Trigger Warning: This Title is Tough to Read
They told us who they are and we should believe them...
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know my feelings on school choice and the fact that it decimates local public schools (especially rural schools), funds religious indoctrination, creates welfare for the well-to-do, siphons taxpayer money to private organizations, and allows for blatant discrimination.
But, do you know the history of the “school voucher” and all of the racist dog whistles it has blown since Brown v Board? Keep reading, friends…
Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains, wrote this passage in her Washington Post article:
“White Southerners first fought for “freedom of choice” in the mid-1950s as a means of defying the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which mandated the desegregation of public schools. Their goal was to create pathways for white families to remove their children from classrooms facing integration.
Prominent Libertarians then took advantage of this idea, seeing it not only as a means of providing private options, but also as a tool in their crusade to dismantle public schools altogether. This history reveals that rather than giving families more school options, school choice became a tool intended to give most families far fewer in the end.
School choice had its roots in a crucial detail of the Brown decision: The ruling only applied to public schools. White Southerners viewed this as a loophole for evading desegregated schools.”
Knowing this history is important today as we see the push for “school choice” and disseminate the messages being deployed by folks like Corey DeAngelis, the self-described “School Choice Evangelist.”
Corey works for the DeVos funded “Federation for Children” but he previously worked for the Cato Institute which is funded by the Koch Foundation. While working for Cato, Corey wrote an essay titled “Legalizing Discrimination Would Improve the Education System".”
I saw his article a few years back before Corey DeAngelis was spending his time flying all over the country to meet with red state legislators and Governors. When I realized this was the man who wrote the essay, I went back to it and was just as horrified when I reread it as when I encountered it for the first time.
His closing statement is the proverbial “quiet part out loud. He states, “Although there are certain types of unhealthy discrimination, it is not optimal for bureaucrats to determine which types are permissible for the rest of society. Instead, we should allow families in society to choose the schools that do not partake in the discriminatory practices that they deem to be non-permissible. Additionally, policymakers should realize that there are types of discrimination that are actually beneficial for teachers, students, and the rest of society.”
Friends, the origins of the school voucher were born in discrimination and they continue to hold up that history.
School vouchers siphon money from taxpayers and funnel it to private and religious schools.
School vouchers are state subsidies to private and religious schools who more often than not have no oversight, no accreditation, no rules for teacher certification or professional development, and no transportation for children all while discriminating against the most vulnerable and stacking piles of taxpayer cash.
School choice and vouchers are scams.
~Jess
What a surprise to find your Substack! Thanks for all the hard work you are putting in to save Democracy.