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Private School Vouchers on the Ballot on Election Day
Voucher programs, which divert scarce public resources to private schools, have been repeatedly shown to fund discrimination against students and families, fail to improve student outcomes, and undermine funding and resources for public schools, which serve the vast majority of children. They are also widely unpopular with voters. In fact, every time vouchers have been on the ballot, they have been rejected.
Nebraska is in the national spotlight. An obscure education fight could tilt the election results.
A fight to overturn Nebraska’s $10 million school voucher law has scrambled the state’s traditional political affiliations — and fired up Democrats over the possibility of beating back a cause that’s swept across conservative states.
The People Have Spoken: Private School Vouchers Have A Long Track Record Of Failure At The Ballot Box
Voters in Arizona in November rejected a plan to expand private-school vouchers in the state by 65 to 35 percent. The lopsided results might have been a surprise to school-voucher boosters, but they shouldn’t have been. Vouchers and other forms of private-school aid plans have been getting trounced at the ballot box since 1967.
These former senators‘urge Nebraskans to voterepeal on Measure 435’
We cannot afford to fund two school systems — both our public system and a private system — especially when one has such little accountability or measurable return on investment. Programs like this have decimated budgets in state after state, and we believe Nebraskans demand more responsible decisions be made with their tax dollars.
Nebraska voters reject state funding for students attending private K-12 schools
Voters on Tuesday resoundingly rejected Nebraska’s new school voucher or scholarship program, steering public dollars spent to public schools.
Segregation Academies Across the South Are Getting Millions in Taxpayer Dollars
Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs, a ProPublica analysis found.
Voters Across the Political Spectrum Gave Public Education Important Wins in the 2024 Election
School voucher programs, elaborate schemes that give parents taxpayer money to fund their children’s private school tuition, had an especially bad day at the ballot box. Voters rejected these schemes despite their popularity with Trump, who many experts say will likely make a federal voucher program a priority in his upcoming administration.
The Fiscal Impacts of Expanded Voucher Programs and Charter-School Growth on Public Schools: Recommendations for Sustaining Adequate and Equitable School Finance Systems
The U.S. Department of Education has projected enrollment declines over the next decade, leading to budget cuts for school districts, which will be particularly impactful in urban and rural areas serving vulnerable students. As federal COVID-19 funds expire, districts will face challenges in cutting costs, potentially leading to layoffs or school closures. Meanwhile, many states have expanded voucher programs and charter schools, diverting funds from public schools despite limited enrollment growth. Research shows these shifts harm traditional public school financing. To address this, policymakers must ensure equitable funding for public schools and hold charter and private schools to the same standards as public ones.
No-Limit Vouchers Are Blowing Up Arizona’s Budget. This Woman Is Leading the Way.
Since Arizona passed its universal voucher bill in 2022, eight more states have followed suit: Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Indiana expanded existing voucher programs. Arkansas, Alabama, Iowa and Utah joined West Virginia, whose Hope scholarship program began in 2021, in creating new programs set to become universal. Clark’s Love Your School AZ has expanded to Alabama and West Virginia, and Clark has started a series of related groups to bolster the national ecosystem supporting school vouchers. She’s also become one of the movement’s key messengers, aided by the prestige of an appointment to the Arizona board of education, and the most visible antagonist of the state’s public school advocates.
How vouchers harm public schools
The growing popularity of vouchers raises a host of crucial questions and concerns. Key to informing the debate are questions of public finance and education quality. Is allowing public money to leave the public school system and follow kids to private schools the most effective or equitable way to make sure every child has access to an excellent education? Our view is that it’s not. Public dollars allocated to education should go to boosting spending in public systems, not subsidizing private education.
Failing charter school closed by Az regulators reopened as a taxpayer-funded private religious school
Arizona does no vetting of new voucher schools. Not even if the school or the online school “provider” has already failed, or was founded yesterday, or is operating out of a strip mall or a living room or a garage, or offers just a half hour of instruction per morning. (If you’re an individual tutor in Arizona, all you need in order to register to start accepting voucher cash is a high school diploma.)
Oppose $20 Billion Federal Private School Voucher Program
House Republican leadership want to include a $20 billion private school voucher program in the 2025 tax-reconciliation bill. Known as the Educational Choice for Children Act of 2024 (H.R. 9462 in the 118th Congress), it would give away $5 billion per year for each of the next four years of federal taxpayer dollars to fund private school vouchers. Instead of directing resources to the public schools that 90% of American children attend, vouchers divert critical federal dollars to students already attending private schools and to schools that can cherry pick which students they want to educate.
Opinion: Trinity won't let me write about Amendment 2. Here's why I'm against it.
I’m a “private school kid.” I went to St. Francis of Assisi for first through eighth grades, and I am now a senior at Trinity High School. I will always be indebted to those schools for providing me with fantastic educations and experiences in the most formative years of my life. But to say I am disappointed with Trinity’s stance on Amendment 2 — a Kentucky ballot measure that would allow public tax funding to be used for private schools — would be an understatement.
A Supreme Court Decision on Oklahoma Catholic Charter School Case Could Transform Public Education in Pennsylvania, and Across the Country - Bucks County Beacon
Oklahoma officials have petitioned the Supreme Court to hear an appeal on a case that challenges the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school. Should SCOTUS agree to hear the case and then decide in favor of the school, it could change how we do public education in Pennsylvania and the rest of this country.
In an Unprecedented Move, Ohio Is Funding the Construction of Private Religious Schools
The state is giving millions in taxpayer dollars directly to private schools to help them renovate and expand their campuses. It may be the next frontier in the push to increase the use of school vouchers, proponents say.
Court Strikes Down South Carolina School Voucher Program
In many states, the challenge of creating a school voucher program is a constitutional requirement that public tax dollar are designated only for public schools. South Carolina’s legislature thought they had found a workaround; today the State Supreme Court said no.
Voucher Boondoggle: House Advances Plan to Give the Wealthy $1.20 for Every $1 They Steer to Private K-12 Schools
While there was never any question as to whether the committee’s majority supported private school vouchers, this is the first time they have gone on the record specifically endorsing the kind of profitable tax shelter embedded in many voucher programs. As we learned yesterday, most of the House Ways & Means Committee is content to facilitate new forms of wasteful tax avoidance if doing so aids the cause of funneling more public resources into private K-12 schools.
The Dark Money Defunding Rural Schools
Eleven states now have universal school voucher laws, with the harm falling especially hard on rural schools. Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have at least one private school choice program. In November 2023, when Politico tweeted out its story, “GOP states are embracing vouchers. Wealthy parents are benefitting.,” Corey DeAngelis, DeVos’s privatization point man, responded, “Fantastic.”
Kentucky Voters Buried Private School Vouchers. One More Idea Must Die to Truly Reinvest in Our Public Schools
Despite the best efforts of anti-public school activists and the deep pockets of out-of-state billionaires, Kentucky voters resoundingly defeated the proposed constitutional amendment allowing public dollars to be diverted to private schools. The amendment was rejected in all 120 Kentucky counties and at the hands of a unique bipartisan coalition of rural, urban and suburban voters.
States Should Bolster, Not Undermine, Education Gains Made with ESSER Funds
Over half of states divert public dollars away from public schools to private schools through school vouchers. In 2024, 14 states enacted new, or expanded existing, school voucher programs, and Colorado and Kentucky are considering legalizing school vouchers through ballot measures. For example, Florida will spend almost $4 billion on its school voucher program this year, an amount that could easily replace Florida’s total annual ESSER loss if invested in public, rather than private, schools.