Rural Republicans Somehow Not Interested In Defunding Their Public Schools To Send Rich Kids To Private Ones

School vouchers are 'the single worst, most dangerous idea' in education, says education activist Jonathan Kozol.

For years, Republicans across the country have waged war on public schools. Public schools are the enemy, they tell conservative parents. They’re going to make your white children feel badly about themselves by telling them they are bad and racist, they’re going to turn your children gay and trans, and then they are going to hate you and reject you and your beautiful Christian values.

The thing about these culture war issues is that there’s always another angle that benefits the kind of Republicans who care more about lower taxes and having fewer regulations on their businesses than they do about bullying LGBTQ+ children (not that they’re not willing to assist when it benefits them). In this case, that angle — at least one of them — is rallying support for school vouchers.

As it turns out, though, rural Republicans have been pretty darn reluctant to defund their own public schools, which are often the only schools in their area, in order to funnel money to more affluent suburbanites who are already sending their kids to private schools and don’t feel they should also have to pay for other people’s kids to go to public schools.

---

---

In fact, it’s been one of the only things the larger GOP has had trouble getting them on board with, partly because public schools serve a larger function than just education in these areas.

“Public schools provide more than just a high school diploma in rural areas, which frequently lack private alternatives,” reports The Daily Yonder, which reports on rural issues. “They are a large employer, serve as public gathering spaces for community events, and they inform the community’s next generation of workers, voters, and leaders.”

The GOP has pushed homeschooling, they’ve spread distrust of public schools and public school teachers, and even actively tried to make public schools worse by making it so unqualified people can teach at them (just as unqualified people can teach at charter schools). Still, there are rural Republicans running against vouchers.

Now, state Republican leaders are cracking down on those who refuse to get in line and support them.

Via WNAX in South Dakota:

Just last month in Texas, Republican Governor Greg Abbott targeted Republican members of the state house who opposed his school choice initiative using out-of-state cash from billionaire donors and super PACs. Six members were defeated in the March 5 primary and four more were forced into runoffs. […]

Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall, a popular rural legislator, faced big money blowback for halting a school voucher bill in 2022.

Residents of Sulphur, which, with a population of 5,000, is the largest town in McCall’s district, received a wave of political mailers and TV ads attacking the representative. The money for this political blitz came from Club for Growth, a conservative PAC located in Washington, D.C.

In Iowa, in 2022, Governor Kim Reynolds actively campaigned against Republicans who did not support her plan to expand the state’s school voucher program.

The GOP is playing a long game here. Yes, they want to privatize and monetize schools because they want to privatize and monetize everything. But they also want more control over who has access to education and who doesn’t. They want to ensure top spots for their own kids and they want an underclass of relatively ignorant culture warriors they can deploy to vote for tax cuts and against regulations so long as they throw in a little “And we’ll protect you from the gays and the feminists!”

---

---

These people are right to oppose school vouchers, which education activist Jonathan Kozol has rightly called “the single worst, most dangerous idea to enter education discourse in my lifetime.” School vouchers mean their kids will get screwed, that their kids will get a lesser education, so that Muffy and Biff’s parents can get a sweet discount on their private school tuition. They mean less money for books, less money to attract good teachers, and less money for sports and other extracurricular activities. State parties are asking parents in rural areas for a pretty big sacrifice.

As important as it is to fight the grotesque culture war battles that the Right has foisted upon our public school system, it’s just as important to continue to fight for the continued existence our public school system — for everyone. And you never know, perhaps, for some people out there, this might be the thing that finally makes it click that no, these people do not actually give a flying shit about them at all.

[WNAX]