The new wave of private school vouchers

Make Me Smart

For decades, private school vouchers, often referred to as school choice programs, were limited to low-income students. But recently, several states have passed universal voucher programs that any family, regardless of income, can use to pay their kids’ private school tuition. On the show today, Huriya Jabbar, professor of education policy at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education, explains the history of private school vouchers, what makes the latest wave of these programs different from traditional school vouchers, and why some believe private school vouchers undermine the purpose of public education in the U.S. Plus, what does Milton Friedman have to do with all of this?

Then, Kai Ryssdal explains the ins and outs of how the Bureau of Labor Statistics revises its job data. And, we’ll hear from listeners about free garden seeds and American soccer in the ’70s.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

• • “Millions of campaign dollars aimed at tilting school voucher battle are flowing into state races” from AP News

• • “Arizona School Voucher Program Causes Budget Meltdown” from ProPublica

• • “Public Funding, Private Education” from The New York Times

• • “The new and radical school voucher push is quietly unwinding two centuries of U.S. education tradition” from the Brookings Institution

• • “Which States Have Private School Choice?” from Education Week

• • “Georgia election board approves another rule that could disrupt certification” from WABE

• • “Election Deniers Secretly Pushed Rule That Would Make It Easier to Delay Certification of Georgia’s Election Results” from ProPublica

• • “Fed Confronts Up to a Million US Jobs Vanishing in Revision” from Bloomberg

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