Fight the Scholarship Program on Principle or Pivot: A Civil War-Era Foundation Chose the Pivot
NPR frames the decision facing Democrats and public school advocates as a genuinely awkward one: embrace a Republican program that might help some public-school families pay for tutoring and summer school, even though it will also pour taxpayer dollars into private schools.
Groups that have championed public education face a parallel fork — keep fighting the scholarship program on principle, or make a practical pivot and encourage school districts and public school families to embrace it so they can benefit from it.
The Southern Education Foundation, created in the aftermath of the Civil War to guarantee schooling to the children of formerly enslaved people, chose to pivot.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The mechanics are the pivot's best defence. From January, qualifying taxpayers can direct up to $1,700 to a scholarship-granting organization, which turns those donations into vouchers for costs that include private school tuition but also tutoring, summer school and even new computers. If the tutoring line is what your students need, that is the line worth holding open.
The range of eligible expenses is a selling point, not a rebuttal. The same program that might pay for a public school kid's tutoring also sends taxpayer dollars into private schools, which is exactly why the choice NPR describes is uncomfortable rather than obvious.
Uncomfortable is apparently contagious: according to an Ed Week tracker cited by NPR, 15 Democratic governors, plus the mayor of Washington, D.C., have still not decided — which is its own kind of answer.