Kentucky’s Amendment 2: Taxpayer Dollars for Religious Schools

rural areas dependent on state funding. The amendment is seen as a way to bypass existing constitutional barriers that prevent public money from financing private religious education. Opponents, including Governor Andy Basheer Warren, that the amendment is misleading and could lead to worse educational outcomes for most students. This story is from The Friendly Atheist by Himant Meta on eight twenty eight, twenty twenty four.

it's going to redirect it into private schools. And you know, it seems like we cover these voucher stories very often on the nonprofits. It's really one of our regular kind of stories. And I'm not saying that because I think that we should stop doing it. I'm saying that because

we need to keep bringing this up. We need to keep mentioning this, we need to keep bringing it, putting it on the front page there, and it's getting so that it's hard for me to say, you know, I try to at least approach it at a slightly different angle each time to kind of expand our knowledge of what's going on here. So what I did this time is I looked. I found four facts. Four facts that I got from the National Education Association about the school

voucher programs. Fact number one, there's no link between vouchers and gains and student achievement. Okay, I'll say that again. There's no link between vouchers and gains and student achievement, or at least none, none that they've discovered. There's no conclusive evidence that vouchers improved achievement of students who attend prime, even those students who use those that money to attend

private schools. And so not only is it harming the public school students, but it's not helping the students that are using that money. Nor is there any validity to the claims that it creates a competitive marketplace to encourage those struggling public schools to step up and and do better. Okay, so it doesn't. It doesn't raise scores, it doesn't improve the education system. Second fact, vouchers undermined accountability for public funds.

Private schools are different than public schools in a few ways, but one of those ways has to do with accountability. Being private institutions, they're not required to be as transparent and accountable as a public school might. And so if you divert money to these private schools, you know, they have fewer restrictions on who they teach, what they teach, how they teach, how they measure student achievement, if at all, how they manage their finances, and what they're required to

disclose to parents in the public. So it clouds accountability. Third fact, vouchers do not reduce public education costs. Okay, actually they increase costs by requiring taxpayers to fund two separate school systems. They have to fund the public school system and now they have to supplement the private school system as well. And so you know that's going to lead to things like more strain on the teachers that

they have. It's going to be lead to larger classrooms, it's going to be less money for resources, textbooks, school nurses, counselors, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, it's just there will just be generally less money available for all students. And the final fact number four here, vouchers actually don't give parents real educational choice. Private schools don't. There's no requirements for private schools to accept students like there are for

public schools, so they can discriminate. They can discriminate based off of a variety of things, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ability, behavioral history, prior academic achievements, standardized test scores, even based off of interviews with the students, and income, and so, uh, it kind of gives us these private schools arbitrary ability to push out the students that they don't want and

to keep the students that they do want. And so it's, uh, it's very frustrating and and all of the all of the talking points that are put out there in favor about your programs are actually the opposite is true for all of those and so it's it's really not a not a good situation for anybody.

laws like this. As Scott said, the arguments used in favor of those laws, they are just nonsense. So it's a it's a vicious circle, and it weaponizes people's ignorance against themselves. It's pretty cunning, but it's diabolical. And remember Kentucky is ranked thirty fourth in education in the US. So yeah, there's that. Yeah, this is a textbook example of how to increase politician's power so that they can

rule instead of represent uh. And it's another very small step to turn the US into a Christian telement system. She is yeah, yeah, And There's also something something else is you know when when when you talk about money in in education, like, uh, there's been discussions about giving free food for children in school and all this stuff, there's always from the right coming the area that who's going to pay this, Well, look look how much money

is wasted? You know when when when talking about these, people often come to, yeah, look at how the how much the military in the US takes money. But I think that's not the worst.

just buffling. And so the fact that people won't spend like ten to fifteen millions to give to children and instead they will put money into this and vote for this and vote for people who advocate for this, it's just crazy.

language specifically around school choice. And Scott, you did an excellent job about how basically school choice is not really school choice and what they really think it is when people first hear that is not going to be as as the children say a flex.

kind of thing. And so, uh, I mean, really that's just the the cheap makeup that's slathered on the pig, right. I mean it's it's you can do that all day. It's still a pig though. And so it really whether it's twofold one, it high. It hides what's happening from the people that are concerned about it, and it also the people that are in support of this kind of thing. Uh, it gives them an opportunity to convince themselves that they're

on the on the right side. Right. I think it was Mark Twain who said something about it's much easier to fool somebody than to convince yourself that you've been fooled or something like that. And so anything that they can do to uh support that without having to, you know, without having to to show me the money, right, without having to to you know, have the evidence back up your claims, you need to cover it up. And so

I think it has that twofold effected. It hides with the true intentions from the people, from the watchdogs, and it gives the zelots, you know, some gasoline in there in their tank so that they can you know, fight it and live and live and fight the next day as well.

