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The Century Foundation: The Federal Voucher Program is a Hoax and a Fraud

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2026 //
2

The Century Foundation published an analysis of Trump’s federal voucher program, which explains why it is a hoax and a fraud. The authors are Kayla Patrick and Loredana Valtierra.

The promise it makes is that families and students will choose schools that are just right for them, but the reality is that schools choose the students they want.

The promise is that school choice will benefit black and brown children, as well as children with disabilities, but children abandon all civil rights protections when they enroll in private schools.

The promise is that schools of choice will produce better academic outcomes but typically they produce worse outcomes (see Josh Cowen, The Privateers).

The promise is that school choice represents accountability but it usually means no accountability at all, because nonpublic schools don’t take national or state tests.

Kayla Patrick and Loredana Valtierra write:

Modern school voucher programs are often framed as a response to declining academic achievement and a way to expand “parent choice” by enabling private educators to operate within the public system. But in practice, vouchers operate quite differently than advertised. It’s the private schools, not families, who ultimately decide who enrolls, and they do so outside the accountability systems that govern public education and public dollars and ensure every student has equal opportunity to learn.

The Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Program (FTCS), passed as part of the Republican Party’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBBA), scales this model for camouflaged privatization to the national level. Though branded as a tax incentive, it functions as a nationwide voucher system that diverts public dollars to private schools while allowing those schools to play by different rules than public providers—evading civil rights protections, academic oversight, and any requirement to provide meaningful evidence to the public of their students’ outcomes.

A National Voucher Program Disguised as a Tax Credit

The FTCS nationalizes a model that at least twenty states and counting –including Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania – have already adopted, one which functions by siphoning public dollars through scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). Under this law, individual taxpayers can donate up to $1,700 annually to SGOs in exchange for a 100 percent federal tax credit, effectively turning private donations into reimbursed public expenditures.

SGOs then will distribute “scholarships” to K–12 students to use toward private school tuition, books, curriculum materials, tutoring or other educational classes, and educational therapies provided by licensed providers. While the program is optional for states, at least twenty-seven have already signaled their intent to participate.

[To see which states have expressed their intent to participate, open the link.]

Despite its branding, this design drains public revenue that would otherwise support public schools—which still educate roughly 90 percent of American students—and redirects it to private, religious, and largely unregulated providers. 

The program model also ignores what parents time and again have told us they want for their children. When given a direct choice at the ballot box, voters have repeatedly rejected school vouchers and related private-school subsidy measures. In the 2024 election, proposals to authorize or expand voucher-style programs in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska were defeated, and historical ballot measure data show that voters have rejected every statewide private voucher or education tax credit initiative placed before them since 1970. This opposition is reflected in polling that shows nearly 70 percent of voters say they would rather increase federal funding for public schools than expand government-funded vouchers, including majorities across party lines.

[Open the link to see which states have held referenda on vouchers.]

Broad Eligibility, Few Quality Controls, and Limited Public Benefit

Even measured against its stated goal of affordability, the FTCS program misses the mark. But if the goal is to make education more affordable for families under real financial strain, this program is also ineffective. Private K–12 tuition averages nearly $13,000 per year nationwide, placing private schooling out of reach for many families even with a modest subsidy. Yet the tax credit is not targeted to families facing affordability pressures. It allows households earning up to 300 percent of area median income to qualify, a threshold that would make roughly 90 percent of U.S. households eligible. In high-income regions, families earning as much as $500,000 per year could receive publicly subsidized support for private education, while in a city like New York—where median income is about $81,000—families earning nearly $244,000 would qualify. At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, housing, and child care, this program directs public dollars toward a limited use—private education subsidies for households that largely do not need the financial help—rather than toward measures that would help most families, like lowering child care or housing costs.

At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, housing, and child care, this program directs public dollars toward a limited use—private education subsidies for households that largely do not need the financial help—rather than toward measures that would help most families, like lowering child care or housing costs.

At the same time, the program imposes no meaningful accountability requirements on participating schools. There are no academic performance standards, no transparency obligations, and no requirement to evaluate outcomes. In contrast to nearly every other federal program serving children, from Title I to Head Start, this is public spending without public oversight. Federal programs historically are monitored for fiscal, quality, and sometimes for safety compliance by the agency with charge over the program. In this case, U.S Department of Education (ED) expertise plays no role in oversight of new national policy for education.1

What State Leaders Can and Cannot Control

FTCS offers a tempting hook for well-intentioned state policymakers as well: Some governors and state legislatures may view the tax credit as a way to unlock new resources for priorities like tutoring or after-school programs. In practice, however, it offers no new, flexible funding for states and gives them little control over how public dollars are used. The law defines “scholarship-granting organizations” so broadly that states cannot meaningfully restrict eligibility, set standards, or influence whether funds flow primarily to high-cost private schools rather than unmet public needs.

Once a state opts in, its role is largely administrative and unfunded. States receive no resources to carry out oversight, cannot impose safeguards, and must submit eligible organizations to the U.S. Treasury without authority to shape program design or accountability. Far from being additional education funding that states need, opting in requires that states absorb the fiscal, administrative, and equity consequences of a federal program they are unable to direct or correct. It is not “free money” for states. The opt-in decision is therefore the only meaningful leverage states have—and governors should use their right to refuse to play along in order to protect their public education systems.

Why Oversight and Accountability Matters

Public funding should never function on a good-faith system. It’s very simple: in good policymaking, whenever taxpayer dollars are allocated, oversight measures are put in place to make sure those dollars are spent in the way intended. We already know from numerous examples in the school choice policy space itself that no accountability means that those who need the help the least receive the most benefit.

Eighteen states have a universal private school choice program. Unfortunately, states that have expanded vouchers or education savings accounts with minimal oversight have already seen waste, fraud, and abuse. Arizona’s universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, for instance, has minimal controls, audit practices that automatically approve reimbursements, and has been linked to purchases of non-educational items like diamond rings, televisions, and even lingerie with taxpayer funds, prompting investigations by the state attorney general. Rather than lowering costs for families, the program has generated ballooning expenses for the state and contributed to a growing budget crisis—with no measurable benefit to students at all.

Similarly, the federal Charter Schools Program has repeatedly been shown to lack meaningful accountability, with investigations and audits documenting hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on schools that never opened or closed prematurely, and charter networks facing conservatorship over financial mismanagement and self-dealing. These outcomes are the predictable result of public dollars flowing to private operators without meaningful oversight.

Decades of research on voucher programs show mixed or negative academic outcomes, particularly in math and reading, and no evidence that vouchers close opportunity gaps. In Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio, studies found declines in student achievement following expansions in voucher programs. Students in Louisiana’s voucher program experienced drops in both math and reading in their first two years, while voucher students in Indiana and Ohio performed worse than comparable peers who remained in public schools. 

The program nationalizes an unproven experiment while insulating it from the very safeguards that exist to protect students and taxpayers alike.

