That is true of education and much else that governments do. As in so many things, God is in the details.

We don’t have public grocery stores. We do have public universities, but their job is to provide post-secondary education for less money than privates, so if you use the funds at a private school it’s a one for one basis. If for some reason people started using Pell Grants at such a level that we didn’t have enough seats, or new universities had to be started, there would start to be similar pressures–but no, not really, because we have an oversupply of PhDs, but not of k-12 teachers.

Lots of apartment complexes refuse section 8 vouchers. Similarly, lots of private schools reject vouchers. But it’s a lot easier to bootstrap a voucher-based private school than it is to buy a building and convert it to section 8s, particularly when it’s just as easy to buy a building and convert it to ordinary rentals.

Pell Grants and educational loans are two things that needn’t be used at a “public” school. Neither do the feds prescribe a course of study that must be pursued by recipients, though they do put on a number of restrictions.

Section 8 housing vouchers needn’t be used in public housing, and are in fact a quite deliberate alternative to government provided housing. Food stamps (I forget what the name is now) can be used all over to buy all sorts of things, though again there are restrictions on what can be bought, and every year seems to bring some legislator trying to illegalize what she thinks are unwise choices.

You’re wrong. But if you want out of government control, quit whining for money from the government. First, as Roger says, money from the government always comes with strings. But more importantly, it’s kind of idiotic to whine about government control when you want their money.

” They become an alternative to paying thousands of dollars per kid for private schools,”

They become a GOVERNMENT FUNDED alternative to paying thousands of dollars per kid for private schools, which is what people did before charters came around. Basically, the government took over private schools for people who didn’t want to pay for private schools. And rest assured, the day is coming soon when ALL charters start being forced to follow the same rules that made the middle class folks too cheap for private school want charters in the first place.

Utterly hilarious, once again, to see people a) bitch about public school being government control and b) demand the government pay for their personal private public school.

Public school is about government control. If I write someone a check and leave them alone as they homeschool, then very little government control is happening.

That there is some seriously flawed if-then construction.

“Also, charter schools provide many of the services that Catholic schools provided for those that didn’t care about the religion. Namely, some alternative to terrible urban public schools.”

The schools weren’t “terrible”, they were just filled with not terribly prepared students. And you say this without seeming to grasp the huge irony of all you foolish folk who simultaneously, effortlessly, hold three conflicting views as firmly as religion: Null Hypothesis (nothing works), public schools are expensive failures, and charters and choice are going to kill public schools.

Charters have had next to no impact on public schools, but they have already killed off an enormous chunk of *private* schools, including a near obliteration of urban Catholic institutions. Which has thus converted a ton of private employment to public, increasing education spending and ultimately adding to the pensions (many charter teachers are already pensioned, and the unions are rapidly pulling more of them in).

And you can’t PAY people to homeschool any more than you PAY them to send their kids to private school. Homeschooling *is* private school. And if you pay people to do it, it becomes public school. Hilarious that the same people yapping about public school spending want wives funded to stay home and play teacher on the public dime, instead of a husband’s.

Conservatives can’t fight and win in most colleges — but CAN fight to make the rich, tax exempt orgs pay “their fair share”. Stop the tax exemptions to colleges.

Conservatives could, in theory, be more successful in Hollywood. But in the meantime, Reps should be pushing for Hollywood to pay “its fair share”. Stop Hollywood tax breaks.

Conservatives will never be as successful in non-profit orgs as anti-profit social oriented folk. But Reps should be pushing for tighter requirements and enforcement of non-political orientation of orgs like SPLC, who now label too many conservative orgs as “hate organizations”. (I used to donate, 35 yrs ago, to the Southern Poverty Law Council). Such orgs have many tax advantages so are not yet paying “their fair share.”

The biggest issue getting more Reps hired as professors in colleges. That discrimination should really stop, and cutting fed research funds, like Trump is threatening to do if Free Speech is not supported, cutting fed funds would be a step.

Reps need to be fighting back in the current orgs, and constantly calling out how the institutions are promoting hate, as well as building alternatives.

Many mothers who homeschool can handle two or three kids; or more. With fairly low cost computers, improving homeschool YouTube/video lessons.

I don’t think the latest Ed stuff from DoEd includes this, but conservatives should be pushing it.