‘School Choice Week’: A Dose of Facts to Debunk Voucher Propaganda
The real impetus in this movement comes from the same old anti government religious right that cranked up the anti-gay push in the country last decade, and the same organizations that created the Tea Party circa 2006. You see the same revolving carousel of 501 c3’s, and the same billionaire founders. At the root of this push is the urge to grab your tax dollars for their private conservative religious schools that are failing. If you follow the story links to source you will find groups like “Watchdog (dot) org” and others propagating this tax dollar grab. They appear like generic concerned citizens groups, but they are run by highly conservative zealots.
Advocates of taxpayer funding for private schools have dubbed Jan. 25-31 “National School Choice Week.” The event is designed primarily to mislead the public and drum up support for vouchers, tax credits and other forms of taxpayer aid to religious and other private schools. Despite the unpopular opinions of most voters on vouchers, politicians and corporations (along with the Religious Right) continue to rebrand and propose new schemes. Just look at this map of current and proposed voucher programs:
The forces behind vouchers are varied. Some are lobbyists for the Catholic hierarchy who want a taxpayer bailout to save their financially ailing parochial school system. Some are fundamentalist Christians who claim public education is “godless” and want taxpayers to prop up private academies that teach creationism, anti-gay bias, faulty “Christian nation” history, anti-woman theology and other offensive concepts. Still others are radical anti-government groups that don’t like public education and want to see it privatized so corporations can move in and run schools on the cheap for the sake of a quick profit. Others despise teachers’ unions.
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