Stories describe how voucher programs have hurt people and communities.

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.

This PFPS webinar features Dr. Josh Cowen, Education Law Center Senior Fellow and professor of education policy at Michigan State University, in conversation with Maria Bautista of the NYU Metro Center about his new book, The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold Vouchers. The book provides a deep-dive investigation into education privatization covering a range of topics, including the origins of private school vouchers and the network of billionaire conservatives who have converged around the issue. It also highlights how vouchers are failing students and exacerbating income inequality, arguing that the advancement of privatization policies is an assault on public education as a defining American institution.

PFPS is excited to welcome back authors Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider to the PFPS webinar series. Ms. Berkshire and Dr. Schneider will discuss their new book, "The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual," with Jasmine Bolton, Policy Director at the Partnership for the Future of Learning.

Experts including Professor Josh Cowen, ELC Senior Fellow and author of The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, and Jessica Levin, ELC Litigation Director and Director of Public Funds Public Schools, discuss the implications of Donald Trump's presidency on public schools and voucher programs.

This PFPS webinar featured ELC Senior Fellow Josh Cowen, Nicole Fuller from the National Coalition for Public Education, and speakers from PFPS/ELC who shared information, resources, tools, and tips to help advocates prepare for crucial state and federal legislative fights over private school voucher programs in 2025.

Although private school voucher programs continue to spread across the country, many states have remained voucher-free or held off significant expansions. In this webinar experienced advocates discussed the work of their organizations and numerous allies to oppose voucher legislation. They offered insight, strategies, and tips for others working against school privatization in their states, with plenty of time for Q&A.

This webinar provides 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.

When pundits describe the current political zeitgeist as a drift toward “populism,” they’re generally trying to convince you that something very bad is going on. But it’s important to understand that populism, a term that basically means the will of the people, can swing both ways. Nowhere is this more obvious than in education policy and politics

Another secret recording obtained by NewsChannel 5 Investigates reveals how Tennessee lawmakers are facing pressure to send your tax dollars to the state's private schools.

In the recording, the lead lobbyist for a well-financed group lobbying for school vouchers warns a reluctant lawmaker that his job could be at stake if he doesn't vote the way she wants him to vote.

In this webinar Heather DuBois Bourenane of the Wisconsin Public Education Network, Cathy Fuentes-Rohwer of the Indiana Coalition for Public Education, and Beth Lewis from SOS Arizona talk with OpenSky about the impact of school privatization legislation in their states.

Weekly one-hour interviews about the impacts of vouchers in Wisconsin featuring state and national experts

School choice has had troubling consequences for the Indiana K-12 public school system. Indiana’s Choice brings forward the voices of teachers, students, administrators, and parents to examine how school choice enables segregation of students and discrimination against students, families, and school employees.

The National Rural Education Association (NREA) advocates for equitable educational opportunities for the nearly 9 million students attending rural public schools across America. Tennessee has over 600,000 students in rural districts that are the backbone of our communities. But now our rural schools face an existential threat from school vouchers.

Legislative Bill 753 will be on the ballot in November 2024, and it's up to Nebraska voters now to decide if the state should go forward with a program to divert tax dollars to fund private school tuition.

A voucher program is a policy of diverting state and taxpayer resources marked for public education to private entities. Proponents of this system try to claim that children are “trapped in the public education system they were raised in.” This is, quite frankly, not true.

Right now, a lot of people claim to have the answer to solving the problem of equity in our education system. It seems that equity in education is a value many of us share, regardless of political leaning. There are a number of roads that people think will take us there, but not all roads are clear on the reality that education is a public good and a key ingredient in a healthy democracy.

Every Child NC's "Opportunity for Every Child" rally was held in response to the Republican-led legislative efforts to expand private school vouchers this long session. Speakers spoke about the importance of funding quality and equitable public education.

CBS 17 covers a a CREED and HEAL NC rally against school vouchers.

As a school board member in Arizona, I hear the concerns, hopes and frustrations that parents and citizens have about our public schools. The things that families worry about? School safety, shrinking budgets, student achievement and the accessibility of programs.

These are the issues that unite our students and families in our public schools and the kinds of problems that they want addressed. And these are the issues that I really want to work on with other policymakers who, regardless of political affiliation, care about similar things.

President Donald Trump didn’t coin the phrase “government schools.” But he gave it a big stage and a broader public audience during Tuesday’s State of the Union address, when he used it to urge Congress to back a bill that would provide $5 billion in tax credits to support scholarships for private school admission, tutoring, and other educational services.

Ohio public school districts that support a lawsuit against the state over private school vouchers say Republican leaders are bullying and intimidating them.

According to A.J. Calderone, superintendent of LaBrae Local Schools in Trumbull County and a member of the coalition Vouchers Hurt Ohio , Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) and Auditor Keith Faber (R-Ohio) wrote to all of Ohio’s public school districts earlier this summer asking for information about individual school districts that were involved in the lawsuit against the state. Calderone said the letter was unnecessary because the requested information would have been available through the state's Legislative Service Commission.

A growing number of school districts are joining a lawsuit against the state, pushing back against private school vouchers. The lawsuit was filed last year and is awaiting trial.

“Vouchers are going on trial,” Dayton Public Schools board member Jocelyn Rhynard said. “And we will make our case in the court of law, where the law matters, and the constitution cannot be ignored.”

An Ohio program that already directs more than $100 million of public money to private schools will undergo a massive expansion this school year.

What seems like an outbreak of local skirmishes is part of a decades-long push to privatize the education system.

Public school teachers are under assault from every angle. Arizona's universal voucher program is just one (very harmful) example.

Inside a double-wide trailer on the Warm Springs reservation in central Oregon, nearly two dozen American Indian high-school students sit facing computers, teaching themselves math and history. Rain slaps the roof. Ear buds dangle from one girl’s left ear. Two more students whisper, sharing a joke. Still another student, his face set in a serious expression, stares at the screen before him. The one teacher in the room previously taught third grade; he’s certified to teach high-school continuing education and agricultural science. Nearly all of the young people who study in this trailer—officially called the Bridges Career and Technical High School at Warm Springs—are Native Americans.

Today advocates of “school choice” routinely use the language of civil rights to argue that federal and state governments should finance largely unregulated private schools through the use of vouchers. These are the same type of vouchers that were the essential tools of Southern segregationists who fought and obstructed public school desegregation after the U. S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. How has the nation arrived at this point?

Illinois Families for Public Schools, the Illinois Education Association, the Illinois Federation of Teachers and the League of Women Voters of Illinois held a virtual forum on Tuesday April 25, 2023, "What You Need to Know about Invest in Kids: Illinois’ Tax Credit Voucher Program."

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.

Voucher programs around the country—whether in the form of traditional vouchers, education savings accounts (ESAs),or tax credit scholarships—are supported by well funded and organized groups. These include: Americans for Prosperity (the Koch brothers’ 501c4), the American Legislative Education Council (ALEC), the American Federation for Children (Betsy DeVos’ 501c4), Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation, among others.

What do these organizations have in common? They work openly to discredit public schools and push a privatization agenda, using the slogans of school choice, education freedom and parent rights. Many of them were on the ground working on the April 2023 school board elections in Illinois.