the federal Constitution. So that federal Constitution is next to impossible to change. I mean, seventy five percent of the states, after two thirds of both houses of Congress have passed it, seventy five percent of the states have to also pass it. So it's a high bar to change the constitution, and rightfully so, but it's not so high a bar in

the states. And if they can put it into the constitution, it will take a long time to change it if it's going to be changed, And this is going to have long term implications for schools, and it's going to really really be a massive like it's like you said, a massive finance shift to religious schools, because over ninety percent of the people who take these kinds of vulture programs are religious schools. So it is a direct violation

of the federal constitution. But who's going to bring that suit? It has to be they have to have standing to do that. So I'm wondering now, as the children start to grow up homeschooled and taught nothing about the work and the work and play, they will be totally unprepared to exist in the society with other people, especially other people who don't happen to share their views or values

or from different parts of the country. How are they going to work with those people if they have to spend their entire time catching up trying to figure out what they're doing and how they're doing. There is no substanue for standardized education. Everybody starts with the same information at the same level as practicable according to their own skills and their own intellect, of course, but that intellect doesn't get developed by teaching them sixteenth century English, you know,

it just doesn't help. So it's not going to be something. This will have a snowball effect before it can get changed. It will have a snowball effect in really damaging an entire generation of students. Because also one other point is that if students are discriminated against but the private schools and thrown out for any one of those reasons we stated,

they're going back to the public schools. Now, if they're children with special needs, that burden is on a chronically even more underfunded teachers and system to take care of their needs. And where are they going to fall They'll fall out of the system, and then what's their life expectancy or their success expectancy in regular in the regular society. So I am really kind of furious at the way they worded this. This is like, do this favor for

your children. Of course, ten percent of your kids. The other ninety percent we're thrown under the bus while we do this. But don't look at that. Look at these ten percent that we're going to help by sending them to a religious school. You're not helping them either. Religious schools are notoriously bad at getting people ready to deal with reality. So that's where we stand, you know, and I'm really kind of upset about this whole situation.

into the same pool. And I think that you know, Scott, you wanted to expand a little bit on the potential of racism in implementing this particular constitutional midment. Can you speak on that a bit more?

bits of information. I wanted to read the last paragraph. I'll cut it down to just the last sentence. It says, no matter how well intentioned, widespread voucher programs risk exacerbating segregation in schools and leaving the most vulnerable students and the public schools they attend behind. And so we talked a little bit about how schools can discriminate. Basically, private schools can discriminate to a certain extent, and you know, and along racial lines is just one one way that

that goes. And you know, that's something that often gets overlooked. I think when we talk about these kind of things, like many of the cherished institutions of the United States, these voucher, these push for school vouchers, have their origins in racial discrimination. And so it's you know, it tastes bad no matter where you taste it, right.

that we have covered this topic before. When we are talking about specifically how the crystal fascists or the Christian nationalists utilize some of their talking points in historical senses

that came from a racist path. You know. One of the reasons why we had such a push from the right to get rid of abortion is because of two educational entities, Bob Jones University and Liberature University, who wanted to actually do what you mentioned, have a choice of who they happened to have as students in their institutions,

and they did not want to accept black students. Now, because of this, the university, the actual United States, the fits basically said, hey, listen, if you don't accept, you know, students who happen to not be white, then you can lose your funding, uh for you know, for being a school, for being a university. So you know, they had to basically hold their nose into letting students happen to be in who happen to be black and other and other

ethnicities and backgrounds and things of that nature. And so they decided to just pivot what they're going to rally against in order to get their base together. And and I think it's and I don't and I don't find it ironic at all, that it's the same group of people, the same people who have this political ideology that are also pushing for school choice and also being able to divert tax dollar money into other religious schools that can

discriminate on sexual orientation, gender identification. Hell, if they want to go back and say that we don't necessarily want you know, black students, or let's just say they don't want like Muslim students, or if they don't want you know, students who happen to have immigrated to this country, et cetera, et cetera, you know, they want to have that particular

choice to do that as well. So yes, we can see historically and also through empirical data that these vouchers are going to be bigoted, in discriminatory in their inception and also in their practice. But I might want to give the last question to you, you know, as the resident Belgiamite on this panel, Cindy.

That's one of the things I wanted to say. The second thing is, so there was another shooting in school today, and every time that happens, every time I talk about guns, I remember this conservative judge I don't remember his name, but he said basically that the greatest heist that the Right committee was to pretend and made accepted the idea that the Second Amendment was about individual right to own guns.

And I always have this idea in my mind because when I speak about all these education problems the US faces, I think that the second biggest heights that the right has managed to push on is to make believe that this is a cultural war, when instead it's a class war. They're trying to keep classes separate, like rich people, rich white people, against poor, uneducated, and every kind of people. And the fact that they disguise it into a culture

war makes it less evident to fight. And so you ask me how it can be fought, it's by identifying the problem in the first place. It's a class war, it's not a cultural war.

Kentucky has a choice on Amendment to either to keep public education funded and ensure that taxpayer money benefits all students, not just those attending private schools that might not even need it or support it. The choice is yours.