Taken together, these examples underscore why oversight and accountability are not optional when public dollars are at stake. The FTCS program includes no meaningful accountability, evaluation, or research requirements to justify an estimated $26 billion cost to taxpayers. Without data on student learning, fiscal integrity, or long-term outcomes, the public has no way to assess whether this investment is helping students or simply reshuffling them across systems while diverting resources away from the public schools that serve most children and toward unknown corporate interests.2 In effect, the program nationalizes an unproven experiment while insulating it from the very safeguards that exist to protect students and taxpayers alike.

Who Profits When Public Dollars Become Private Subsidies?

Another consequence of turning public education dollars into private subsidies is that it creates a lucrative marketplace for the companies that manage these voucher systems. A handful of firms have seized on state voucher expansions to secure multimillion-dollar contracts, turning what was pitched as a cost-saving policy into a business opportunity for tech and finance intermediaries. These companies often have limited experience running education programs, and in some states have faced scrutiny over operational problems, questionable spending controls, and high administrative costs. 

This track record raises questions about whether families truly benefit from FTCS’s model. It would seem the opposite: it diverts taxpayer dollars into private profit streams instead of lowering education costs for struggling families. Instead of more wasteful government contracts, these dollars should be used to improve neighborhood schools by hiring high-quality educators, increasing after school programs, expanding pre-K, and hiring mental health professionals.

A Tax Policy Not Designed to Support Education

Congress gave sole interpretive authority for this program to the U.S. Treasury Department, deliberately excluding the U.S. Department of Education and its education-specific expertise. As a result, a major national education policy will be implemented through the tax code, with limited attention to accountability, equity, or educational impact. While advocates have urged the Treasury Department to include stronger transparency, safeguards, and state authority, it is unlikely those measures will be adopted to address the program’s core design flaws.

This use of the tax code stands in sharp contrast to prior policies that successfully supported children and families. The 2021 expanded Federal Child Tax Credit helped to lift more than 2 million childrenout of poverty and reduced the country’s child poverty level to a historic low of 5.2 percent. This program will likely do the opposite. Research shows that private school voucher programs disproportionately benefit wealthy families. Consistent with many other provisions in the law, Congressional Republicans have chosen to prioritize a tax break that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, over nearly every other form of charitable giving, such as donations to food pantries, hospitals, or community services.

By incentivizing families to exit public schools, the voucher tax credit also undermines the financial stability of those schools, particularly in rural and high-need communities. Because education funding is largely enrollment-based, even modest shifts can lead to school closures, consolidations, and reduced services. This leaves behind those families who don’t have the time or resources to navigate private systems, and asks taxpayers to reimburse private donations on top of existing public education costs.

Civil Rights Protections Are Excluded

Public schools that receive federal funding are required to comply with federal civil rights laws, including Title VI and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. In 2024, ED received 22,687 civil rights complaints, including about 8,400 related to disability discrimination, reflecting just how often students and families rely on these protections. 

These laws require schools to take corrective action to prevent and respond to discrimination, provide accommodations and services to students, investigate complaints, and offer families meaningful avenues for recourse. This is what public accountability looks like in practice, and its success depends on ED’s legal authority and the staff capacity to respond when families ask for help.

By contrast, the OBBA does not require scholarship-granting organizations or the private schools and programs they fund to comply with these federal civil rights protections, even though they benefit from publicly subsidized dollars. This means that if a student experiences harassment or discrimination based on race, national origin, sex, religion, or disability, families may have little or no ability to hold private schools accountable or seek remedies comparable to those guaranteed in public schools.

Evidence from state voucher programs shows why this gap matters. An investigation in North Carolina found that voucher funds flowed to private schools that were significantly whiter than the communities they serve, reinforcing racial segregation rather than expanding opportunity. In the absence of enforceable civil rights guardrails, public funding supports exclusionary practices that would be unlawful in public schools.

The Cost to Public Schools and Communities

Ultimately, this voucher/tax credit perpetuates a broader pattern of states, in addition to the federal government, stepping back from their responsibility to fully fund and strengthen public schools. Rather than address the systemic problems that perpetuate low-performing schools, it treats educational inequity as a series of individual problems to be solved by sending public dollars to private education. No matter how the administration spins it, these programs fail to prioritize students from lower-income families while simultaneously subsidizing private education for higher-income families. It invites taxpayers to feel as though they are helping children access opportunity, while leaving the underlying inequities in public education unresolved and, in many cases, deepened.

[Open the link to see data on source of insurance.]

This tax credit is projected to cost $26 billion, which is a high price tag that instead could be doing real good in public schools. If Congress instead invested this through Title I, that money would amount to roughly $1,238 per student in schools serving low-income communities. Research shows that investments of this size improve reading and math outcomes. In other words, we know how to use public dollars to help students succeed. This policy chooses not to.

Imagine putting that $26 billion, the lowest estimated cost of the tax credit over ten years, toward Title I, the federal program that benefits most public schools. That would more than double Title I’s current funding at $18.4 billion. Title I’s flexibility allows schools to meet their specific needs to improve student achievement: more teachers, aides, professional development, wraparound services, and more. 

IDEA is supposed to fund 40 percent of each student’s special education each year, but the federal government has never met that promise. Current funding at $14.2 billion amounts to less than 12 percent of the promise. However, adding $26 billion to IDEA would almost triple current funding and completely close the gap. 

We know that the unprecedented funding from the American Rescue Plan and other COVID relief packages will make a major return on investment: every $1,000 invested per student will be worth $1,238 in future earnings. That funding also required states to at least maintain their education budgets at prior funding so that the federal investment would not replace their responsibility and effort, but work together. The FTCS model completely disregards these precedents, and their values.

The Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Is a Heist Taken Straight from the Right’s Privatization Playbook

The Federal Tax Credit Scholarship program follows a familiar privatization strategy. It routes public dollars to private actors while stripping away the oversight, transparency, and civil rights protections that normally accompany public investment. Framed as generosity and choice, it instead creates a system in which taxpayers assume the cost while private schools and intermediaries operate largely beyond public accountability.

The program recreates many risks at a national scale. The schools and organizations receiving these publicly subsidized funds are not required to demonstrate academic results, comply with federal civil rights law, or provide transparency about how dollars are spent. Families are left without protections, taxpayers without accountability, and policymakers without evidence that the investment is improving student outcomes.

When public dollars are transformed into lightly regulated private subsidies, they invite exploitation. The Federal Tax Credit Scholarship is not an isolated policy choice: it follows a pattern of policies that weaken, and normalize weakening, public education while insulating private actors from responsibility. History shows where this path leads: higher costs, weaker safeguards, and fewer assurances that public investments serve the public good.

Notes

  1. The Trump administration has taken multiple actions to reduce the role of the U.S. Department of Education, including firing staff and reassigning education programs and staff to other agencies through interagency agreements (IAAs) without congressional authorization. Such actions raise legal and governance concerns and further erode the education-specific expertise, oversight, and accountability that Congress has historically vested in ED.
  2. Under the OBBA, the federal tax credit for contributions to SGOs applies to individual taxpayers. The law does not provide separate federal tax credit rules for corporate contributions; whether and how corporations might participate or benefit may depend on future Treasury and IRS regulations and state tax policies. Many states currently allow corporate contributions to SGOs.
Read more about Kayla Patrick

Kayla Patrick, Contributor

Read more about Loredana Valtierra

Loredana Valtierra, Contributor

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding, Hoax, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Special Education, Trump, Vouchers

Arkansas Increases Funding for Vouchers, a Bonanza for Kids in Private Schools

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2026 //
0

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders is holding the line on spending, except for vouchers, which h will get a big boost. About 85% of the students using vouchers never attended public schools, so Governor Sanders is handing out money to pay for students already enrolled in private and religious schools.

