Why White People Don't Like Vouchers

Gary North explains why white people really don't like vouchers:

The next group that opposes education vouchers is made up of parents in the suburbs. They understand what vouchers really are. Vouchers are a way to get forced integration, at government expense, into their schools. Parents pay a lot of money to get out of the cities, in an attempt to get away from the social environment of the inner city. This includes getting away from inner-city schools. Now, with government money behind them, parents in the inner cities are going to be able to get their kids out, but without going to the expense of getting the educational background themselves, or earning enough money to buy their way into neighborhoods where there is less crime, more parental support for education, and better public schools. In other words, education vouchers are government subsidies for social escape of the next generation.

The Coleman Report found that black kids do better academically only when placed in schools where whites are in the majority. This means suburban schools. White voters can see where this is heading. They oppose vouchers.

The parents of the children were enrolled in suburban schools do not want their schools invaded by students who have grown up in the ghetto. They don't want their children in the same classrooms with poorly trained students who are two years older than the kids around them. They cannot compete with the suburban students who are their own age. Because the schools do not want to push those older students downstream, and because their parents resent the policy, these poorly educated students are put into the classrooms filled with children their own age, but who are two years ahead of them academically. The voucher-funded students will be resentful because they cannot compete, and they will make trouble. The parents who live in the suburbs know this, and they will fight vouchers every time.

So, there is an alliance. Libertarians do not like tax-funded education, so they oppose vouchers. The teachers' union does not like inter-school academic competition, so they oppose vouchers. Suburban parents do not like forced integration, so they oppose vouchers. All in all, vouchers have been a gigantic failure.

An article well worth your time.