem. Why not make public schools better? People have tried. The problem is the governance structure that creates a race to the bottom. It's not a question of funding anymore. The reason that private school is so successful? It's run by teachers. People who have gone to school, received training and degrees as professional educators. Not only are they able to get together to talk about new techniques, figure out the best ways to teach and improve what they do, how they teach, what they think is important to teach...but they also have to convince parents that the school is the best place for their kids to be so there's a natural balance factor in play of "teacher collaboration", "parental buy in" and "is it actually working for my child"? What sold me was the tour we did when my son was getting ready to start K5. Everything looked great on the tour of course. I was happy with everything that I saw, but then I started asking questions. This was during the time that common core was being rolled out everywhere and I was seeing my friends with parents of older kids talking about how students who were previously getting straight A's or perfect scores in math were suddenly getting bad grades because they were getting the right answers the wrong ways. They were turning into stressed out, anxious basket cases who hated school. That system was being thrust on everybody so quickly by careless governance that it was causing chaos. The dean's answer? "We also use common core here, but we decided on that a few years prior after our teachers researched it and decided it would be best. It was gradually implemented over 4-5 years and parents were communicated to about the changes along the way. The entire process was very smooth." That sold me. We actually live where we live because it is zoned for a good public school. The option to have a school experience for my kids that wasn't going to be disrupted by dramatic changes after every election was more important to me. I wanted a stable elementary school experience and we planned to move them out to public in middle school. Then Covid hit and the school handled things much better than public schools did for those 2 years. Now we're on to high school and the political climate is just about the strangest it's been in my lifetime with so much politics aimed at school boards, so without ever planning to there's a good chance that they'll continue here for high school too. The educational factors are important, yes. It's a rigorous school. But the stability factor is more important. My kids love school. I didn't when I was a kid and I'm very thankful that they are in an environment that gives them that. The religious aspects for me are good, but they would get most of the same in church. But I do like knowing that the same values we teach our kids are being modeled in their daily environments. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." - Galations 5:22-23
- hibikir 3y ago
  Even among private schools, pricing differentiation happens. My local catholic parish has many schools: Some are very affordable, but those are not the good ones. The ones that are competitive with the secular private schools charge just as much, and it's not due to facilities suddenly costing five times as much: It's that, for the most part, only the kids with rich parents will afford them, plus a few rare scholarship targets that happen to make the school look a little diverse. The high price is a feature. So Vouchers do not have all choices available: Having a voucher doesn't guarantee acceptance to a school. And depending on your voucher legislation preference, you aren't going both force all schools to accept vouchers and make sure they don't raise prices. Ultimately, being selective is a feature, and therefore prices will go up, not unlike how easy student loans for colleges help raise prices. The top schools will eat the entire value of the voucher in cost increases, or just refuse the value of the voucher if they can't. You are right in the fact that really, most people in America have to pay for the good school district, either straight up in cash, or in significant increases in home costs. I've seen 30% drops in home values as, within the same district, the line of who got to go into the 'good' public school changed. Vouchers probably make the school choices far more explicit, and might lead to less housing segregation. But they sure aren't going to make all choices available to everyone, any more than I can choose to marry a supermodel, or own a private island.
- cmurf 3y ago
  I went to a Catholic one of these. World religion was a double edged sword. If you're born a Muslim and are a good Muslim you go to heaven. But it's better to "upgrade" by converting to Catholicism. That's what we were taught. Including the inferiority of evangelical Christianity. i.e. belief in Christ as a deity and your redeemer, isn't good enough to get you into heaven. You have to do good works. I have every confidence religious schools teach the superiority of their religion. With a white Jesus on a cross. It's not Jewish and Muslim schools pushing for public money without strings attached into private schools. It's Christian schools. Well maybe there will come a time once again when folks understand Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, from which we get the wall of separation between church and state phrase. It is in the letter from the Danbury Baptists we see what they were worried about. It wasn't Jews, Muslims, atheists, or anti-religionists. They were worried about the Danbury Congregationalists. Christians are not on the same page, is an understatement. They really aren't all on the same book either. It's impossible to promote them all the same. And they will not and should not permit dissimilar promotion. The only sane solution to preserving freedom of religion is to also preserve freedom from it. The government must only promote secularism. Everything else is playing with fire.