Poor people in Arkansas don’t get much help in the budget, but affluent families get tax cuts and vouchers to pay for private schools, religious schools, and home schools.

The Arkansas Times reports:

Arkansas lawmakers are set to convene April 8 to hash out next year’s state budget. In a Wednesday letter to lawmakers, Sanders said she’s proposing a 3% increase, a pretty standard figure on par with recent years.

But what’s going to be funded in this mostly flat spending plan, and what’s not? At first blush, it looks like well-to-do Arkansans are the big winners, cashing in on private school vouchers and more income tax cuts.

Sanders’ proposed 2026-27 budget, presented to lawmakers by Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration Director Jim HudsonWednesday morning, includes up to $379 million for the Arkansas LEARNS vouchers that parents who opt out of traditional public schools can tap to pay private school or homeschool expenses. That’s a big increase over the $187 million budgeted for vouchers last time.

The 2025-26 school year was the first in which all students in Arkansas were eligible for these vouchers, and the price tag keeps creeping higher. Ballooning costs are pretty much a given, based on what’s happened in other states that pioneered this tricky transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to their wealthy overlords by paying fancy kids’ tony tuitions for them. Just ask Arizona and Florida. 

Lawmakers have made a number of adjustments and budget increases for LEARNS after voucher costs quickly exceeded the budgeted amount. In January, a legislative committee signed off on giving another $32 million in one-time reserve funds to Arkansas’s newly universal school voucher program, bringing its total cost in the current 2025-26 school year to $309.4 million, which covers more than 44,000 students. That $309 million is the base amount proposed for 2026-27, but Sanders’ budget proposes an extra $70 million for it, just in case.

Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families warned in January that vouchers are doing all the things opponents warned they would: creating new spending obligations for taxpayers to cover private school tuitions and other costs that were never on the public dime before; chipping away at public schools’ financial resilience; and generally busting budgets. 

These set-aside amounts that were incorporated into the state’s school voucher fund this year, and which are being teed up to be added next year to the tune of $70 million, look a lot like a trap. Last go-round, lawmakers approved about $187 million for vouchers, but then added another $122 million to the school voucher cause in piecemeal fashion over the course of the fiscal year, to ultimately spend $309 million. Now lawmakers are looking at $309 million as the floor for voucher spending for 2026-27, and will almost certainly throw in that set-aside $70 million, too (if not more). How many hundreds of millions more are we going to add in these payouts for the well-to-do each year, in slapdash fashion? Don’t say we didn’t warn you!

Categories Accountability, Arkansas, Education Industry, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Dr. Mike DeGuire: The Public Doesn’t Want Vouchers. Why Are They Spreading?

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2026 //
2

Dr. Mike DeGuire is a lifelong educator who served as a principal of a public school in Denver. Now retired, he has assumed an active role in fighting privatization.

The dirty little secret of the voucher movement is that most of them are claimed by well-to-do families whose children were already attending nonpublic schools. Vouchers are a subsidy for people who were already paying tuition at private schools

His post was distributed by Advocates for Public Education Policy.

A4PEP introduced his statement:

Vouchers aren’t winning because voters love them. In fact, they keep losing at the ballot box.

So what’s going on?

In a new post, A4PEP Vice-Chair Dr. Mike DeGuire points to a big driver: billionaire-funded networks that keep pushing “school choice” as a marketplace, where public dollars follow students into private (often religious) schools.

It’s not just messaging, either. These efforts are backed by think tanks, lobbying, and big political spending, and now there’s a new federal tax credit plan that could supercharge scholarship-granting organizations with even less transparency.

If you want the clearest breakdown we’ve seen of who’s behind this and what it means for public schools, read Mike’s full post:

Public education is a public promise. Let’s protect it.

Dr. Mike DeGuire wrote about why vouchers have been winning despite lack of public support.

He said:

One answer: Billionaires

Billionaires Charles Koch, Betsy Devos, Jeff Yass, William Dunn, Phillip Anschutz, Michael Bloomberg, Reed Hastings, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, John Arnold, and the Walton and Bradley families have led the movement for private school choice through support for both charters and vouchers for over 30 years. Their goal is to dismantle what they call the “government school system” and to change how public education is funded. They want to create a “marketplace of options” so families can use money (vouchers) from public funds to send their children to private, religious, or home schools.

The marketplace concept allows billionaires and their investors to make money through real estate, tech and service contracts, and gain significant tax benefits. For many, the goal is to support religious schools which then profit from enrollment growth.

How did billionaires get the public to go along with their privatization goals?

They used their vast resources to set up think tanks and lobbying organizations which employ hyperbolic messaging with misleading data to communicate that public schools are failing, insisting parents need resources (vouchers) to find alternative schooling options. When their voucher goals met with resistance in the 1990s, billionaires focused on spreading charter schools instead, especially in major cities. The charter movement created the false narrative that parents should leave their local public school instead of focusing on increased funding to meet changing student needs.

During Trump’s first term, and after the pandemic hit, vouchers started to reappear, especially in red states, as billionaires backed pro-voucher candidates in state legislatures and Congress to secure favorable voucher legislation. However, not a single taxpayer-funded voucher program in the United States has been approved by voters. Every state voucher program was enacted by legislators, often under heavy pressure from well-funded pro-voucher lobbying groups. Billionaires also funded groups who lobbied Congress to pass the federal tax credit voucher scheme in July that enlists all 50 states to join in the billionaire’s version of “education freedom for private school choice.”

How will they use the “historic” federal tax credit to spread more vouchers?

Taxpayers in states that opt in to the federal voucher scheme select from a list of scholarship granting organizations (SGOs) to reduce their tax liability by $1700 when they pay their 2027 taxes. Billionaires have been funding K-12 SGOs for over 25 years. They use the money raised to give scholarships for students to attend private schools. These SGOs will have billions more from individual taxpayers to use for the same purposes. Billionaire John Walton, son of Sam Walton of Wal-Mart and the richest family in the US, co-founded the nation’s two largest scholarships granting organizations, ACE Scholarships and Children’s Scholarship Fund. Most of their scholarships go to students who leave public schools to attend religious schools.

The federal voucher program includes no spending cap, and the billionaires have already tossed in over $10 million to market the program. The voucher advocates are pushing hard for regulations that slam the door on any approach that does not further the growth of this largely unregulated voucher program.

The path forward: opt out, speak up, organize

This isn’t a grassroots uprising. It’s a long-running, well-funded project, one that keeps losing at the ballot box, so it shifts strategy: different messaging, different vehicles, same end goal. If we want truly “free” public education, we can’t let billionaires and private interests redefine freedom as a shopping spree financed by public dollars.

