Why are Democrats so afraid of school choice (voucher).?

It would mean an end to the 13 year liberal indoctrination camps that they are relying on now

I think it shows a poor understanding of economics when people say that vouchers will harm poor people. In Savannah Georgia, where I live, public schools use somewhere around $5500 per person of tax payer money to give what is very clearly a substandard education. The private school I attended cost me an almost identical amount of money per year and I received a very good education. This is one more thing that the private sector does far better in because of market competition. Vouchers would expose public schools to this competition and would force them to improve themselves. When people say that vouchers would take funding from and hurt public schools, then they are admitting that public schools are unable to compete with the private sector. If this were passed into law, the price of many private schools would inflate to adjust to the increased amount of money people would have available to pay for school. However, many would find a niche in offering as good of school as possible for the cost of the voucher, since they would realize that there would be good money in attracting students who could not afford other schools. I believe we would see the people running schools come up with all sorts of creative ideas to attract parents to their school.

To address the question, this is not a problem with Democrats or Republicans. This is a problem of a lack of understanding and a fear of change.

there are about 2 million teachers in America. that's a huge voting block.

they're also huge in terms of campaign contributions and poll workers.

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my guess is that most teachers believe they are trying to do the right things, or did at one time before they burned out. my experience is that probably 90% of them do NOT recognize when they aren't being effective at teaching this specific child -- and of the 10% who do, fewer than 1/2 have both the knowledge, skill, and willingness to actually do anything different.

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There's a reason that inner city Hispanic kids can learn advanced math from a tremendous teacher, but that most inner city kids don't actually learn much math at all.

There's also a reason that Mr. Escalante received almost nothing extra for being so very good at teaching math to the disadvantaged.

Because they don't understand that it provides truly equal opportunity to poor people to obtain better educations for their children.

Plus, throwing money at "education" is their favorite fix. "If we had more money, education would be better," it's a real bleeder. It seems to never occur to them that kicking out the NEA might improve education overnight.

Oh ya awesome, so now my kids can be undereducated AND looked down upon by rich kids. All public education sucks because of the curriculum and stupid requirements that exclude people who would be good teachers. It's not just the public schools. The only worthwhile curriculums are those that cost $40k per year.

No thanks, I'll send my kids to public school to make friends and educate them at home.

Why should rich kids get my tax money to help pay their tuition to private school? Welfare for the rich!

Think about it. A voucher would be for around 5,000 a year. Private school tuition is around $10,000 a year at least. Poor kids STILL couldn't afford it, even with the voucher, so they would still go to the public school. Only the rich kids would "benefit" in the form of welfare.

It's becasue once a person has a voucher they could use it at any school at all and the public schools wont get that money. The more vouchers, the poorer the schools get

and the more kids who suffer

because that would hold teachers accountable and it would be bad for the teachers unions. Failing schools would loose students and money, then teachers would quit or laid off and not pay their unions dues.

Unions give a lot of money to the democratic party.

government does not like for you to have freedom of choice. They'd rather you just do what they tell you you should do, and don't ask too many questions. That way you help them to retain their power and authority over our lives.

Because they view schooling as indoctrination. And they want to control all indoctrination.