Red states take aim at public schools
By Will Marshall
Founder and President of the Progressive Policy Institute
for The Hill
The states, said Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, are America’s “laboratories of democracy.” Today’s red-state Republicans see them differently — as staging grounds for cultural revolution.
Despite polls showing that most Americans favor legal abortion, 15 Republican-controlled states have passed laws depriving women of their reproductive rights. They are also targeting the nation’s public schools.
So far this year, 10 red states have enacted laws expanding school vouchers and similar subsidies to private schools. Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Oklahoma and Florida have gone farther, passing “universal voucher” bills that allow even the wealthiest families to collect public dollars for private schooling.
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