The path forward is clear, even if it’s not flashy. Communities can press state leaders not to opt in. Parents and educators can demand transparency from scholarship-granting organizations and insist on real accountability for any program that touches public money. And all of us can keep returning to the basic truth: the best “choice” is a fully funded, welcoming neighborhood public school, one that serves every child, not just the children a private system chooses to accept.

Public education is a public promise. We should protect it like one.

Categories Billionaires, Education Industry, Privatization, Scandals, School Choice, Vouchers

Ohio: “Center for Christian Virtue” Starts Schools, Draws on Public Funds

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2026 //
2

Stephen Dyer, former state legislator, follows the money. As usual, in Ohio, public money is flowing to private organizations that are neither accountable nor effective. In this post, he assays the trail of public funds collected by the Center for Christian Virtue. The Ohio Constitution could not be clearer: no money for religious schools. The Ohio legislature treats the state constitution like an outdated relic.

Dyer writes on his blog Tenth Period:

The Center for Christian Virtue is making quite a play in Ohio’s education policy landscape. They are using a multimillion dollar Capital Square office to run the lobbying effort to continue the state’s unconstitutional private school tuition subsidies. They also are running a so-called $3.2 million Scholarship Granting Organization, which is really just a fancy way of funneling millions more of our tax dollars into unaccountable private schools.

And, potentially most harmful of all, they’re running an operation they call “school planting” where they use the unconstitutional private school tuition subsidy to kick-start “schools” inside of churches across Ohio.

They are now claiming to have done this with 15 “schools” so far, publicly naming four new ones that opened this school year and another 4 next school year. Here’s how they brag about it in their news release about this initiative:

“Through our innovative school-in-a-church model, God is expanding access to Christian education for families in every corner of the state. By leveraging existing church facilities, we help keep costs low, making it possible for more families to afford a high-quality, Christ-centered education.”

Let’s set aside the fact that having schools pop up in churches is an ancient practice and not in any way “innovative” (having American taxpayers subsidize these things is “innovative”, though).

Anyway, here’s the thing: a total of 25 kids in only 1 of these schools — Westside Preparatory, which is the shining example displayed on CCV’s education website — has ever been tested for proficiency in reading and math, with only 9 ever being deemed “proficient” in both1.

This performance reflects these kids’ scores on tests the schools gets to pick from scores of options allowed by the state.

Public schools, in contrast, do not get to pick their kids’ tests.

All taxpayers had to do for 9 private school kids to test proficient on tests the school picked was to unconstitutionally subsidize these schools by about $2 million.2

[Open the link to see the scores.]

But at least the schools’ scores are 51 percentage points worse last year than the previous year in Math. Not an awesome trend, by the way.

Quite a return, wouldn’t you say? I mean, considering that none of these kids ever attended a public school. I am deducing this because in the schools’ first year of existence, only kindergarteners and first graders are included in their enrollment counts.

And that’s it. That’s all we know about the quality of these 15 “schools.” Hence my quotation marks around the word “school”.
Because what these “schools” really seem to be are money makers for CCV so it can finance the elimination of public education.

This is why I call them the new White Hat.
For those who aren’t familiar with White Hat, it was the company run by David Brennan that made millions running Charter Schools in Ohio and simply flipped a small percentage of those profits into Republican campaign war chests with the goal of de-funding public schools and the teachers unions that backed Democrats.

CCV is running the same White Hat playbook — set up a bunch of bullshit shell corporations, siphon millions of public dollars from Ohio’s 1.5 million public school students, use a small percentage of that money to lobby Ohio legislators and governors (who are notoriously cheap to buy) who allow CCV to continue stealing that money from kids, then watch public school kids suffer from it all.

All in the name of Jesus — they call this a ministry even!

Because robbing money from poor kids in Columbus, Athens, Steubenville and Findlay is exactly what Christ would have done.
What CCV is doing to Ohio’s public school kids is blasphemy. Pure and simple.

But get this: Because CCV’s operation involves advocating for the state to shovel money to private schools, we have no idea how much of that largesse CCV is accumulating. We do know that CCV staff is making bank — again, just as Jesus intended.

Please open the link and finish reading this post. Once again, the people of Ohio are being ripped off by grifters.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization, School Choice

Stephen Dyer: Vouchers’ Growth in Ohio Will Be Their Demise

By dianeravitch
February 23, 2026 //
0

Stephen Dyer is a former legislator in Ohio who keeps track of the budgetary impact of school choice on the state’s public schools. Despite multiple voucher programs, 85% of the state’s 1,000,000 children attend public schools. Dyer’s blog is called Tenth Period.

Ohio’s State Constitution contains explicit language supporting public schools and equally explicit language barring the public funding of religious schools.

Article VI of the Ohio State Constitution says:

“The General Assembly shall make such provisions, by taxation, or otherwise, as, with the income arising from the school trust fund, will secure a thorough and efficient system of common schools throughout the state; but no religious or other sect, or sects, shall ever have any exclusive right to, or control of, any part of the school funds of this state.”

Nothing ambiguous there, but Republicans in Ohio ignore or creatively distort the State Constitution.

He writes:

So I came across an interesting piece of information today. Since 2021, Ohioans went from unconstitutionally subsidizing the private school tuitions of a little over 3 in 10 private school students to more than 8 in 10 today.

At an astounding pricetag of a 313 percent increase — at least — in taxpayer subsidies¹.

Yes, Ohio’s private schools have seen an enrollment increase. However, that 22,000 student increase represents barely 1 percent of the 1.9 million students enrolled in all Ohio schools this year. 

And the funding has vastly outstripped the rate of unconstitutional voucher growth — resulting in a nearly 20 percent per pupil funding increase for private schools.

So get this.

State leaders have spent the last 5 years increasing unconstitutional voucher spending by $600 million, demonizing public education, putting on a full-court press to convince people to take unconstitutional vouchers and that’s netted them … barely a 1 percent increase in the private school share of Ohio’s school enrollment?

Pretty awful ROI, don’t you think?

Especially when you consider that by unconstitutionally subsidizing the private school tuitions of mostly wealthy people like Les Wexner, the state is literally funding a separate, second educational system in direct contravention of the state constitution. 

And it has meant they have been unable (unwilling?) to fully pay for the state’s school funding formula for the 85 percent of students attending Ohio’s public schools. The state’s public school funding comes out of the same budget pot as its voucher money.

So the only way for voucher proponents to convince any good-faith judge or group of judges that they are not funding a second, unconstitutional and unaccountable² school system is to actually shrink the number of vouchers.

Which they’ll never do.

This fact, as much as any, helps explain state Rep. Jamie Callender’s recent attempt to bully the suing school districts into dropping the case— a threat from which he has (kinda) weaklybacked down.

For if these suing school districts continue to stand strong, Callender and his overlord, Speaker Matt Huffman — lawyers, both — know they are screwed.

Legally speaking.

Footnotes:

1. I’m only including the two EdChoice programs and the Cleveland voucher program because those are the ones at issue in the current lawsuit. These numbers are, obviously, higher if you include the autism and special needs vouchers. Also, as with every current year data analysis of vouchers, the funding numbers are estimates because we don’t have readily accessible current year dollar figures for the vouchers, just the number of students whose schools are now eligible to get them. So I multiplied last year’s per pupil amount for each of the voucher programs to reach the $861.6 million figure. It’s probably going to be more because per pupil voucher funding always increases.

