Below is a link to a 2017 blog by Bruce Baker, Professor in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey who has written many peer-reviewed articles on state school finance policy.

“The necessity to revisit the basic connections between taxation and the provision of public goods[ii] comes about partly in response to a frequent argument of school choice (voucher and charter) advocates that the public tax dollars belong (or at least should belong) to the child, not the institutions (schools). Institutions – especially government institutions – are faceless bureaucracies, thus “bad” whereas children are obviously “good.” That is, even if those institutions are established to serve the children. While this claim makes a compelling soundbite, it falsely assumes an oversimplified linear tax collection to spending distribution path and individualistic benefit basis for public goods and services. That taxpayer-parents (presumed one and the same?) pool their money such that the money can be distributed not based on any collective preferences but instead according to each individual’s preferences for their own child, and with no other contributor to the pool having influence over individual choices. That is, individual parent preferences for the use of public dollars always supersede societal preferences. This ideology runs contrary to the basic concept of public goods and services.
The “money belongs to the child” claim also falsely assumes that the only expenses associated with each individual’s education choice are the current annual expenses of “educating” that individual. Further, that the expenses associated with educating (equitably) the first, second and third child are the same as the ninety-ninth child choosing any one institution. That is, it ignores entirely marginal costs and economies of scale, foundational elements of origins of public institutions. We collect tax dollars and provide public goods and services because it allows us to do so at an efficient scale of operations.”

Posted to Facebook 1/5/2021.