How a School Voucher Works

If you believe the opponents of school vouchers, they would have you think that the government is just giving money away to rich people. Nothing could be further from the truth.

A voucher is simply an amount of money that is set aside for a child's education. The money does not go to a child or the parents of a child but is used to educate that child at whatever school they chooses to attend.

For some reason, children in this country are not allowed to attend any school they want. They are forced to go to whatever school their government tells them to attend. It doesn't matter if this is a good school or a bad school. All that matters is that it is a tax supported school

Of course, you can choose not to go to a tax supported school but you still must pay taxes for that school, its faculty and administration, and its school budget. The tax supported schools claim that if private schools were to receive vouchers, then the public schools and its students would suffer. Nothing is further than the truth. In fact, every time a private school closes through lack of funds, and its students are forced into the tax supported schools, everyone suffers. (except maybe the Public School's budget)

Doing the Math

To explain how everyone is helped by a school voucher system, we'll do a few Math Word Problem, the kind of problem a seventh grader might be given.(Did I just hear a groan)

1. The nearby tax supported school is given $4000 in tax money to educate each child in the class Ms. Jones has a class of 30 students. Her local area just passed an initiative that would give her students a $3000 voucher to attend a private school if they so desire. Five of her students choose to take the voucher option. Answer the following questions.

2. How much money does Ms. Jones class receive before the voucher initiative was passed.

   The answer is: $120,000 (currently the government is collecting enough money to give her class $120,000 and that money, divided by the number of students is $4,000)

3. How much money does she receive after five students have left, if the voucher money came out of her budget:

   The answer is: $105,000 ( five students @ $3000 = $15,000. $120,000 - $15,000 = $105,000)

4. Before the voucher was introduced, Ms. Jones' class had $4000 per student. Now that she has lost five students, how much does Ms. Jones currently have per student.

   The answer is : $4200. ( $105,000 ÷ 25 students = $4,200) That's right. Mrs Jones now has a smaller class, which means she can give better attention to each child and she also is getting more money for each child. This is because the voucher doesn't siphon all the tax base from the public schools as some people would have you believe.

1. The local private school closed and of the 16 kids in the school, 7 of them lived in Ms. Jones school district. The kids cannot afford to go to other schools and are forced to attend Ms. Jones class.

2. How many kids are now in Ms. Jones' class

   The Answers is: 30 + 7 = 37

3. Because none of the tuition previously paid to the private school is transferrable to the local tax funded school, you might think the private school children will bring no extra funds to the school. How much money will the school now receive to educate the children and how much will be used per child.

   This answer is: This second part is a trick question. you might think the taxes have already been paid so the amount of money provided for the class is still just $120,000. but it doesn't quite work that way. you see every time a private school closes, the public schools pick up a few more students and their funding is based on how many kids they have in the school. So even though the school is over corwded and the quality of education goes down, according to the teachers unions, the public schools get more money. But how is that so? Simply RAISE taxes to pay for the new students added to the already overcrowded tax supported school. Now of course there aren't really more children in the school district and you've already been paying your share of the taxes for the school but now that share has just gone up but the quality of everyone's education has just gone down. in other words you are paying more for less while the unions get stronger. So as you can see, it really is about the money, not the quality of education given to our students or a seperation of church and state.