2. Remember that not a penny of the $8 billion+ we’ve spent on unconstitutional private school tuition subsidies since 1996 has been audited.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ohio, School Choice, Vouchers

John Thompson: Is It “Silly Season” or “Cruel Season” in Oklahoma as Legislature Reconvenes?

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2026 //
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John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, reviews the big concerns that will preoccupy the Republican Governor and Legislature in 2026.

He writes:

As Oklahoma’s legislative session begins, commentators are reminding us of the absurdities that will come. The Oklahoma Voice’s Janelle Stecklein’s Welcome to the 2026 Edition of Welcome to Oklahoma’s Political Silly Season. Here are Some Bills Worth Mocking, reported on: 

A proposed deregulation bill that would result in alligators taking over our wetlands; the bill to ban Sharia Law; the “doubly criminalizing the stealing of shopping carts,” and the bill which claims “condensation trails left in our atmosphere by airplanes are actually chemical agents designed to interfere with the sun, [and] weather or are a nefarious way to psychologically manipulate us.”

And, former Speaker of the House, Cal Hobson’s, “Hide the Children. Lock the Door. The ’26 Session Draws Near, summarized  the bill to require universities to build structures honoring the assassinated Charlie Kirk.

Then came Governor Kevin Stitt’s address to the legislature.

Seven years ago, Stitt promised  to make us a “Top Ten” state,” by creating a business-friendly environment by cutting “red tape,” reducing regulations, as well as pushing school choice, and other free-market policies. 

But, according to CNBC, Oklahoma is now ranked 41th for business, 48th in education, and 49th in life, health and inclusion.

According to the U.S. News and World Report, we’re ranked 46th in economic opportunity, and 42th overall.

But Stitt told the legislature:

We’ve proven to the world that Oklahoma is second to none – it’s a state that promotes innovation, champions freedom, and creates opportunity for its people.

Oklahoma wasn’t built by government planners or bureaucrats. …

Oklahoma was built by entrepreneurs, risk-takers and innovators who believe in free markets and the American Dream – that if you work hard, take risks and create value, you should be rewarded.

Actually, Oklahoma was founded on populist principles, such as empowering voters to pass initiative petitions and amendments to the constitution. After the voters legalized medical marijuana, and voted for the expansion of Medicaid, Republicans have attempted to undermine those rights. And, now, Stitt is calling for the repeal of those two laws, and passing two other petitions that are the opposite of what voters supported.  

Stitt’s most destructive attack could be on Medicaid expansion, known as SoonerCare, which reduced the state’s uninsured rate from 17.6% in 2019 to 13.9 % in 2024. But, now it needs almost $500 million to maintain the federally mandated level of service and to administer new mandates and to more efficiently manage the system.

And Oklahoma’s recent privatization of Medicaid campaign “moved thousands of patients to other insurance providers.” And, it has “resulted in lower reimbursement rates and increased denials for services.”

Medicaid provides coverage for one in four Oklahomans. It provided coverage for more than ½ of the state’s child births. While half of its recipients are children, it helps out many low-income seniors and persons with disabilities.

But, Stitt told the legislature, “Nobody feels sorry for an able-bodied male that should be working between the ages of 25 to 65, and we should not be giving them free healthcare.”

Stitt bragged about his cuts in income taxes, which were “the Path to Zero income tax;” He called them a step towards “one of our greatest budget reform wins in history.”

Due to spending cuts, Oklahoma saved over $5.5 billion dollars. Those funds could be used to address $692 million shortfall for this year, as well as $1.5 billion in increased funding that state agencies have requested.

Instead, he wants to amend the constitution to place a 3% annual cap on recurring spending growth.

The third state question Stitt suggested to lawmakers would be to freeze property taxes for “all levels.” Property taxes are a major funding source for public schools, CareerTech, and county level programs. 

And he would like to expand the $249 million per year tax credits for private schools.

And Stitt repeated his calls to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling and limit tribal sovereignty in Oklahoma.

Of course, Stitt praised Trump and Ronald Reagan. He challenged the legislators to read Reagan’s speech, “A Time for Choosing.” He then said Reagan was “the last best hope of man on earth;” without him we would have taken “the last step into a thousand years of darkness.”

He then bragged about freeing Oklahomans from Covid lockdowns, protecting them from vaccine mandates, and, in the name of protecting individual liberties and religious freedom, preventing boys from playing in girls’ sports.

After boasting about his success in limiting the freedom of transgender students, he called for the elimination of the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) for not promoting the open transfer of student athletes.

And Stitt concluded:

Oklahoma is not just part of this American Dream. We are its purest expression. And this spirit is what has always defined Oklahoma.

Oklahoma is where bold dreams are possible.

I believe these last seven years have been the greatest in state history

Of course, Stitt’s “commitment to limited government and protecting the Oklahoma way of life,” also required cooperation with rightwing legislators; together, they share credit for making “our state … the best in the country.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Extremism, Oklahoma, Privatization, School Choice

Peter Greene: Will Mississippi Ditch Its “Miracle” by Endorsing Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
January 23, 2026 //
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We have all heard the stories of the “Mississippi Miracle,” the dramatic rise in test scores in the midst of underfunding and poverty. Whether or not there has actually been a miracle, some Mississippi legislators are eager to help kids escape those miraculous schools. Specifically, by giving them vouchers for private schools.

The legislature is split, however. The key senator opposes vouchers, which always end up subsidizing kids in private schools. The key members in the House are all in to pay the tuition for affluent families.

Why in the world would legislators want to help students “escape” good schools?

Peter Greene writes:

Mississippi legislators are fiddling with school choice. Some of their fiddling is very limited, and some is just kind of odd, given the context of Mississippi education these days. 

In the senate, SB 2002  is a bill for public school choice, called open enrollment in some states and portability in others. It would give students the chance to pick a public school outside of their own attendance area. Education Committee Chairman Dennie DeBar said that’s as far as he’s willing to go. As J.T. Mitchell reports for Supertalk:

“This is as far as we’re willing to go. I’m not in favor of vouchers,” DeBar said in regard to universal school choice that includes using public funds to help parents pay for private school tuition. “This creates competition amongst our schools to make them better.”

The house, however, is willing to go quite a bit further. They’ve launched HB 2, the Mississippi Education Freedom Act, which would establish Magnolia Student Accounts, an education savings account style voucher.

The bill proposes most of the usual features. A few notable quirks:

* Half of the vouchers are designated for students currently in public school, half for those already in private school.

* Vouchers will be awarded in a first come, first served priority order. Families with under 100% of area median income. Next those between 100% and 200%, then 200% to 300%. Then “all other eligible students.” 

* Each of those eligible groups has a different voucher amount limits. It’s the total funding formula, not to exceed– $4,000 for the under-100% crowd, $2,000 for the next group, and so on. There are also limits on the total that can go to one household.

The voucher dollars can be spent on the usual stuff– tuition, fees, supplies, equipment, uniforms, testing. Plus a whole category for “technological devices” including television, videogame console or accessory, home theater or related audio equipment, and virtual reality products. 

