Archives for category: Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Why Should Democrats Be Divided About Vouchers?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2025 //
10

The New York Times published an article by Dana Goldstein asserting that Democrats are divided about vouchers. Her evidence: Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the organization created by hedge fund managers to advocate for charter schools, for evaluation of teachers by their students’ test scores, for Teach for America, and for every other failed corporate reform idea, now, unsurprisingly, supports vouchers.

This is no surprise. DFER never represented parents, teachers, or students. They gained notoriety because they raised big dollars on Wall Street to persuade key politicians to join their campaign to undermine public schools. In D.C. and in state capitols, money rules.

Goldstein tells us that the teachers’ unions, the usual suspect, woo Democrats to support public schools, but that’s not entirely true.

Most people don’t want their public schools to be privatized. Most people don’t want public money to subsidize religious schools. The proof is there. Voucher referenda have been on state ballots numerous times since 1967, and the public has voted against them every time.

In the 2024 elections, vouchers were on the ballot in three states, and lost in all three states.

Now that a number of states have voucher programs that are well established, we know three things about them.

  1. Most students who get vouchers are already in private schools. Their parents are already paying private school tuition.
  2. As Josh Cowen demonstrates in his book “The Privateers,” the academic results of children who leave public schools to attend private schools are abysmal.
  3. Vouchers diminish the funding available for public schools, since the state takes on the responsibility of subsidizing tuition for students whose parents currently pay the bills.

DFER still has money but it has no constituency. The Democratic Party is not split. Its leaders know that the vast majority of students attend public schools, and those schools need help, not a diversion of funds to religious schools, private schools, and homeschools.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democrats, Democrats for Education Reform, DFER, Disruption, Elections, Opinion Polling, Privatization, Vouchers

Brookings Institution: What Recent Supreme Court Decisions Mean for Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2025 //
3

It is obvious that the rightwing Supreme Court tilts decidedly in favor of religious rights and religious schools. The six-member majority seems to have forgotten about separation of church and state and about the “establishment clause,” which forbids government endorsement of religious schools.

The Brookings Institution invited noted scholars to reflect on the Court’s recent decisions and how they are likely to affect public schools.

This is an excellent collection of short commentaries by scholars, not ideologues.

It opens:

The 2024-2025 Supreme Court term was a consequential one for K-12 public education. The Court considered the legality of religious charter schools (Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond), the rights of students with disabilities to access a public education (A. J. T. v. Osseo Area Schools), and whether parents should be allowed to opt their children out of lessons or access to curriculum material that conflicts with their religious beliefs (Mahmoud v. Taylor).

In this piece, we invited experts on education law and policy to share their reactions to the Supreme Court’s recent decisions this term.

A few excerpts.

Robert Kim writes that the Supreme Court is enthralled by the “free exercise clause” of the First Amendment.

There is a way to characterize the results in the three Supreme Court cases this term touching most directly on K-12 public education in minimalist fashion. Let’s begin there.

In AJT v. Osseo School District (2025), the Court held that parents of students with disabilities who sue public schools for discriminating against their child in violation of federal disability rights laws must prove no more than what litigants would have to prove in other disability discrimination contexts. This holding is logical, unsurprising, and consistent with Supreme Court rulings in recent years that affirm the rights of students with disabilities and eliminate administrative legal hurdles in their path (see Endrew F. and Fry in 2017, and Perez in 2023).

Staying with the minimalist approach, in Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the Court ruled that the disallowing parents the ability to opt their children out of LGBTQ+ inclusive curriculum violated parents’ rights to religious free exercise under the First Amendment. The Court’s ruling does notprohibit public schools from adopting inclusive curriculum on LGBTQ+ issues or any other topic, nor does it disturb the basic equal protection principle that public schools must treat all students equally. Parents have long had the ability to opt their children out of various school curricula and activities, so in a sense, Mahmoud simply attaches more finely polished First Amendment armament to an existing right. 

Finally, in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond (2025), the Court issued a one-sentence per curiam (unauthored) opinion announcing that it was “equally divided” (due to Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s recusal from the case). The 4-4 deadlock thus affirmed a prior Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling prohibiting what would have been, for the first time in modern U.S. history, the establishment of a religious public school.

And yet. When we remove our minimalist blinders, one can’t help but be deeply troubled by what the two latter cases involving religion portend for the future. There’s language in the majority opinion in Mahmoud that signals the Court’s desire to resist a growing perception–fueled in part by the Court’s own, still-recent rulings sanctioning same-sex marriage and prohibiting discrimination against LGBTQ+ employees–that LGBTQ+ equality is a normative value in American law and society. And, but for Justice Barrett’s recusal in Drummond, the Court almost certainly would have approved the establishment of a public school run by the Catholic Church.

Running through Mahmoud and the oral argument in Drummond are signs that this Court continues to be enthralled by the Free Exercise Clause–to such an extent that it is willing elevate religious rights above other constitutional interests, including the separation of church and state and equal protection. These signs, I fear, spell deep trouble for public education and the rights of students in ways that will be revealed by the Court over the next couple of years.

