Greg Wyman looks back to the Reagan era and failed policies like trickle down economics, and how they affected students.
Most important for this discussion, children often bear the consequences of these policy choices. Tax reductions, combined with decades of additional tax cuts at both the federal and state levels, reduced government revenue available for the public common good. At the same time, many states expanded school choice programs that diverted funding away from traditional K-12 public schools.
Arizona provides a useful case study. After decades of tax-cutting policies, state leaders now face recurring challenges in generating sufficient revenue to meet public needs, including support for traditional K–12 public education. 3
Another key component of Reagan-era policy was deregulation. While deregulation affected many sectors of the economy, it was also the framework that would later shape the school choice movement.
School choice was marketed as a mechanism for empowering families. Yet reality tells a different story. Deregulation created opportunities for charter operators and voucher-funded schools to operate with significantly less oversight than traditional K-12 public schools. In many states, this has led to documented examples of fraud, abuse, and discriminatory admission practices that often benefit wealthy families.
In essence, similar to Reaganomics there was a trickle down effect of who had access to school choice. Despite the promise for all, very little trickled down for the middle class, working class and poor families. However, there were significant opportunities for the wealthy to receive public funding to attend a school of choice.
Understanding these policy shifts helps explain not only the growth of school choice but also the broader increase in wealth inequality over the past fifty years. Ironically, the groups most frequently accused of “gaming the system” are often not the individuals benefiting most from public policy. In many cases, the greatest financial advantages have flowed upward rather than downward. In fact, the wealthy have built their wealth on the backs of the middle class, working class and poor. So instead of “welfare queens” we seem to have “wealthy entitled kings and queens.”
That reality becomes particularly clear when examining the current federal budget debate and its impact on children. One voice on this topic is Bruce Lesley, author of the Substack newsletter Kids Can’t Wait. 4 As I read his work, one question continually comes to mind: When will the silent majority stand up for children?