Voucher programs drain funds from public education.

State lawmakers are considering legislation that would expand the Missouri Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program, or vouchers. The expansion of school vouchers and associated tax credits would divert state funding from local, neighborhood public schools.

This graphic documents how Florida’s school voucher program has evolved from a small program for students with disabilities to a program that costs Florida taxpayers $4 billion.

This report by Public Funds Public Schools (PFPS) and the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy (the Center) explains why Idaho policymakers must continue to reject proposals for private school vouchers and instead invest in the state’s underfunded public education system, which serves the vast majority of children.

As people reach for social justice and better lives, they create public goods--free education, public health, open parks, clean water, and many others--that must be kept out of the market. When private interests take over, they strip public goods of their power to lift people up, creating instead a tool to diminish democracy, further inequality, and separate us from each other. 

Florida receives an F on an A-F scale on all three funding metrics: funding level, funding distribution, and funding effort.

Since 2019, the flow of public funds to private education dramatically increased after the State Legislature enacted the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) program.

The Georgia Senate recently passed a bill that would funnel public state dollars to private schools. Senate Bill 233 would create a promise scholarship account (PSA), another name for a voucher, for families to pay for private school tuition or qualified education expenses with funds from the state government.[1] The bill would set aside $6,000 per academic year into a “consumer-directed account.” A family’s acceptance of these funds would act as a refusal of federal protections for students with disabilities and state laws for an adequate public education, such as background checks for teachers.

These slides from the North Carolina Justice Center show the fiscal impact of North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship voucher program.

Public school voucher, tax credit scholarship programs, and education savings accounts (ESAs) are becoming increasingly popular school choice options. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures 13 states and the District of Columbia have school voucher programs as of January 2014, 16 states have scholarship tax credit programs, and 5 states have an education savings account program. As of April 22, 2016, legislation to create new voucher, tax credit, or ESA programs have been introduced in several states. Given the saturation of existing voucher and voucher-like programs, and continued appetite for new voucher or voucher-like programs, it is important to understand whether such programs are, or are likely to, improve or worsen state budgets. *Please note that this is a draft template for organizations to use to develop their own fiscal impact analysis.

This video from SOS Arizona answers the one billion dollar question—do Esa vouchers defund Public Schools? Arizona's K-12 system is based on a complex formula using state federal and local dollars and most school funding comes from the state which is funded by income and sales tax. Arizona state budget is tiny and underfunded in fact it's one of the smallest per capita in the entire United States. Only 44 percent goes to K-12 education which means there's not nearly enough funding for public schools and the 1.1 million students who rely on them. ESA vouchers draw directly from state funding and will siphon one billion dollars away from public schools this year

The use of publicly funded vouchers to support enrollment in private schools has a long history, but only over the past dozen years have private school vouchers gained significant traction in the United States. In some states over this time period, the growth in voucher programs has been dramatic.

In this fact sheet Public Funds Public Schools reveals the true cost of private school vouchers.

Senate Bill 1038, which is before the Idaho Senate, would create a universal private education program. According to the bill’s fiscal note, in its first year (FY2024) Freedom in Education Savings Accounts (ESA’s) would cost the state about $45 million in Fiscal Year 2024 by serving about 6,600 Idaho students and providing administrative funds for the new program.

On March 27, 2023, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed CS/CS/CS/CS/HB 1 into law.1 This bill makes vouchers, known as Florida Empowerment Scholarships and Florida Tax Credit (FTC) Scholarships, available to all students in the state who are eligible for kindergarten through grade 12, regardless of family income. Vouchers already cost $1.4 billion — dollars that are redirected from public education to private schools.

The SB 202 proposed legislation in Florida would further expand the already substantial voucher program, pulling an estimated $4 billion in state aid from public school districts to private education in 2023-24 though Florida Empowerment Scholarships with the cost increasing annually. Estimates of the cost of this program at the district and state level were made based on a variety of assumptions described below. The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship program, providing $568 million in vouchers in 2021-22, is also poised for expansion, but estimates for that program are not included here.

The Florida House PreK-12 Appropriations Subcommittee offered a proposed committee substitute (PCS) to HB1 that included a fiscal analysis estimating the universal private education voucher bill will cost $209.6 million in year one for Florida Empowerment Scholarship (FES) vouchers. As of February 24, the PCS is now the new version of HB1, CS/HB1. Why is the fiscal analysis price tag so much smaller than the $4 billion estimate provided by Florida Policy Institute (FPI) and Education Law Center (ELC)? Because the FPI/ELC estimates follow a set of key assumptions that were not considered in the House’s fiscal analysis.

As advocates for sustainable and equitable opportunities for all Ohioans regardless of their ZIP code or what they look like, we believe that protecting public schools and providing a strong education is the foundation of a functioning democracy. Some of the proposals in House Bill 33 would strengthen that foundation. Others would undermine it.

As advocates for sustainable and equitable opportunities for all Ohioans regardless of their zip code or what they look like, we believe that protecting public schools and providing a strong education is the foundation of a functioning democracy. Senate Bill 11 would weaken that foundation.

The notion that it costs less to educate students with publicly funded private school vouchers than it does to educate them in traditional public schools ignores important realities that make voucher programs expensive, impractical and unsound.