The dumb leftist argument against school choice that won’t go away

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• With school choice being pushed by the Trump White House, Mississippi senators should think twice about relying on empty leftist rhetoric like “no public money for private schools” in opposition

School choice will be the number one issue in Mississippi this legislative session. Combatants should be prepared for a no holds barred fight, complete with idiotic talking points and scare tactics.

Among the dumbest rhetoric mindlessly repeated by putatively conservative Mississippi senators is “no public dollars to private schools.”

So why is the “no public money to private schools” narrative — one created and market tested by far left national teachers’ unions and now funded in Mississippi by the Southern Poverty Law Center — so dumb?

For starters, there’s no such thing as public money. There’s money the government collects from the labor of private citizens in order to provide services to those citizens. Your money.

But it’s also altogether silly as a premise because taxpayer dollars are routinely spent on private providers for the public’s benefit.

In the realm of education, consider the federal Pell Grant program. Pell Grants provide taxpayer dollars to low income students to attend the college of their choice — including private colleges. That’s “public money to private schools.” None of the people using the slogan against school choice proposals advocate for the end of federal Pell Grants. Not a single one.

Peculiarly, many who oppose K-12 school choice fervently support government-backed student loans that allow students to attend the private college or university of their own choosing. As one recent social media post noted:

“The same people that think taxpayers should cover the student loans of basket-weaving majors from Oberlin College also think children of low-income families should be trapped in failing public schools instead of being allowed modest stipends to go to literally anywhere else.”

In Mississippi, at least two programs already exist that allow families the option of spending taxpayer resources on private education. Mississippi law already provides for education savings accounts for children with special needs and dyslexia scholarships. None of the people parroting the “no public money to private schools” rhetoric are leading the charge to end these programs.

If they are serious, they should put their money where their mouths are and work to take away resources for special needs and dyslexic kids. They won’t, because they know better.

More broadly, government has tens of thousands of private vendors that supply public services. It’s an arrangement widely accepted across multiple industries. No one argues that there should be no taxpayer dollars spent on private road builders, for example. MDOT and local government officials regularly use taxpayer resources on companies with the unique capabilities of building and maintaining roads and bridges.

No one who supports public expenditure on healthcare argues that there should be no taxpayer dollars spent on private health providers. Medicare and Medicaid funds are, as a matter of routine practice, spent on private medical clinics and hospitals. Taxpayer funded food programs like SNAP don’t involve going to a government run grocery store, but to Kroger or the Piggly Wiggly.

I could go on, but you catch my drift. There’s no actual guiding principle behind the “no public money to private schools” line. It’s a thin veil for institutional protection and nothing more. And its robotic repetition, in the place of substantive argument, banks on the listener not employing critical thinking. It banks on you being as dumb as the line.

The whole goal of taxpayer expenditures is not to support internally maintained government institutions, but to provide a public service. The point of a public investment of taxpayer dollars in education, specifically, is to best prepare kids for a productive and meaningful life.

If for some kids, that best opportunity is private schools, the logic applied by the “no public money to private schools” crowd is not only dumb, it’s immoral. It’s Mamdanism, embracing the “warmth of the collective” over what is actually in a child’s individual best interest.

Senators using it to stand against President Trump, Governor Reeves and Speaker White in their push to expand education options for Mississippi families should think twice.