Understanding bills, legislation, and litigation can help fight vouchers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Voters on Tuesday resoundingly rejected Nebraska’s new school voucher or scholarship program, steering public dollars spent to public schools.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Educational Choice for Children Act of 2024, introduced by Representative Adrian Smith (R-NE-3), would create school vouchers on the federal level, and as with all voucher programs, the devil is in the details. What do we find when we take a look under the hood?

The Educational Choice for Children Act (H.R. 9462 in the
118th Congress) would give away $5 billion per year to
fund private school vouchers. Vouchers divert critical
funds from public schools to subsidize/pay for students,
many who already attend private schools. Private schools
cherry pick which students they want to admit, resulting
in discrimination.

Some Members of Congress want to sneak a $20 billion private school voucher program into a priority tax package aimed at cutting taxes. The Educational Choice for Children Act would create a national, federal voucher program and funnel $5 billion per year in taxpayer money to private schools and families who homeschool.

If passed, the ECCA will fund vouchers through a tax credit system. Contributors (which the bill refers to as “any taxpayer”) will donate money to a 501(3)(c) scholarship granting organization (SGO), which in turn awards the money as vouchers to families. The families may then use the money for a variety of education-related expenses, including private school tuition. Contributors then receive a dollar-for-dollar credit on their federal tax bill of up to $5,000 or 10 percent of their gross income—whichever is greater.

Public Funds Public Schools and allies submitted an amicus curiae brief in St. Dominic Academy v. Makin urging the First Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the application of Maine’s anti discrimination requirements to all schools receiving public funds, whether public or private, religious or secular. PFPS also recently filed amicus briefs in two other cases presenting similar issues.

In a major victory for public school students in South Carolina—and across the country—the South Carolina Supreme Court has struck down the private school voucher program enacted by the State Legislature in 2023.

These slides on are from SEF’s webinar which provided a high-level overview of education policy and news from the 2024 southern legislative sessions, highlighting regional trends, and reviewing SEF’s policy recommendations. Partners, lawmakers, and other stakeholders are encouraged to attend and share widely across their networks.

The Support Our Schools Nebraska coalition needed to collect 61,621 signatures to let voters repeal or retain a bill that spends millions of public tax dollars to pay for private schools. Today, the coalition submitted more than 86,000 signatures to the Nebraska Secretary of State to ensure the issue will appear on the November ballot. The group also exceeded the 38-county requirement with 5% of voters signing the petition in more than 60 of the state’s 93 counties.

A controversial proposal to allow New Hampshire parents to use public funds for private school tuition will move ahead next month, after the Senate Finance Committee added the program to the state budget.

Walmart heir and Arvest Bank CEO Jim Walton donated $500,000 last month to a group working to defeat a proposed constitutional amendment on K-12 education, according to documents filed this week with the Arkansas Ethics Commission.

Though it has been the subject of debate for decades, school funding is back in the limelight in New Hampshire. The state Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week after four districts sued the state for not funding an adequate education for students. We examine the history and nuances of this discussion and explore how the issue is complicated by COVID-19.

With oral arguments coming on Wednesday, both sides of the long-running fight over vouchers for religious schools are preparing for a watershed moment for public education.

The American Federation of Teachers and the Center for Education Reform don’t agree on much. But they both think a Supreme Court case, with oral arguments set for Wednesday, about whether a state can prohibit public funds from going to religious schools is a very big deal.

The PFPS bill tracker monitors all 50 states and the U.S. Congress for proposed legislation that creates, expands, or modifies private school voucher programs. Use the tracker to search for bills by number or keyword or to filter by state, year, and/or PFPS-assigned categories.

The National Coalition for Public Education has developed a legislation tracker which includes bill summaries and links to sources.

This model legislation was developed by the Southern Education Foundation in response to the increase in school privatization and voucher programs.