Voucher Damage in One Graphic

The voucher argument is that if the money just follows the students, everything comes out even. Public schools lose money, but they also lose students, so no biggie.

There are some obvious problems with this--can you run four schools for the same money that ran one school? Remember that time that your school district was cash-strapped, so they addressed the problem by opening more school buildings? That's right. It never happened.

But there's another reason that this is bunk, because in many states, vouchers are not being used by students exiting the public system, but students who are already gone. We've discussed this before, but here's a handy graphic to make it even clearer.

In other words, the vast majority of vouchers are going to students who were never in the public system in the first place, so the public system has its operating funds cut by a big chunk, and its operating costs cut by $0.00. 

The graphic comes from the National Coalition for Public Education, a group that goes all the way back to 1978 and collects lots of other organizations. They have some excellent materials citing real research about vouchers (as opposed to the "research" created as marketing tools by voucher advocates. They've even got some handy downloadable materials just in case you need something to hand to your local elected officials.