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Sunday, January 16, 2011

Modern School: Authentic School Choice for Virtually No One

Modern School: Authentic School Choice for Virtually No One

Authentic School Choice for Virtually No One

The school choice and voucher movement is heating up again, with the new Republican majority in congress and pressure from their Tea Party supporters. They want less “Big Government” intervention (read: less support for publicly funded and publicly controlled local schools that serve the vast majority of American children) and more “parental choice” (read: less of their own money going to public schools for the rabble and more tax breaks, incentives and vouchers to subsidize their kids’ elite private schools). At the vanguard of this movement are Wisconsin, New Jersey and Florida, where Governor Rick Scott is calling for universal vouchers that would provide families with money for private schools, taking a portion of those funds from the pool of tax dollars that would have gone to public schools.

According to a 2003 Heritage Foundation survey on school choice, 41% of U.S. representatives and 46% of U.S.