Wisconsin's school vouchers are a scam

Dave Zweifel:

The recent news release from the State Department of Public Instruction revealing that 67 percent of the applicants to the Walker administration's expanded school voucher program are already attending private schools elicited cries of "scam" from many quarters.

And well it should have.

That two-thirds of the voucher applicants had their children already enrolled in private schools lays waste the argument by Wisconsin legislative Republicans and the governor that vouchers are needed so poor families can rescue their children from poorly performing public schools.

That has always been a spurious argument, even back in the days when Gov. Tommy Thompson shepherded the nation's first school choice program through the Legislature for low-income Milwaukee families. It was sold based on the argument that poor families, said to be ill-served by Milwaukee's public school system, ought to be able to send their children to private schools just as do rich people. So, in order to do that with taxpayers' money, vouchers were devised to technically make tuition grants to the families, which in turn would use them to pay the private schools.

Dana Goldstein on Sweden's voucher system.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 6, 2013 12:34 AM
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