  - brightball 3y ago
    > The only sane solution to preserving freedom of religion is to also preserve freedom from it. The government must only promote secularism. Everything else is playing with fire. There's nothing about vouchers that prevents the creation of secular private schools. Religious schools that you have no choice but to attend are very, very different than religious schools that your parents choose for you because they think it's the best place for your education.
    - cmurf 3y ago
      Government providing $1 to a religious private school is finding favor in that particular religion. Since Christian schools are more common than any other, public funding in any amount is the state promoting that religion above others. A possible work around is the state donates $x to each registered religious organization in that state. Every group gets an equal amount. John Rawls "veil of ignorance" thought experiment applies here.
- JamesLeonis 3y ago
  > My kids go to a private religious school in South Carolina. > They are taught about world religions, evolution, have chapel twice a week and allow prayer. It’s also the best school in the entire state. My kids go there because it's a great school. I also went to a private christian high school and it was all that you say here. However I also remember many very rich, ultra religious parents that ousted three principles over religious horseshit while I attended until my latin teacher became Principal and told them all to pound sand or go somewhere else. I also went to a private catholic elementry school. While it was good at the time, recently it's falling apart. The church has distanced itself from it, attendance YoY is falling, and it'll likely close in the next few years. However unlike a public school, these private schools can close and lean on the public system to catch all of the students they shake out. Unlike the private and charter schools, the buck stops at Public schools. > The reality is that the only people with true choice in school selection have to either be able to afford private school, afford to move to a house zoned for a better school or afford to have parent who can facilitate a home school group. Charter schools kick out kids as well, so all of these problems apply to them too. The only purpose of charter schools is to make their lobbyists (like Bill Gates and Betsy DeVos) rich by siphoning public money like defense contractors. All this talk about Charter Schools is about Options for students/parents, but nobody is talking about who is Obligated to those students, parents, and the tax payer. When a charter or private school closes, it dumps its students into the pubic system [0]. > Consider City High School in Los Angeles, California, which received a $575,000 grant from the federal government. The school had barely started its second year when it suddenly closed, leaving 116 students scrambling for a new school. Similarly, a charter school in Wilmington, Delaware, received a grant of $350,000 but closed just five months into its first school year, forcing 206 students to look for a new school. > The Acclaim Academy charter school chain in Florida received grants of $375,000, $175,000, $175,000, and $19,198 for its four schools. One never opened, another was taken over by the district due to financial concerns and mismanagement, and the two other closed suddenly with no notice, in the middle of the year, leaving students, some of them seniors preparing college applications, searching to find new schools. Then there is the low attendence and fraud. > The report locates much of the blame for this waste of taxpayer money on the Department of Education’s practice of awarding grants to states with few rules and virtually no accountability. Often, grants were “doled out to individuals who had no credentials or experience to open up a new school,” according to the researchers. > The report also identified a “pattern” of charter school operators—even before their school opened—funneling money from grants to their own personal accounts, to purchases of expensive equipment, and to “for-profit consulting and education management organizations” that do not publicly divulge how they spend money. The report concluded that, due to these practices, the charter school grant program “has become a magnet for grifters, consultants, and charter entrepreneurs who see an easy way to cash-in.” The kicker: > When members of Congress repeatedly referred to those findings when questioning Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, she dismissed the findings as “political.” History is littered with corpses and bailouts. At the end of the day, it's all about privatization of public institutions for private profit. It's also an open secret that private schools rose as a response to desegregation [1] [2]. Privatization is cancer. [0]: https://progressive.org/public-schools-advocate/new-report-waste-abuse-charter-bryants-191212/ https://progressive.org/public-schools-advocate/new-report-w... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy [2]: https://southerneducation.org/publications/history-of-private-schools-and-race-in-the-american-south/ https://southerneducation.org/publications/history-of-privat...
- MisterBastahrd 3y ago
  Voucher proponents want to get parents hooked on the idea of charter schools, and then the schools will invariably raise their prices past the cost of voucher when the undesirables start trickling onto their campuses.
  - AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
    [dead]
  - aidenn0 3y ago
    There is a world of difference between means-tested vouchers and non-means-tested vouchers. Non-means-tested vouchers will have the effect of making expensive private schools more affordable for the upper-middle-class, while means-tested vouchers can't do that.
zmgsabst 3y ago
There’s nothing that prohibits public funds given to individuals from then going to religious organizations, eg student loans at university level. They’re not “siphoning public dollars” as some third-party cabal; members of the public are choosing to allocate their dollars (in benefits) to what they believe will be best for their children. Edit: It’s not “siphoning” because the allocation is made by the beneficiary of those funds, who is choosing their preferred service provider. There’s no diversion of funds: they’re being utilized by the intended beneficiary in the manner they deem to best suit their needs. That’s in contrast to traditional school systems, where funds are diverted by administrators to engage in politicking unrelated to education. Edit 2: I understand that many people are upset the beneficiary of a public benefit is allowed to make their own choice of service provider. People that in their wisdom, they know better how other people should run their lives! But it’s indisputably the case school allocations are to benefit the student — the intended beneficiary. Admit you’re in a huff because you’re being told you can’t control what other people do with their benefits. You’re like people yelling candy shouldn’t be allowed with SNAP/EBT funds. Next you’ll be yelling about “muh welfare queens!” or whatever.
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  If money is literally being diverted, why can't it be called 'syphoning'? Guess it depends on the state. In my state, public dollars are literally, pulled from public schools, and given to private schools, which can then teach religion as fact. How is that not 'syphoning'?
  - mhb 3y ago
    The "public" dollars were already, literally, pulled from the people who would prefer to use them to choose a school at which to spend them.
    - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
      Why can't I choose to have my tax dollars go somewhere besides the Military? I think this whole 'choice' thing with education is odd. Government isn't a buffet you get to 'choose' where the money goes. The responsibility is to provide a minimum education standard. Teach logic, science, math, reading. Give all kids equally some minimal ability to function. Why do some kids get choice and others do not? If a lot of parents choose to indoctrinate their kids to be Scientologist, that would be wrong wouldn't it? That would have negative consequences for everyone. What about teaching them that honor killings if they have sex before marriage is ok? Even the bible teaches if a women cheats, she should be stoned. Is that where we are going with our 'choice'? What if a large portion of the population 'chooses' to stone women because that is what their school taught where their parents 'choose' to enroll them. At some point that changes society, and that is the goal of the religious right in promoting private schools. If the Taliban choose to teach stoning, it's Evil, if Christians do it, it's 'Choice'? How did we get to a point where people are ok with tossing out the separation of church and state? People are willing to die for the second amendment, but really like cherry picking everything else.
LanceH 3y ago
As long as they cover the curriculum required by state law, withholding money from them because they choose to teach religion is the violation of separation of church and state. The money is for the state mandated education of the children which is typically being satisfied.
JediWing 3y ago
It's also in large part profit motive. You can bet there are corporations licking their chips at the thought of opening cut-rate schools and raking in the profits. They can also incorporate all sorts of corporate propaganda that their parent companies want them to inject. The profit motive belongs far far away from education.
zackmorris 3y ago
Ya this is a really sad turn of events for the US. When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, public school was considered one of the pillars of the American Way, like free speech and MTV. But after 9/11, trillions of dollars got funneled to Christian nationalist groups loosely aligned against Islam and diversity in general, who wouldn't have otherwise received that money, that work tirelessly to underline American values like the separation of church and state that you mentioned. Now whole generations have been raised under an MTV that doesn't play music videos. It seems like it's the same, because we have reality shows and influencers and people who are famous because they are famous. But it's not the same. Private school is not the same as public school and it never will be. I would even go so far as to say that it misses the point of education altogether. Like a for-profit church or hospital. Privatization is making America a caricature of itself.

brightball 3y ago

My kids go to a private religious school in South Carolina. They are taught about world religions, evolution, have chapel twice a week and allow prayer. It’s also the best school in the entire state. My kids go there because it's a great school. There are a lot of anti religious scare tactics used to push people off of vouchers. The reality is that the only people with true choice in school selection have to either be able to afford private school, afford to move to a house zoned for a better school or afford to have parent who can facilitate a home school group. Voucher proponents want everybody to have all choices available.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
>"It’s also the best school in the entire state." That is the problem. Why not make public schools better? Why is everyone else at a disadvantage. If our focus was on putting funding into 'all' schools, not just 'rich geographic locations', then everyone could be educated. It isn't about 'Choice', it is about everyone getting a minimal education. If you want to 'choose' to indoctrinate your kids into your particular religion of 'choice', that can be done at home. But everyone should learn the old Reading/Writing/Arithmetic.
