The Left Hates School Choice And That Makes Them Hypocrites

By
Charles Peralo
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2
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For a moment, just imagine the President of the United States, Donald Trump, gets on TV. Donald Trump gets on TV and goes “I am sick and tired of these big food companies gouging the worker. We spend billions on food stamps and it’s going to private companies who treat workers poorly and aren’t giving good nutrition to our consumers. Today, I’m announcing we are going to give boxes of food delivered to Americans on food stamps instead, which are handpicked by me and will be made by these Iowa farmers who voted for me in the last election. No more choices, but just what I say is best for these Americans right to their home and what they need to eat.” Imagine the President saying that and what the leftist reaction would be. Elizabeth Warren has her face drop and rushes to Twitter to say how Trump is evil and needs impeachment. Bernie Sanders drops the soup he ordered at a deli in Brooklyn, to rush over and bash the 1% for this. Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo… Andrew Cuomo waits for the poll numbers on this decision and makes his choice 100% based on that and nothing else. It’d be an outrage! It’d be insane! It’d be exactly what the left encourages for public schools and calls the conservatives evil for backing school choice! Oh, wait a minute…

With that little intro bashing Bernie as some Brooklyn old-man stereotype, and pointing out Cuomo has no authenticity at all, I think it’s just time to address school choice as the biggest example of the left being a group of hypocrites, which is genuinely confusing. This is an idea that is anti-segregation, anti-poverty, pro-choice for low income people, and a small business heavy idea. However, the left is owned by teachers’ unions and thus they can’t support it.

So, here’s just five reasons that if you are a leftist who hates vouchers, you are a freaking hypocrite.

1. School Choice Is Anti-Segregation 

This is just a sad truth to schools in America. Even after the Civil Rights Act, schools are still pretty segregated. Grow up in a wealthy area and there’s likely going to be an absence of minorities. Grow up in a poor neighborhood and notice the school tends to be all minority, and poorly run on top of that. For that, people are buying houses always in the best school districts if they can afford it, and lower income people who tend to be of color don’t get that power.

School choice can allow the kid in the Bronx to take the train to Manhattan and go to a better school. It can be the thing which raises the bar for people in better school districts to force worse performing or behaving kids into lower performing schools, opening the door to better performing kids in lower performing schools. It’s an equalizer, which just gives the power for education to be a thing that doesn’t see incomes. And the greatest argument to point out to the left is: “so if you support free college, we should do it like our public-school system. Free college, but where you live.” Then watch for everyone in the Bernie crowd to say otherwise.

2. School Choice Is Anti-Big Corporations 

The truth is this; a lot of companies get contracts for schools and teachers’ unions are, at this point, a large company acting very wrongly under the disguise of a nonprofit. Allowing vouchers to enter the economy is a motion where providers of textbooks, chairs, services, and more, who have contract monopolies with local governments can break out of them.

3. School Choice Is Anti-Religious Indoctrination

This is one is rarely heard and depends a bit on how school’s choice is done. However, if I was to handle a school choice law, I’d make it so a school providing vouchers couldn’t force prayer on students using voucher funds, or require them to learn religion, and if they teach religion, that expense must be billed apart from the voucher funds.

The reason for this is religious schools have been the most affordable and thus common counter to public schools. This means kids in bad districts tend to get forced into the word of almighty Jesus out of their parents fear they get mugged in the restrooms of public schools. For a voucher program, it’d be very likely that if structured in the way I’ve proposed, fewer kids across the board have to have religious indoctrination in education.

4. School Choice Can Be Pro-Free College

Another reform I’d make is simple; If there is a voucher of say $10,000 a year, parents get an offer to keep 50% of any money they save to put into a college savings fund for their children to incentivize lower cost. Meaning, if a parent could save $1,000 a year for their kids schooling in the process of k-12, that account handled as an education 401k in the form of savings over twelve years gets the child about $18-20,000 to start schooling with. That is far more over the average start most people have entering college and could be an easy way to avoid debts.

5. It’s How Every Other Welfare Program Functions 

And the final point… instead of food stamps, we are going to give people a box of food. Instead of welfare, we will tell people what they are going to have. Instead of Medicare, we are just going to force a doctor on them. If any other program in the social safety net was run similar to public schools, we’d have protestors on the street. We’d have the left going nuts with Bernie, Chuck, and Liz in tears publicly. However, this hypocrisy inflated by the teachers’ unions just holds up time and time again with the left.

Final words… fight for school choice in education!

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Charles Peralo

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