Yesterday:

Eric Schmitt
[May 12, 2025]
Senator Eric Schmitt
[May 12, 2025]
Every child, no matter their background or zip code, deserves a quality education.
Passing the Educational Choice for Children Act will help make school choice a reality for kids across America.
[….]

Some of the responses:

Eric Schmitt, yet Missouri (like other Red states) has been consistently ranked among the worst in education. What have you done in your career to help with that? Not a damn thing.

School choice has been proven NOT to provide quality education for all children. Just the opposite. Those who already could afford private education pay less. The rest of the children get left behind.

vouchers and school choice do not make education accessible for all
It takes money away from public schools, and makes private schools more accessible to the rich.
What happens to all of the other kids who not only do not benefit from vouchers but who now have even worse public school systems?
Or do we just not care about them?

the rich can already afford private school, choice allows lower income folks to attend private school

look at the research. School choice time and time again benefits the rich, not those who truly need it.

Families have always had a choice of where to send their children to school. Stop trying to dismantle public education.

Yup cuz the rich kids need a coupon.

Hmmmmmm if only there were… schools… in every community… like, community schools! And they were… hmmmm…. Funded?!! Wow! I think you’re on to something here… a series of schools funded by the government and managed by, oh, we’ll call it “the department of education” —— yeah. I agree! Let’s fund our community schools and ensure they’re high quality!!

No, it’s not about funding. Schools that spend more do so because they need to make up for poor living situations. These same schools struggle with performance because these students have more challenging home lives.
Zip code is the most closely correlated determinant of academic performance. Secure home lives and involved parents determine performance above all else.
This is why private schools can often appear to perform better. It’s self selecting. By the way, private schools have to requirement to admit marginal students, so any comparison to public schools are poor by design.

[….] Selection bias skews averages because private schools don’t keep poor students. The don’t take disabled students.
Compare income adjusted demographics and performance is the same.

if we know that the root of academic performance is family life how do we repair this so that students may benefit? I personally think universal healthcare is a start.

Bingo!

Eric, this legislation accelerates the undermining and destruction of the public school systems.

He considers that a feature, not a bug.

Not about choice…..gutting public education….too democratic…..funnel public funds to private schools run by religious organizations or their billionaire oligarchs…..to rich people who already can afford to send their children to private school……which can pick and choose…..what happens to children with IEPs? All laid out in Project 2025….written by white Christian Nationalist and those in Opus Dei. [….]

This is just a subsidy for parents who would already likely send their kids to a private school. Now they just get to do it on the taxpayers’ dime while resources are being diverted from already underfunded poor public schools. Another grift by those who think they are smarter than the rest of us.

everyone’s taxes go to public education. It’s a vested interest of the entire community to have an educated public.

yeah…people say that, but it’s simplistic and somewhat misleading. US middle class students do just as well as other middle class students in most other industrialized nations. That’s actually impressive considering US kids spend less days in a classroom. But US public education has notably higher rates of poverty than most other countries. Furthermore, because of the backwards way the US funds education, students in poverty tend to actually have less funding than middle class students. So if you factor in poverty, thr US holds its own.

The establishment of a free public education was never about your personal children. It was to create a society in which the electorate and future employees could help make society as a whole more cohesive and prosperous for all. That is why those without children, elderly people whose children are grown and many others still are required to pay. It is about supporting the type of communities we want to live in. If you choose to pay for another type of education for your children, that is certainly your right, but it doesn’t absolve you of helping pay for a benefit that supports your entire community.

School choice has failed in every US state that has attempted it. Pass.

I’d say let us vote on it, but we’ve seen how that played out to “give it to the states.”
Voted for abortion rights, we spent the entire legislative session fighting against all the bills republicans were trying to pass to overturn the will of the voters.
We voted for workers rights and guess what… republicans spent the entire session trying to scrub the vote saying the language on the ballot was illegal and the voters were confused about what they were voting for.
Education vouchers have been overwhelmingly unpopular in every state trying to force it onto its citizens. Any politician who pushes this is a sell out to private schools and their interests.
Who from Herzog is funding your campaign for reelection? Follow the money and I bet there’s a tie in there somewhere.

Nice word salad to cover up the REAL reason.

My tax dollars should go to only public schools…………not private institutions, especially not those related to religious ones.
PS: Why aren’t you worried about lack of health care and Head Start instead?

No, public dollars are not divided up into who goes to what school. There are many childless folks that pay into the taxing system to help pay for public education. We are some of them.
Do I vote yes on every school levy? I do, because I know investing in our children is important, and previous generations invested in me! But if public schools are not ‘good’ enough for your kids………..then you pay for the privilege of sending them to private schools, but don’t ask me to spend my money to do so. Especially not religious-based private schools.

I couldn’t imagine being as big a coward as you are.

Hey Eric? What say you about the Melon Felon trying to accept a $300 MILLION gift from Qatar? Do you have any spine at all to stand up against this nonsense?

Multiple news reports say it’s $400 million.

Personally, I’d like to take this to the next level and have vouchers from community parks so some people can subsidize sending their kids to private country clubs.

We see what you did there.

This right here is bullshit. Public money, public schools. Private schools are fine, that is your choice. “Universal”?
I thought Repugs were all for states handling their business? Well MO is an R state and they just gave private schools 50 million taxpayer dollars. How much more do they freaking need to pick the kids they want to play sports?

MASA. Make Americans Stupid Again.