- brightball 3y ago
  > That is the problem. Why not make public schools better? People have tried. The problem is the governance structure that creates a race to the bottom. It's not a question of funding anymore. The reason that private school is so successful? It's run by teachers. People who have gone to school, received training and degrees as professional educators. Not only are they able to get together to talk about new techniques, figure out the best ways to teach and improve what they do, how they teach, what they think is important to teach...but they also have to convince parents that the school is the best place for their kids to be so there's a natural balance factor in play of "teacher collaboration", "parental buy in" and "is it actually working for my child"? What sold me was the tour we did when my son was getting ready to start K5. Everything looked great on the tour of course. I was happy with everything that I saw, but then I started asking questions. This was during the time that common core was being rolled out everywhere and I was seeing my friends with parents of older kids talking about how students who were previously getting straight A's or perfect scores in math were suddenly getting bad grades because they were getting the right answers the wrong ways. They were turning into stressed out, anxious basket cases who hated school. That system was being thrust on everybody so quickly by careless governance that it was causing chaos. The dean's answer? "We also use common core here, but we decided on that a few years prior after our teachers researched it and decided it would be best. It was gradually implemented over 4-5 years and parents were communicated to about the changes along the way. The entire process was very smooth." That sold me. We actually live where we live because it is zoned for a good public school. The option to have a school experience for my kids that wasn't going to be disrupted by dramatic changes after every election was more important to me. I wanted a stable elementary school experience and we planned to move them out to public in middle school. Then Covid hit and the school handled things much better than public schools did for those 2 years. Now we're on to high school and the political climate is just about the strangest it's been in my lifetime with so much politics aimed at school boards, so without ever planning to there's a good chance that they'll continue here for high school too. The educational factors are important, yes. It's a rigorous school. But the stability factor is more important. My kids love school. I didn't when I was a kid and I'm very thankful that they are in an environment that gives them that. The religious aspects for me are good, but they would get most of the same in church. But I do like knowing that the same values we teach our kids are being modeled in their daily environments. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law." - Galations 5:22-23
hibikir 3y ago
Even among private schools, pricing differentiation happens. My local catholic parish has many schools: Some are very affordable, but those are not the good ones. The ones that are competitive with the secular private schools charge just as much, and it's not due to facilities suddenly costing five times as much: It's that, for the most part, only the kids with rich parents will afford them, plus a few rare scholarship targets that happen to make the school look a little diverse. The high price is a feature. So Vouchers do not have all choices available: Having a voucher doesn't guarantee acceptance to a school. And depending on your voucher legislation preference, you aren't going both force all schools to accept vouchers and make sure they don't raise prices. Ultimately, being selective is a feature, and therefore prices will go up, not unlike how easy student loans for colleges help raise prices. The top schools will eat the entire value of the voucher in cost increases, or just refuse the value of the voucher if they can't. You are right in the fact that really, most people in America have to pay for the good school district, either straight up in cash, or in significant increases in home costs. I've seen 30% drops in home values as, within the same district, the line of who got to go into the 'good' public school changed. Vouchers probably make the school choices far more explicit, and might lead to less housing segregation. But they sure aren't going to make all choices available to everyone, any more than I can choose to marry a supermodel, or own a private island.
cmurf 3y ago
I went to a Catholic one of these. World religion was a double edged sword. If you're born a Muslim and are a good Muslim you go to heaven. But it's better to "upgrade" by converting to Catholicism. That's what we were taught. Including the inferiority of evangelical Christianity. i.e. belief in Christ as a deity and your redeemer, isn't good enough to get you into heaven. You have to do good works. I have every confidence religious schools teach the superiority of their religion. With a white Jesus on a cross. It's not Jewish and Muslim schools pushing for public money without strings attached into private schools. It's Christian schools. Well maybe there will come a time once again when folks understand Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, from which we get the wall of separation between church and state phrase. It is in the letter from the Danbury Baptists we see what they were worried about. It wasn't Jews, Muslims, atheists, or anti-religionists. They were worried about the Danbury Congregationalists. Christians are not on the same page, is an understatement. They really aren't all on the same book either. It's impossible to promote them all the same. And they will not and should not permit dissimilar promotion. The only sane solution to preserving freedom of religion is to also preserve freedom from it. The government must only promote secularism. Everything else is playing with fire.
