COVID Stimulus Funds for Private School Vouchers?
On April 17, 2020, Oklahoma governor, Kevin Stitt, mentioned possibly using some of the education funding derived from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act on Oklahoma’s private schools via the state’s “opportunity scholarship” program. (Specific block-grant, state allocation amounts can be found here.)
Well, Jeb Bush’s Excellence in Education (ExelInEd) organization apparently sees Stitt’s “maybe” as an opportunity to encourage other state governors to slice off a bit of that COVID federal relief to assist with tax credits for paying private school tuition to help save the private schools, as posted on April 23, 2020:
Because of the pandemic, many parents will be unable to afford tuition, and philanthropists may be less able to support scholarships that help low and middle-income children access private schools. Private schools are at risk of closure unless leaders act.
Now, lest you think that diverting money from public schools to potentially struggling private schools is not in the best interest of public schools, ExcelInEd argues on the contrary:
There are consequences when students switch schools. Mobile students are more likely to suffer from decreased academic performance and self-perception. One study found that children who switch schools even once between kindergarten and eighth grade are twice as likely to drop out of high school. If this isn’t scary enough, high student mobility impacts non-mobile students as well. States and school districts know that when schools have high a rate of students moving in and out of a school (known as a churn rate) teachers are less able to progress through curricula at a reasonable pace without leaving students behind. As a result, overall academic achievement suffers. Graduation rates decline, too.If states don’t support private school students and families in the same way they support those who choose public schools, the reverberations of this failure will be felt far and wide.
Miami-Dade, one of the largest school districts in the country, provides an example. If just 10% of the students currently enrolled in private schools CONTINUE READING: COVID Stimulus Funds for Private School Vouchers? | deutsch29
