Lincoln said you can fool some of the people all the time, and all the people some of the time. The question for us is which category do we fall into on the question of school vouchers funded out of public funds for families that want to send their kids to private schools.
The next question is how do you determine whether it is wise to grab a red hot skillet off the fire. You can try it yourself or you can ask someone who has already done it.
Arizona, the model for school choice programs nationwide, spent so much money paying private schoolers’ tuition that it’s now facing hundreds of millions in budget cuts to critical state programs and projects, and $54 million of cuts is coming out of community college budgets. Arizona is 49th in the country in per-pupil school funding estimated that this program would cost $65 million, but the cost came in at $332 million and is expected to rise to $429 million this year.
Theory was that the subsidy was less than it cost per student in public funding for public school and therefore, would actually save money. However, in reality few kids switched from public to private schools and the families already in private school just pocketed the money and said “slam bam, thank you ma’am and maybe raise the amount next year”.
In Texas, the voters decided in the GOP primary to allow this same program to be enacted in the next legislative session. As Gomer Pyle used to say, “trick me once, shame on you-trick me twice, shame on me.”
