Just for education sake.....Lets review the old, and long aspired conservative policy on SCHOOL VOUCHERS....
Such vouchers offer an amount that will NOT be enough to send your kid to a private school...
Now, wealthier parents could, use the vouchers and supplement the tuition cost to private schools.
Most black families do NOT have the funds to supplement the tuition even with the voucher.
Results:
1. Conservatives have enriched their donors, private schools
2. Black families have no choice but to keep their kids in public schools
3. Public schools would then have mostly black children only
4. De facto segregation is once again, alive and well.
Blue:
True enough in many cases.
In D.C., it is the case with regard to many of the private schools in D.C., and it's absolutely the case for all of the one's with which I'm familiar, but obviously I cannot speak of all private schools in D.C.
Red:
That's not true at all for the D.C. program which incorporates means tests to ensure the vouchers aren't made available to wealthy or even solidly middle class families.
Who is Eligible for a Scholarship?
- Children who are eligible for a D.C. Opportunity Scholarship must be current D.C. residents,
- Be 5 years [old] or entering Kindergarten through 12th grade for the upcoming school year, and
- Be either recipients of SNAP benefits (food stamps) OR meet income guidelines: at or below 185% of the income threshold for first time applicants or 300% of the income threshold for renewing families.
I very quickly looked at just a couple other voucher programs and each of them as well has eligibility guidelines as does D.C.
As goes ensuring the voucher program isn't just a well off and comfortably middle class folks subsidy, like D.C.'s program, the handful of programs I looked at each stipulate as a condition for voucher eligibility statewide household income maximums based on
federal poverty levels. D.C. is a high cost of living place, so the applying the 185% and 300% ceilings fairly well ensures that recipients aren't well off kids from well off families. D.C. also is a geographically small place, so the COLA is pretty consistent throughout the city.
In contrast,
Virginia's program has more generous income ceilings than does D.C., but also has very different COLA's in differing regions of the state. Indiana has more restrictive income ceilings, but
its program appears to be structured so that award recipients never receive the full amount of a private school's tuition, even if the private school's tuition is below the maximum award for a given school district. For example:
- In the Adams district, the maximum award is $4,857.79. A child from a "100% ceiling" family would receive $4372.01 if the tuition at her chosen private school is $4,857.79, thus requiring her family to pay ~$485 out of their own funds. Let's say that the child's household consists of herself and her father who earns $29,637. I don't know Indiana as well as I do D.C., but I'd guess that income for the two of them means they barely and rarely, if at all or ever, make ends meet, so coming up with just shy of $500 strikes me as a real challenge for that family. But maybe it's not for the Adams district is ~30 miles outside of Ft. Wayne.
The Adams district example highlights another dilemma concerning voucher programs: it's hard to see how they are of any help to low income families in high COLA places and in low COLA places, while they can be of some help, they may well be no more useful than tits on a a bull due to the very limited private school choices available.
There are just a few private schools in the Adams district area (Monroe, IN), and every one of them is a parochial school (Lutheran, Christian or Roman Catholic).
At one somewhat nearby school, tuition is $5500.
Green:
I don't know this to be so for sure, for it seems to me that given people's general predisposition to "self segregate" as goes their residential community choice, it may well be the situation you note would be the case vouchers or no vouchers. I think that's likely to be what happens in cities, burbs and rural areas.
Take the Adams district noted above. How many blacks are in the district? From what I can tell, not one. It seems like a place whereby if the residents don't really travel far and minorities don't pass through, one may well be able to grow up and live there and never encounter a non-white person. I don't have a issue with that, that is, unless and until folks who have that circumstance start talking about "black people this" and "black people that." (Or about some other minority if not blacks.)
