“Backpack” Legislation Popping Up Across the Nation
Legislation in various states that would fund parents for education, rather than the states’ system, comes with nuances, but with the same bottom line: fund parents for education, not the system of common schools. All of these schemes would give each parent of school-age children the discretion to use tax dollars to purchase some kind of private education. These schemes would effectively repeal the education provisions in the Constitutions of the states affected by the scheme and would essentially repeal compulsory attendance laws.
Compulsory attendance laws were enacted by states throughout the nation because some parents refused to enroll their children in school. Are there parents of that ilk still around? You bet!
Would some parents take public tax money for education and spend it on things other than education? Most definitely! Would the level of education attainment in the state and nation diminish? Sure would! Could the state effectively monitor the expenditures for education of 1.8 million individually-funded students in a universal voucher environment? No way!
Ohio, Alabama, and Oklahoma, among other states, are currently working toward this asinine ruse.
The No Child Left Behind Act Has Put the Nation at Risk
Vouchers Hurt Ohio