Advocates of spending taxpayer dollars to subsidize private and religious schools call it “the civil rights issue of our time,” equating it with the often violent and deadly struggle by Black people to end racial segregation.
The truth is that Black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis, who was nearly beaten to death on “Bloody Sunday” as marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, did not seek government subsidies like voucher supporters do, but rather the same rights as other American citizens.
Their quest was not for exclusivity, but rather inclusivity. In fact, one of their overriding goals was the desegregation of America’s public schools. That’s why the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision ruling school segregation unconstitutional, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act making segregation unlawful were two of the most important civil rights victories in history.
If anything, the effort by the out-of-state billionaires and their front organizations that want to privatize Idaho’s schools and defund our public schools is a return to the Jim Crow days when schools accepted students they wanted and excluded those they didn’t want. With voucher-style programs parents do not choose the school – school authorities choose the student.
History shows that after the 1954 Brown decision authorities in the South resisted desegregation by closing their traditional white-only public schools and opening private and religious schools with state subsidies. These state supported schools only accepted white students.
One would assume that by the 21st Century those practices would be over, but in states across the Old Confederacy segregation is still thriving, according to an investigation last year by ProPublica. It reported that these so-called “segregation academies” take state voucher money and systemically exclude Black students.
“Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs,” ProPublica wrote.
In North Carolina, ProPublica found 39 of these “segregation academies,” including 20 that had student bodies of at least 85 percent white. Those 20 academies, which were founded in the two decades after the Brown decision, received more than $20 million from the state over the past three years.
None of the schools reflected the demographics of the communities in which they operated, according to the ProPublica reports.
For example, Northeast Academy, a small Christian school, had an enrollment in 2021-22 of 99 percent white students even though the county where it is housed has only a 40 percent white population, according to ProPublica. Since North Carolina launched its voucher program in 2014 the academy has received increased state subsidies, including $438,500 last year. The state subsidy covered half of the tuition for the students attending the academy.
Another school, Lawrence Academy, has never registered a higher Black student population than 3 percent in a county that is about 60 percent Black, ProPublica reported. It received $518,240 in taxpayers’ tuition subsidies last year.
Like nearly every state that has adopted voucher-style programs, vouchers in North Carolina started out small and benefited low-income students. Then the North Carolina Legislature expanded the eligibility to all family income levels and included families that never sent their kids to public schools.
ProPublica reminded its readers that private and religious schools don’t have to open their doors to all students. “Nor do they have to provide busing or free meals,” it added. “Due to income disparities, Black parents also are less likely to be able to afford the difference between a voucher that pays at most $7,468 a year and an annual tuition bill that can top $10,000 or even $20,000.”
But the exclusivity of voucher programs isn’t isolated to the South. In most voucher states between two-thirds and 70 percent of students have never attended public schools and many of them come from families that earn $100,000 or more a year.
One wonders what will happen in Idaho if we pass a voucher-style program for private and religious schools. How many low-income families, Hispanic families, American Indian families, or families with special needs students will have access to taxpayer subsidized private and religious schools? Not many, if the history of vouchers in other states is any indication.
It is true that civil rights are one of the critical issues in today’s education debate. But voucher advocates have it wrong – providing taxpayers subsidies to private and religious schools is not a civil rights issue.
The real civil rights issue is ensuring that our public schools have the financial and other support they need to be successful. Afterall, our public schools welcome all students regardless of race, gender orientation, family income, or learning abilities. They are about inclusivity, not exclusivity.