- brightball 3y ago
  > The only sane solution to preserving freedom of religion is to also preserve freedom from it. The government must only promote secularism. Everything else is playing with fire. There's nothing about vouchers that prevents the creation of secular private schools. Religious schools that you have no choice but to attend are very, very different than religious schools that your parents choose for you because they think it's the best place for your education.
  - cmurf 3y ago
    Government providing $1 to a religious private school is finding favor in that particular religion. Since Christian schools are more common than any other, public funding in any amount is the state promoting that religion above others. A possible work around is the state donates $x to each registered religious organization in that state. Every group gets an equal amount. John Rawls "veil of ignorance" thought experiment applies here.
JamesLeonis 3y ago
> My kids go to a private religious school in South Carolina. > They are taught about world religions, evolution, have chapel twice a week and allow prayer. It’s also the best school in the entire state. My kids go there because it's a great school. I also went to a private christian high school and it was all that you say here. However I also remember many very rich, ultra religious parents that ousted three principles over religious horseshit while I attended until my latin teacher became Principal and told them all to pound sand or go somewhere else. I also went to a private catholic elementry school. While it was good at the time, recently it's falling apart. The church has distanced itself from it, attendance YoY is falling, and it'll likely close in the next few years. However unlike a public school, these private schools can close and lean on the public system to catch all of the students they shake out. Unlike the private and charter schools, the buck stops at Public schools. > The reality is that the only people with true choice in school selection have to either be able to afford private school, afford to move to a house zoned for a better school or afford to have parent who can facilitate a home school group. Charter schools kick out kids as well, so all of these problems apply to them too. The only purpose of charter schools is to make their lobbyists (like Bill Gates and Betsy DeVos) rich by siphoning public money like defense contractors. All this talk about Charter Schools is about Options for students/parents, but nobody is talking about who is Obligated to those students, parents, and the tax payer. When a charter or private school closes, it dumps its students into the pubic system [0]. > Consider City High School in Los Angeles, California, which received a $575,000 grant from the federal government. The school had barely started its second year when it suddenly closed, leaving 116 students scrambling for a new school. Similarly, a charter school in Wilmington, Delaware, received a grant of $350,000 but closed just five months into its first school year, forcing 206 students to look for a new school. > The Acclaim Academy charter school chain in Florida received grants of $375,000, $175,000, $175,000, and $19,198 for its four schools. One never opened, another was taken over by the district due to financial concerns and mismanagement, and the two other closed suddenly with no notice, in the middle of the year, leaving students, some of them seniors preparing college applications, searching to find new schools. Then there is the low attendence and fraud. > The report locates much of the blame for this waste of taxpayer money on the Department of Education’s practice of awarding grants to states with few rules and virtually no accountability. Often, grants were “doled out to individuals who had no credentials or experience to open up a new school,” according to the researchers. > The report also identified a “pattern” of charter school operators—even before their school opened—funneling money from grants to their own personal accounts, to purchases of expensive equipment, and to “for-profit consulting and education management organizations” that do not publicly divulge how they spend money. The report concluded that, due to these practices, the charter school grant program “has become a magnet for grifters, consultants, and charter entrepreneurs who see an easy way to cash-in.” The kicker: > When members of Congress repeatedly referred to those findings when questioning Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, she dismissed the findings as “political.” History is littered with corpses and bailouts. At the end of the day, it's all about privatization of public institutions for private profit. It's also an open secret that private schools rose as a response to desegregation [1] [2]. Privatization is cancer. [0]: https://progressive.org/public-schools-advocate/new-report-waste-abuse-charter-bryants-191212/ https://progressive.org/public-schools-advocate/new-report-w... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy [2]: https://southerneducation.org/publications/history-of-private-schools-and-race-in-the-american-south/ https://southerneducation.org/publications/history-of-privat...