House Speaker Jason White authored HB 2. He explains his support:

White is a longtime advocate for school choice, the idea of giving parents more of a say in where their children are educated without being restricted by their neighborhoods. In a statement, he pointed to Mississippi’s recent gains in education, including a No. 16 overall ranking and nation-leading improvements in reading. He said the Mississippi Education Freedom Act “builds on that success.”

I am not going to get into the Mississippi “miracle” at this point, other than to say that something certainly seems to have happened, but as always with education, it appears to have more to do with hard work, teacher efforts, school resources, and maybe some tweaking of the data, none of which is miraculous.

But whatever “that success” was, I’m not clear on how you build on it by letting parents pull their kids away from it while simultaneously taking resources away from those successful schools. “Our schools are finally improving,” declares White. “So let’s give families more ways to pull their kids out of them.” This does not seem like a recipe for success. 

For the sake of Mississippi students, let’s hope the senate shuts down HB 2. 

Categories Education Industry, Funding, Mississippi, School Choice, Vouchers

A Conversation with Norman B of Tampa NPR About My Memoir

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2026 //
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Norman Batley hosts a podcast called “Life Elsewhere with Norman B.” He is based in Tampa, Florida. The program is widely distributed through WMNF and NPR. He asks great questions, and I was thrilled to be invited to be on his show.

I hope you will listen.

Categories Arizona, Civil Rights, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Ravitch, Diane, School Choice

Jeff Bryant: The Death of Public Schools in Florida?

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2026 //
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Jeff Bryant, a veteran education journalist, dissects he plan to destroy public schools. Governor Ron DeSantis and the Legislature has unleashed the for-profit vultures to pick the bonds and funds of the state’s public schools. Not because the charges are better schools, but because the rightwingers have close ties to members of the legislature. Want to open a charter school? Want the state to pay all your expenses? Come on down to the Sunshine State!

This article was produced by Our Schools. Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Bluesky@jeffbinnc.

The letters started coming in October 2025. In the first wave, according to the Florida Policy Institute (FPI), “at least 22 school districts in Florida” got letters alerting them that charter school operators, including a for-profit charter school management company based in Miami, intended to use a state law recently enacted to open new charter schools on the campuses of existing public schools beginning August 2027.

In Broward County, a South Florida district that includes Fort Lauderdale, the Mater Academy charter school chain, operated by for-profit charter management company Academica, claimed space in 27 public schools. Mater Academy claimed space in nearly 30 schools in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa Bay, “along with more than a dozen [schools] in Pinellas [County] and six in Pasco [County],” Tampa Bay Times reported. In Sarasota County, Mater claimed space in three public school campuses.

At least two more charter chains—New York-based Success Academy and New Jersey-based KIPP NJ—have joined in the campaign.

“So far, 480 schools in 22 counties have received 690 ‘letters of intent’ from charter school organizations expressing their intent to occupy space in public school buildings,” FPI’s Norin Dollard told Our Schools in late November. When schools receive letters from multiple charter organizations, it’s first come, first served, she explained, and the timeline for schools to respond is incredibly short—just 20 days.

Once the charter occupies part of the public school, Dollard explained, it operates rent free, and the public school district becomes responsible for much of the charter’s costs, including those for services charters don’t customarily provide, such as bus transportation and food service, as well as costs for school support services like janitorial, security, library, nursing, and counseling. Even any construction costs the charters might incur have to be covered by the public school.

This new law will force some public schools to convert to charter schools, said Damaris Allen, “and that’s intentional.” Allen is the executive director of Families for Strong Public Schools, a public schools advocacy organization that is rallying opposition to the law.

The letters have caught the attention of national news outlets, including the Washington Post, which reported, “The Florida law is an expansion of a state program called ‘Schools of Hope,’ which was set up to allow certain charters to operate in areas with low-performing local public schools. The new law allows ‘Schools of Hope’ operators to take over space at any public school that’s under capacity, regardless of whether it is high- or low-performing.”

“The expansion of the Schools of Hope idea has been on a slippery slope,” Dollard explained, “much like school vouchers have been in the state.” Originally, in 2017, schools identified for Schools of Hope transition from public governance to charter management were very narrowly defined as persistently underperforming schools. That changed in 2019 when the legislature altered the definition of low-performing to target more schools and added schools in so-called opportunity zones—government-designated areas selected for economic development—as open territory for charters. Now, the new law allows charter schools to take over “underused, vacant, or surplus” space in traditional public schools and operate free of charge.

As the reach of the Schools of Hope idea morphed, so did its rationale. According to a 2025 op-ed by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, the program was originally conceived as an “initiative that incentivizes high-quality charter operators to open schools for students trapped in failing ones.” The aim now, according to Bush, is to solve the “problem” of underutilized space in existing public schools.

With school enrollments in steep decline in nearly every district in the state, fear of a potential mass charter school industry takeover of public school spaces—along with the costs local districts will incur—looms over district leaders across the state and strikes them as a clear existential threat.

Other consequences of colocating more charters in public schools have not been well-thought-out, according to Allen. For instance, on the issue of school safety, public schools have undertaken a number of measures to protect against school shootings, such as converting buildings to single-point entry. Charter schools don’t have to do that. So what happens when a charter operation moves into a building and doesn’t comply with the single-point entry? Also, the state legislature created new rulesfor public school libraries in 2022. Charters don’t have to follow those rules. How is that going to work in a colocation?

Allen fears the daunting challenges of charter colocations will cause some school boards and communities to sell school buildings or convert them to district-operated charters rather than give in to charter schools run by outside, for-profit companies.

And while proponents of Florida’s Schools of Hope program see it as a way to expand education options for students and families, critics point to evidence that Florida charter schools, which one expert called “a shitstorm,” need stricter oversight rather than a free rein. And, regardless of the outcomes, they warn that the idea is sure to get promoted as an “education innovation” that other Republican-dominated states will likely adopt.

A warning sign, not a model

When Nancy Lawther, a retired college professor of French, got involved in public schools advocacy, she became very skeptical about the oft-told narrative about the need for more education options because “too many poor children are trapped in failing public schools.” After all, in Dade County, Miami, where she lives, the public system has an A rating by the state despite having a challenging student population that is overwhelmingly Hispanic, with many living in households earning less than the state’s median income.

Her skepticism only increased when she first heard about expanding the Schools of Hope program to more schools, especially when she saw the results from the first schools taken over.

The original “Schools of Hope” weren’t individual schools; it was a whole district. In 2017, the Jefferson County school board voted in favor of participating in a pilot project for the new Schools of Hope initiative. The board’s approval to join the pilot meant that the district was required to turn over the management of their schools to a “high-performing” charter management company, which, in this case, happened to be Somerset Academy, another charter chain managed by the for-profit Academica management company.

But the results of the pilot would be a warning sign about the abilities of charter management firms to improve the education outcomes of public schools. As a 2025 op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel recounted, “[T]axpayers saw higher costs, stagnant results, and constant staff churn. By 2022, the takeover collapsed. Local leaders called it ‘an absolute disaster.’ The state had to step in with a $5 million bailout just to get the district running again.”

