The Pioneer Institute, a conservative think tank in Boston, recently held a forum on school vouchers. Currently, Massachusetts does not have school vouchers, and there are legal impediments to allowing them.
They recently had a forum where they discussed a proposal to allow families within income guidelines to access vouchers worth $6,000 for K-8 and $10,000 for high school.
You can read more about it here: http://pioneerinstitute.org/featured/study-proposes-school-voucher-plan-for-10000-low-income-mass-students/
So what do I think about all this? I think this isn’t a serious proposal.
Why? Because you can’t send a kid to private or parochial school for $8,000. Listen, ladies and gentlemen, this entire place has been gentrified. You can’t buy a taco around here for $8,000, let alone private school for a year.
Look at these at tuition rates for Private and Catholic Schools:
Private
Buckingham Browne and Nichols
$42,000 (Grade 9)
Roxbury Latin School
$29,000
Beaver Country Day
$43,000 (Wowsa!)
Catholic High Schools in Boston
Boston College High School
$18,700
Cathedral High School
$15,000
Cathedral Memorial
$17,900
I found these tuition rates by clinking around on the websites of schools that come to mind when you say “Private High School” or “Catholic High School.” I quickly grew bored of this so it is by no means an exhaustive list.
But I found these proposals do not come close to meeting the tuition of these schools. So what is this all about?
This is where I make some unfounded accusations. Catholic school attendance has nosedived in the last 10 years. Much of that has to do with the sex abuse scandal in the church and the subsequent closing of parish churches. But the scuttlebutt is that charter schools are also tapering off the group of folks who wanted nothing to do with traditional public schools.
I think this is a bone being thrown to the catholic schools. In effect, an attempt at divide and conquer, by making it look like the state would fund catholic education if it wasn’t for those pesky anti-school choice types. And maybe the state would fund catholic education. But first you would need to double or even triple the worth of the voucher.
As an aside, my mother was amazed of my fondness for plaid as an adult since I was forced to wear it every day through my elementary years. Indoctrination cuts deep.