MisterBastahrd 3y ago
Voucher proponents want to get parents hooked on the idea of charter schools, and then the schools will invariably raise their prices past the cost of voucher when the undesirables start trickling onto their campuses.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
  [dead]
- aidenn0 3y ago
  There is a world of difference between means-tested vouchers and non-means-tested vouchers. Non-means-tested vouchers will have the effect of making expensive private schools more affordable for the upper-middle-class, while means-tested vouchers can't do that.

zmgsabst 3y ago

There’s nothing that prohibits public funds given to individuals from then going to religious organizations, eg student loans at university level. They’re not “siphoning public dollars” as some third-party cabal; members of the public are choosing to allocate their dollars (in benefits) to what they believe will be best for their children. Edit: It’s not “siphoning” because the allocation is made by the beneficiary of those funds, who is choosing their preferred service provider. There’s no diversion of funds: they’re being utilized by the intended beneficiary in the manner they deem to best suit their needs. That’s in contrast to traditional school systems, where funds are diverted by administrators to engage in politicking unrelated to education. Edit 2: I understand that many people are upset the beneficiary of a public benefit is allowed to make their own choice of service provider. People that in their wisdom, they know better how other people should run their lives! But it’s indisputably the case school allocations are to benefit the student — the intended beneficiary. Admit you’re in a huff because you’re being told you can’t control what other people do with their benefits. You’re like people yelling candy shouldn’t be allowed with SNAP/EBT funds. Next you’ll be yelling about “muh welfare queens!” or whatever.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago
If money is literally being diverted, why can't it be called 'syphoning'? Guess it depends on the state. In my state, public dollars are literally, pulled from public schools, and given to private schools, which can then teach religion as fact. How is that not 'syphoning'?
- mhb 3y ago
  The "public" dollars were already, literally, pulled from the people who would prefer to use them to choose a school at which to spend them.
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Why can't I choose to have my tax dollars go somewhere besides the Military? I think this whole 'choice' thing with education is odd. Government isn't a buffet you get to 'choose' where the money goes. The responsibility is to provide a minimum education standard. Teach logic, science, math, reading. Give all kids equally some minimal ability to function. Why do some kids get choice and others do not? If a lot of parents choose to indoctrinate their kids to be Scientologist, that would be wrong wouldn't it? That would have negative consequences for everyone. What about teaching them that honor killings if they have sex before marriage is ok? Even the bible teaches if a women cheats, she should be stoned. Is that where we are going with our 'choice'? What if a large portion of the population 'chooses' to stone women because that is what their school taught where their parents 'choose' to enroll them. At some point that changes society, and that is the goal of the religious right in promoting private schools. If the Taliban choose to teach stoning, it's Evil, if Christians do it, it's 'Choice'? How did we get to a point where people are ok with tossing out the separation of church and state? People are willing to die for the second amendment, but really like cherry picking everything else.

LanceH 3y ago

As long as they cover the curriculum required by state law, withholding money from them because they choose to teach religion is the violation of separation of church and state. The money is for the state mandated education of the children which is typically being satisfied.

JediWing 3y ago

It's also in large part profit motive. You can bet there are corporations licking their chips at the thought of opening cut-rate schools and raking in the profits. They can also incorporate all sorts of corporate propaganda that their parent companies want them to inject. The profit motive belongs far far away from education.

zackmorris 3y ago

Ya this is a really sad turn of events for the US. When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, public school was considered one of the pillars of the American Way, like free speech and MTV. But after 9/11, trillions of dollars got funneled to Christian nationalist groups loosely aligned against Islam and diversity in general, who wouldn't have otherwise received that money, that work tirelessly to underline American values like the separation of church and state that you mentioned. Now whole generations have been raised under an MTV that doesn't play music videos. It seems like it's the same, because we have reality shows and influencers and people who are famous because they are famous. But it's not the same. Private school is not the same as public school and it never will be. I would even go so far as to say that it misses the point of education altogether. Like a for-profit church or hospital. Privatization is making America a caricature of itself.