Apparently the opponents of the state’s new education savings account (ESA) law have a twisted egalitarian view of how our democracy is supposed to work: All people are created equal and, by Jove, they all should stay that way.
In an op-ed piece in today’s newspaper Sylvia Lazos, policy director of something called Educate Nevada Now, first states that Nevada has just about the worst performing public education system in the nation but then argues that no one should be allowed to opt out because this would leave the public schools with a higher percentage of at-risk pupils.
The ESA program would give parents, whose children have been in public school for 100 consecutive days, with about $5,000 per child to leave public schools and pay for private schooling or homeschooling.
Lazos calculates that, if all the 20,000 children currently in private schools choose to use ESAs, it would cut $100 million to public school budgets. That assumes the parents of those 20,000 students would pull them out of private school and put them in those poor-performing public schools for 100 days.
The part of the equation opponents of ESAs neglect to mention is that Nevada currently spends nearly $9,000 per pupil per year, according to National Education Association figures published in May. For every student who opts out, the public schools would have nearly $4,000 to spend on those who remain — in less crowded classrooms. They keep demanding more money, so there it is.
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Sylvia Lazos (R-J file photo by Jerry Henkel)
4TH ST8 
We start out equal and end up equal, what happens in-between is up to the individual.
$4k per child would make Nevada by far the lowest-spending state. Lower than Mississippi. Lower than Arkansas.
On the other hand, I will now be able to spend taxpayer money on sending my children to schools that teach that Adam and Eve rode on the backs of dinosaurs.
With a 4,000 bonus for each student they lose, the children in public schools would, in theory, get a better education than they would have without private schools. What’s not to like?
For those of you who aren’t familiar with this woman, she is a marxist law professor at UNLV. Always stirring up the pot to create trouble. Probably tenured faculty member thus cannot be fired.
[…] law would deprive public schools of desperately needed funding — even though public schools get another $4,000 per pupil from other sources than the state and that money would continue — the ESA law requires that, in […]