Built into the rhetoric of school choice is a deeply misguided vision of how public investment works. You sometimes hear people advocating for charters or voucher programs by saying that parents just want to take "their share" of public education funds and use it to get their child an education, whether by siphoning it from traditional public schools towards charters or by cutting checks to private schools. The "money should follow the child," to use another euphemism. But this reflects a strange and deeply conservative vision of how public spending works. There is no "your share" of public funds. There is the money that we take via taxation from everyone which represents the pooled resources of civic society, and there is what civic society decides to spend it on via the democratic process. You might use that democratic process to create a system where some of the money goes to charter schools or private school vouchers or all manner of things I don't approve of. But it's not your money, no matter how much you paid into taxes. And the distinction matters.
public services are not an ATM
public services are not an ATM
public services are not an ATM
Built into the rhetoric of school choice is a deeply misguided vision of how public investment works. You sometimes hear people advocating for charters or voucher programs by saying that parents just want to take "their share" of public education funds and use it to get their child an education, whether by siphoning it from traditional public schools towards charters or by cutting checks to private schools. The "money should follow the child," to use another euphemism. But this reflects a strange and deeply conservative vision of how public spending works. There is no "your share" of public funds. There is the money that we take via taxation from everyone which represents the pooled resources of civic society, and there is what civic society decides to spend it on via the democratic process. You might use that democratic process to create a system where some of the money goes to charter schools or private school vouchers or all manner of things I don't approve of. But it's not your money, no matter how much you paid into taxes. And the distinction matters.