A 2024 account of the pilot in the Tallahassee Democrat reported, “[F]rom 2017 to 2022,… [Jefferson County] remained troubled by students’ lagging academic performance and mounting disciplinary issues, like fighting that in one case led to the arrest of 15 students. … [And] the school district was still getting a D grade” from the state.

Nevertheless, after Florida lawmakers expanded the Schools of Hope program in 2019, which has cost more than $300 million as of 2025, “There are only about a dozen Schools of Hope in Florida. In 2024, eight of them got C or D grades,” pointed out the Bradenton Times.”

‘All about market share’

Given its track record of failure, Lawther suspects that expanding Schools of Hope has nothing to do with improving education outcomes or making better use of publicly funded school buildings.

Indeed, Sarasota County, one of the districts targeted for charter colocations, has been an A-rated system since the state created the grading system in 2004, according to the district website.

Also, in districts where there are enrollment slides, there are few signs that demand for charters will soak up excess building capacity. According to a 2025 analysis of Sarasota County by Suncoast Searchlight, “The number of charter schools has grown in recent years, but the share of students at charters has not shifted much.” And building utilization rates of the different sectors are nearly identical—82 percent for public schools and 84 percent for charters, WUSF stated. “Some of the lowest-performing charters are barely a third full.”

Mater Academy, the charter operator using the Schools of Hope law to claim space in Sarasota public schools, does not currently operate a school in the district.

“This is all about market share,” Lawther said. “It’s about getting an advantage over charter operators that are not Schools of Hope providers, and independent charters that can’t compete in a market geared to the large chains,” like those operated by Academica.

Further, while enrollments in Florida charter schools continued to grow, it has shown signs of slowing down—from 3.7 percent in 2024 to 2.6 percent in 2025—and the number of charter schools decreased, from 739 in 2023-2024 to 732 in 2024-2025.

Also, the charter industry in the state faces many more privately-operated competitors. “Expansions of voucher programs are creating a more competitive market for charter schools,” Lawther noted, “and private schools, microschools, and homeschooling are growing forms of school choice.”

Indeed, charter schools no longer appear to be the fastest-growing form of school choice in the state.

After the Republican-led Florida legislature passed a bill in 2023 that did away with income requirements for families to receive state-sponsored school vouchers, the share of state funding diverted from the public system—which, technically, includes charters—to private schools and homeschooling doubled from 12 percent in 2021 to 24 percent in 2025, WUSF reported. In the school year 2023-2024, the number of vouchers, often called “scholarships,” given out to help families pay for private school tuition and homeschooling increased by approximately 142,000 students, according to Next Steps, a school choice advocacy group.

Florida has also experienced a 46 percent increase in homeschooling over the past five years, WEAR statedin 2025. And the state has freed up 50,000 new community facilities to serve as microschools, according to the Center for American Progress.

It would seem that in this increasingly competitive education landscape, the Florida charter school industry could use a new competitive angle like the one offered by Schools of Hope. “Officially, charter school advocates say Schools of Hope is an amazing opportunity to expand parent choice,” Dollard said, “but unofficially, this is an incredibly lucrative business opportunity.”

An industry in decline?

The charter school industry’s desire for new business strategies that enable charter operators to seize public school classrooms—or even whole buildings—is not confined to Florida.

In Indiana, for years, public school districts have been required to notify the state, within 10 days, when one of their buildings becomes vacant and to make the building available to lease to a charter school for $1 per year or sell the building to a charter operator outright for $1.

In Ohio’s 2025 approved budget, a new provision allows the state to force school districts to close some public school buildings and sell those properties to charter or private schools “at below market value,” Ideastream Public Media reported.

Arkansas is also likely to adopt a Schools of Hope-like measure, Allen speculated, because its state secretary of education Jacob Oliva served in Florida. Oliva was Florida’s state education chancellor during the failed Schools of Hope pilot in Jefferson County.

One market condition that’s likely behind these increasingly aggressive charter school industry is land grab, as revealed in a 2025 analysis by the National Center for Charter School Accountability (NCCSA). According to the report, charter school closings have been accelerating nationwide, while the pace of new charter openings has slowed significantly during the same time.

“[T]he 2023-24 school year saw just 12 more open charter schools than during the previous year,” the report found. This is “a dramatic departure” from the heydays of industry growth when “[t]he number of charter schools increased by 421” between 2010 and 2011.

Charter school enrollment growth has also stalled, according to the report, increasing by 0.1 percentage point—from 7.5 percent to 7.6 percent of total charter enrollment—between 2020 and 2023.

In the most recent school years, based on official data from 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, NCCSA found, “Most states experienced declines or stagnation [in charter school market share], and preliminary indicators suggest that, once the 2024 data is finalized, the trend will likely worsen.”

North Carolina offers a clarifying example of the significant headwinds that the charter school industry now faces.

In the Tar Heel state, charter schools have enjoyed widespread support among state lawmakers and private investors. The state legislature has made dramatic changes to state laws regarding charters, including loosening regulations and fast-tracking approval of new schools. And a 2024 analysis by the Charlotte Observer found “at least $279 million in private equity investments in North Carolina charter schools since 2013.”

Despite this support, the number of charter schools in North Carolina declined in 2024-2025, from 211 to 208 in 2023-2024, according to an industry spokesperson. And many of the newest charter schools to open in the state have not fared well. “State data show that only about 26 percent of new charter schools in the past five years met or exceeded their enrollment projections,” NC Newsline reported, “and more than half of those that missed the mark are now closed or never opened.”

The report’s findings revealed that although charters tend to locate in low-income neighborhoods, they serve far fewer children from low-income families, fewer children who are English learners, and fewer children with disabilities, resulting in leaving traditional public schools with elevated needs and higher costs.

Critics of the Schools of Hope law noted that these industry shifts, as well as a historical tendency for education policies enacted in Florida to get picked up in other Republican-dominated states, will spur other states to adopt similar policies, regardless of any evidence that they might harm public schools.

“More generally,” Baker added, “Florida charter schools are a shitstorm, both underserving higher need populations and underperforming with those they do serve.”

‘A shitstorm’

Among the critics of Florida’s Schools of Hope legislation is Bruce Baker, a professor and chair of the department of teaching and learning at the University of Miami and an expert on charter schools and public school finances.

“I’m, of course, deeply concerned with granting preferential access to any charter operator, at the expense of a fiscally strapped school district,” Baker wrote in an email. “I’m more concerned when it may present a slippery slope regarding control over land and buildings that should—by the [state] constitution, which supersedes this regulatory change—be solely under the authority of the local boards of education elected by the taxpayers who financed those facilities and continue to maintain them. It becomes even more problematic if this eventually creates an avenue to transfer ownership. That would be a particularly egregious violation of local board authority and private taking of public assets. We aren’t there yet, but it’s a concern.”

Baker’s assessment of charter schools in the Sunshine State is evident in his 2025 report, which looks at the impacts of the industry on school funding adequacy, equity, and student academic outcomes across the state, and, more specifically, in the Miami-Dade district.

Also, charters, despite having an advantage of educating less challenging and less costly student populations, underperform public schools on state assessments while “serving otherwise similar student populations.” This finding holds statewide and in Miami-Dade.

