Voucher programs do not consistently prevent discrimination.

Public schools in Illinois can't discriminate on the basis of disability status, gender identity, sexual orientation, language, pregnancy or parenting status, marital status, or religion. But under the Invest in Kids voucher program, public dollars are now going to private schools in Illinois, many of which do discriminate against students in all these protected categories.

Education Voters of Pennsylvania developed this report on the $340 million in annual funding for EITC and OSTC programs that provide taxpayer-supported vouchers to students who attend private and religious schools.

Illinois Families for Public Schools developed these talking points in English and Spanish on how the Invest in Kids voucher program hurts equity.

The Education Law Center-PA wrote this letter urging the senate to reject SB 795. Funding private schools with public dollars, as this bill proposes, will not move the Commonwealth a single dollar closer to its constitutional mandate, which is to support and maintain a contemporary, effective public education system accessible to every child in the Commonwealth, regardless of their school district’s local wealth. In fact, it does the opposite, redirecting funds away from public schools and making compliance with the court ruling harder to achieve.

This policy brief focuses on Mississippi’s ESA voucher program. In 2015, the Mississippi Legislature passed and the governor signed Senate Bill 2695, “The Equal Opportunity for Students with Special Needs Act.”1 The act established an Education Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher, which sends public money to private schools. The voucher was set up as a five-year pilot to test the effectiveness of voucher programs in Mississippi, and it will end in 2020. In the 2020 legislative session, lawmakers will decide whether to continue funding this voucher program or allow public dollars to remain in public schools.

This webinar features Dr. Preston Green, Professor of Educational Leadership and Law at the University of Connecticut and the John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education at the Neag School. Dr. Green has extensive knowledge of education law and has published numerous articles and book chapters on legal and policy issues related to educational access and school privatization. Dr. Green discusses school voucher programs and how these programs fail to provide civil rights and constitutional protections to students. He also discusses protections for students participating in voucher programs.