‘The View’ Has No Clue About Why Parents Love School Choice
Another day, another outrageous comment from one of the ladies on “The View.” This time it was Sunny Hostin putting her foot in it, demonstrating how unfamiliar she is with school choice.
In a heated exchange with co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin, Hostin made two patently false statements about school voucher programs. The first is that the recipients of these vouchers come from “overwhelmingly” wealthy families. The second is that vouchers divert money from public schools.
Neither is true. I live in North Carolina, where about 50,000 people are on a waitlist for vouchers. The grants in question are for $3,000 and $7,000 per student per year.
Trust me, truly wealthy families wouldn’t even get out of bed for this kind of money, let alone tackle the paperwork involved in the application process. But $3,000 to $7,000 is a godsend for a middle-class family whose child is struggling in a public school or who want their child’s education to reflect their family’s religious commitments.
Vouchers are meant to ensure that students failed by the one-size-fits-all public school model have a fair shake at a decent education. Their degree of vulnerability does not correlate to their parents’ income but to how they are served — or not served, as the case may be — by public schools.
Take my children, for example. Both are on the autism spectrum. My daughter has intellectual disabilities due to an ongoing fight against cancer. To say that the public school system doesn’t work for them is like saying that Cher has a fondness for Botox.
We applied for these vouchers because any money we earn goes right back out the door for medical bills, physical therapy, follow-up scans, etc. We are hardly the only family in this situation.
Parents of special-needs children are used to hearing “no.” We are used to being told there is nothing that can be done for our children. We also refuse to abide by this narrative. Instead, we do whatever we can to help our children. To Hostin, this might make us greedy jerks, but perhaps that is because she doesn’t know us. We are actually quite hardworking, charming jerks.
This leads to the second point Hostin got wrong. According to her, money for these vouchers diverts funds from the public school system. That’s false. Year after year, public school systems across the country ask for and receive larger sums of money. The United States is now paying more than ever, in inflation-adjusted terms, for K-12 schooling.
Furthermore, the money for these systems comes from taxpayers. Middle-class families pay taxes. Some of us our failed by the system. To ask for a fraction of this money back to ensure our children get a good education is not entitlement, it is common sense.
Amanda Parry is a former newspaper reporter and the mother of two amazing special-needs children. Her work has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Scary Mommy, and Real Clear Politics.