The report concludes that Florida charters are “compromising equity, eroding efficiency, and producing poor educational outcomes for those it serves.”

Given these findings, the report recommends that state lawmakers “[i]mpose a moratorium on charter school expansion, including the Schools of Hope Program.” It also calls for “new regulations for evaluating existing charter operators,” stronger vetting of new charter operators, and stricter enforcement of regulations about charter school student outcomes.

Schools of nope

Several district school superintendents across Florida have urged their communities to oppose the state’s Schools of Hope charter school expansion in public school buildings. When the state’s current education commissioner defended the Schools of Hope law in his address at a 2025 conference for school board members and district leaders and suggested it could be used to shut down whole districts, the audience roundly booed him.

Grassroots groups such as Families for Strong Public Schools have held events to educate the public about the negative impacts of charter colocations. A coalition that includes the United Teachers of Dade, NAACP Miami-Dade Branch, the Miami-Dade County Council of PTA/PTSA, and others has formed to protest charter colocations. And a senator in the state legislature has introduced a bill to repeal the Schools of Hope expansion.

Much of the opposition has rallied under the banner of “Schools of Nope” and is organizing call-ins and an email campaign targeting state legislators.

Opposition organizers like Damaris Allen see this as a do-or-die moment in the state. “Either we win this fight, or it’s the death of public schools in Florida,” she said.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization, School Choice

The War on Public Education Hurts the Most Vulnerable Students

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2025 //
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Garry Rayno, veteran journalist in New Hampshire, understands the war on public education. He knows that privatization is meant to diminish public education. He knows that it is sold by its propagandists as a way to help the neediest students. He knows this is a lie intended to fool people. He knows that the children who are hurt most by the war on public education are the most vulnerable students.

You might rightly conclude that the war on public education is a clever hoax.

Rayno writes:

“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” 

The quote is often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, but is also similar to words from British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft.

What better measure of treating the most vulnerable than the public education system open to all, not just those with the resources to send their children to private or religious schools.

Public education is often called the great equalizer providing the same learning  opportunities to a community’s poorest children to the richest in stark contrast with today’s political climate driven by culture wars and fear of diversity, equality and inclusion.

Public education has provided an educated citizenry for businesses, government and political decision making for several hundred years.

Public education is the embodiment of “the public good,” as it provides a foundation for a well-lived life that is both rewarding and useful to others.

But for the last few decades there has been a war on public education driven by propaganda, ideology and greed.

While the war has intensified in the last decade, it began with the US Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954 declaring racial segregation in public schools a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The decision overturned the court’s earlier Plessy vs. Ferguson decision which established the separate-but-equal provision for public education.

The Brown decision required the desegregation of public schools sending a tidal wave through the south reaching north to Boston.

The southern oligarchs who never really believed the South lost the Civil War soon colluded with others like them to develop a system to bypass their obligation to pay to educate black kids. Instead they established “segregation academies” where their children could learn in a homogeneous setting.

The system was created with the help of libertarian economist James Buchanan who touted the belief that the most efficient government is one run by the wealthy and educated (the oligarchs) because the regular folks are driven by self interest which makes government inefficient, and most importantly, costly through higher taxes.

This philosophy continues today as libertarians and other far right ideologues want to privatize public education because it takes too much of their money in taxes, and a humanities-based public education induces children to develop beliefs different from their parents, which once was the norm for American families.

It is not by happenstance we see parental bills of rights, opt outs, open enrollment and greater and greater restrictions on what may be taught, along with increased administrative work loads piled onto public education by politicians in Concord as they double down on refusing to do the one simple thing the state Supreme Court told them to do 30 years ago, provide each child with an adequate education and pay for it.

Instead they have pushed a voucher system costing state taxpayers well over $100 million this biennium, with 90 percent of it paying for private and religious school tuition and homeschooling for kids who were not in public schools when their parents applied for grants if they ever were in public schools.

Most of the voucher system expansion occurred under the Chris Sununu administration with his back-room-deal appointed Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut.

Edelblut nearly beat Sununu in the 2016 Republican primary for governor for those with short memories.

Sununu sent his children to private schools while he was governor and Edelblut homeschooled his children.

Public education during the eight years of the Sununu administration was not a priority although 90 percent of the state’s children attend public schools.

And it is not coincidence that after the Republican House resurrected House Bill 675 which would impose a statewide school budget cap, that Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s small DOGE team — led by two “successful businessmen” — issued its long awaited report and one category targeted schools following the legislature’s Free State agenda of greater transparency and efficiencies, seeking Medicaid and insurance reimbursements and reforming school audit requirements. 

HB 675 failed to find enough support last session because it violates the once sacred “local control ideal” often touted for local government.

House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, R-Auburn, issued a press release linking the report and the bill.

“HB 675 applies the findings of the report where they matter most. When dollars are committed and taxpayers are on the hook, HB 675 puts power back into the hands of the voter by requiring a higher threshold of consent,” he said.

Yes a higher threshold which means the will of the majority is nullified by a minority.

State lawmakers fail to acknowledge they provide the least state aid to public education of any state in the country. Instead local property taxpayers pay 70 percent of public education costs and should be able to set their school budget and various other realms usurped by state lawmakers without a “higher threshold of consent.”

The battlefield in the war on public education shifts over time. It began with religious and political ideology; moved into gender and sexual identification; parental rights, including who decides whether school materials and books are appropriate; school choice such as open enrollment, which will exacerbate the already great divide between property poor and wealthy school districts; and is now positioned to impact the most vulnerable of public school children, those with disabilities.

Last week special education administrators gathered for their annual meeting and to celebrate 50 years of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to improve access to education and to integrate classrooms to include those with disabilities.

Today’s special education services and supports are lights overcoming the darkness of institutionalization or stay-at-home kids separated from their peers in public schools.

Many children with disabilities were told to stay home and not to attend school as there were no specialized services or therapies for them.

But services are expensive as federal lawmakers knew they would be, promising to pay 40 percent of the cost, but reneging on that promise and paying only about 13 percent.

In New Hampshire, most of the remainder is paid by local property taxpayers.

The state pays little until a student’s costs reach three-and-a-half times the state’s per-pupil average or about $70,000.

But state lawmakers have also failed to live up to their  obligation to pay their state of the catastrophic costs, so local school districts are reimbursed at less than 100 percent.

Last session lawmakers approved an 80 percent threshold as the low end of the reimbursement scale.

Special education costs are difficult to predict and a budget can be blown quickly if a couple students needing costly special education services move into a district.

The federal government is potentially moving the Office of Special Education from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services which local special education administrators said would change the goal from education to a health model which would imply there is a remedy or an illness.

And they said it is the first step back down the road they began traveling 50 years ago when students with disabilities were institutionalized or warehoused in one facility.

Several bills to come before the legislature this session will explore going back to centralized facilities to provide services and supports and explore if the private sector can better provide the services, which is consistent with the libertarian ideal of private education.

Great strides have been made in the last 50 years allowing people with disabilities to lead productive and rewarding lives independently, but that could change as lawmakers focus on costs and greater efficiencies, and the political climate seeks a homogenous environment without minorities, disabilities or vulnerable people.

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Funding, Lies, New Hampshire, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers
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