School Vouchers Misrepresented By Wyoming Democrat Group

A recent article by a Democrat website in Wyoming completely misunderstands and misrepresents school voucher proposals offered in Wyoming.

A recent article on the website states:

A proposal before the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Education Committee this week would spend tens of millions of dollars on “education savings accounts” to pay for private, religious, and fly-by-night home schools with zero accountability or oversight. (BW).

This is not true.

Since the money for private, charter, and home schools come from the taxpayers, there will be state oversight to ensure the quality of education standards.

Teaching methods may vary, but results will be scrutinized.

Similar education systems have already proven outrageously expensive in other states, and yet “fiscal conservatives” continue to push the idea in Wyoming as part of their agenda to tear down public education. (BW).

Part one of that statement is completely false.

Private, charter, and home schools typically get much better results on a far lower budget.

Still, the money earmarked toward each Wyoming student will follow the student to wherever the parents choose to send them. Our Wyoming public school system wastes most of that money on bureaucracy. Private school systems are streamlined and focus that money on the classroom.

As far as the end of the statement, "part of their agenda to tear down public education," the point is NOT to "tear down public education." The point is to bring all schools into competition, including the public schools. If Public schools can't produce a better quality graduate than a private school, then let them fail. OR, maybe the public schools might improve their quality and beat out the private sector. Let the best system win.

Wyoming is among many rural states that have not adopted a “voucher” system, not only because it’s a bad idea—but also because in many of our small towns there are simply no private or religious schools to choose from, and working parents aren’t able to adequately homeschool their own kids. (BW).

This last statement was made without investigation or thinking.

There are many small towns across America that are swapping their failing public schools for charter schools and getting better results.

The state of Wyoming closed the public school in the town of Chugwater, to save money. Those kids are being bussed to Wheatland. So the people of Chugwater, and the surrounding area, are reopening the school as a charter school, to keep the kids in town and provide a better quality education.

As for homeschooling, in some rural areas, parents who can't take the time to homeschool have banded together and hired one teacher, making their own version of a one-room school house. Once again, getting better results in education than their failing public school.

America is a free nation where its people get to choose for themselves the pather they think is best.

Opinions on what the best choice is will vary, and that's okay.

What always ultimately fails is a single, government-run system. Bureaucracy complacency and special interest groups ruin every government program.

Government-run healthcare has always become an outrageously expensive bureaucratic nightmare, wherever it has been tried.

Think of NASA. Once a great program that took us to the Moon. But they eventually became so overly bureaucratic they ended up spending billions of dollars every year while producing almost nothing. They ended up paying Russia for rocket launches into space because they could not produce their own.

Now, the private sector is in the space race. Look at how much they are accomplishing, at such a fast pace, while spending far less money.