"The View" co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah Griffin clashed on Wednesday over school choice while discussing President-elect Trump's pick for education secretary, Linda McMahon.
"When you hear about school choice, it’s really connected to the voucher system," Hostin said. "The Department of Education is responsible for $18.4 billion that fund high poverty K-12 schools. Schools where kids are poor. Kids that grew up in neighborhoods like I grew up in the South Bronx projects."
Trump's education secretary pick comes amid discussions of abolishing the Department of Education, which experts say the president would need congressional approval to do.
"And what happens with vouchers? The studies show very clearly that they fund students already attending private schools. So people with money get those vouchers, use the vouchers to pay less for their private schools and their kids go on to do well. Where do you get the money from vouchers? You pull that money from the poor schools," Hostin said. "Wealthy families are overwhelmingly the recipients of school voucher tax credits, I'm not making this up."
Hostin touted a 2020 study that found just half of states with voucher programs required teachers to have a bachelor’s degree, teacher training and licensing.
Griffin asked Hostin for the sourcing of the study she mentioned, but Hostin continued to speak.
"That's just not my experience, if I may get in just to make it a conversation," Griffin said, as Hostin continued to talk. "I went to public school, I believe you got to go to private school," Griffin said of Hostin.
After more crosstalk and back and forth, Hostin tried to make a final point before co-host Whoopi Goldberg shut down the conversation and said nobody could understand what was being said.
"I haven't gotten a word in, she's been talking for three minutes," Griffin said.
After returning from a commercial break, Goldberg pointed out the "beauty" of their show was that they have different opinions.
"We lost the election. We're miserable. Half of this country is miserable. And let's just tell the truth: we hate that he won. We hate it. And everybody is uptight and crazy right now," co-host Joy Behar chimed in.
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Hostin argued that voucher programs do not benefit students academically and said definitively "that's the truth."
Citing other statistics and her personal work on the D.C. opportunity scholarship program while she worked in Congress, Griffin argued that the tax dollars should follow the students if a parent wants to give their child a leg up in a school district that may be falling behind.
"It's simply that a parent should be able to make the best choice for their student. I also think that there are schools that are falling behind. It doesn’t mean they don’t deserve education, but I don't think students should be victims of a falling-behind school. Their life is at stake, their future, their earning potential," Griffin said.
Hostin said that she didn't go to a good school district in the South Bronx and said, "that's the inequity."
Griffin pointed out again, "did you get to go to a private school?" Goldberg threatened to shut the discussion down again before she made her argument.
