On X, Marc Porter Magee, CEO of 50CAN, posted a graph showing where people send their kids to school broken out by household income. He asked, “When money is no object, where do parents send their kids to school?” The implication is that most wealthy families, those earning more than $500k, usually don’t send their kids to the local public school. But, as Robert Pondiscio responded, the graph overestimates public school buy-in because, “When money is no object, parents don’t need to pay for private schools. They can buy multi-million dollar homes in exclusive neighborhoods that are unaffordable to most Americans.”
While I get what both Marc and Robert are saying, I think they have missed the even more interesting take-a-way from this graph—taxpayers are subsidizing the education of the rich!
As Tennessee Democratic State Senator, Jeff Yarbro, has said, “This is about subsidizing the wealthy.” Oh wait. He said that about private school choice programs.
Why is it that no one complains about subsidizing the rich when they are in public schools? It’s almost as if they aren’t upset about publicly funding education for the wealthy, but about funding educational choice.