Derek Black sees trouble ahead:

Public education survived what risked being the most painfully consequential decision in half a century in Drummond—or at least survived to fight another day—while suffering a stiff smack on the hand in Mahmoud. 

With Drummond, forcing states to approve religious charter schools would have delivered control over what it means to be a public school into private hands. Taxpayers would have to pick up the bill for religious schools but have no control over what those schools teach or whether all students have equal access to them. Publicly funding religious schools would also radically reshape funding for public schools. Religious schools that have long operated on tuition may shift their costs onto taxpayers, and many new religious charter schools would surely open. States would face either increasing taxes or cutting the already-too-small education pie into smaller and smaller pieces. The consequences of religious charter schools are important to understand, since the question will almost certainly come before the Court again in the coming years.

Mahmoud is trickier. The threshold question was whether the school’s LGBTQ+ books and curriculum burden parental rights. Prior precedent would have said no, but courts have been exceedingly stingy in recognizing burdens on parental rights and exceedingly deferential on the related matter of school curriculum and the possibility of censorship—almost to the point of absurdity. Whatever you think of the parental burdens issue, we were long overdue for an update on where the Court stands vis-à-vis curriculum. The problem for the Court has been how to draw a line that does not micromanage local school decision-making. It remains unclear where exactly the line on parental burden is now, but it is clear the court lowered the bar for establishing religious burden. That means schools can expect new challenges on topics like vaccine requirements, absences, and student codes of conduct.

Regardless, schools are still free to promote inclusive values and curriculum. And to be clear, the Court did not give students license to harass others based on religious beliefs. Schools can and should continue to prohibit and punish inappropriate behavior—and stick to their values.

Rachel M. Perera predicts that the Court’s decisions have created thorny challenges for schools:

Public education is under attack—from the expansion of universal private school choice programs that are siphoning monies away from already cash-strapped public schools to the Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the federal education department and the recent withholding of Congressionally mandated federal school funding. And the Drummond and Mahmoud decisions indicate that the Court is more likely to accelerate attacks on public education than to forestall them.  

Both Drummond and Mahmoud, along with other recent decisions of this court—e.g., Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (a ruling in favor of a high school football coach who was fired from a public school for leading postgame prayers) and Carson v. Makin (which struck down a Maine law prohibiting the use of public funds for religious schools)—are evidence of rapidly eroding divides between religion and public life.  

Public schools narrowly avoided catastrophe with the split 4-4 decision in Drummond, but the question of religious charter schools will almost certainly come before the Court again—and under more favorable conditions. Religious charter schools would have major implications for the health of our public education system, the charter school sector, and education funding.

With Mahmoud, the Court ruled that parents should be allowed to opt their children out of school curriculum and programming that conflicts with their religious beliefs. Where future courts will draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate concerns remains to be seen. But what we do know is that this decision adds another layer of costly complexity to the already challenging landscape that school districts are facing given the rise in statewide universal private school choice programs, enrollment declines, and budget shortfalls.

Worse, the Mahmoud decision will undermine local efforts to make school programming and curriculum more pluralistic and inclusive. As Justice Sotomayor pointed out in her dissent, because school districts are resource-constrained and risk-averse, “schools may instead censor their curricula, stripping material that risks generating religious objections.” And we’ve seen this happen before. After the wave of anti-critical race theory state laws in 2021 and 2022, many teachers reported preemptively changing their instruction in the face of potentially costly conflict.

At a time when schools are in dire need of more resources and support, the Court has added only more challenges to their plate.

Open the link to read the excellent contributions by Derek Black and Preston Green.

Categories Curriculum, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

SCOTUS Gives Trump Permission to Eliminate Department of Education

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2025 //
16

After the election, I confidently predicted that Trump would never be able to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education. To eliminate a Department required Congressional approval, and I was confident that Trump would never get that. He would need 60 votes, not 51, and he would never get them. There might even be Republicans voting to keep the Department.

But I was wrong. Obviously. It didn’t occur to me that Trump would fire half the staff of the Department and dismantle it without seeking Congressional approval.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the President could continue to lay off the employees of the Department of Education while leaving aside the legal question of his power to destroy a Department created by Congress 45 years ago. Its ruling allowed him to achieve his goal without consulting Congress or abiding by the Constitution.

Because he wanted to. And because Congress–if asked– would stop him. And because six members of the Court wanted to help him achieve his goal.

Lower courts told him to reinstate those who were fired without cause. Federal Appeals courts agreed with the lower courts. The Supreme Court reversed them and gave Trump what he wanted.

The Republicans in Congress watched supinely, conceding another of their Constitutuinal powers. They had already abandoned their power of the purse. Trump might as well abolish Congress. He doesn’t need their approval. They have disemboweled themselves, with the approval of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court majority are extremists. They occasionally hold up a fig leaf and claim to be “originalists” or “textualists,” interpreting the Constitution as it was written. We now see that they are originalists when it suits them, but not originalists when Trump asks them to expand his imperial powers.

The Founders thought they had created a system of checks and balances, where no single branch could control the other two. Trump is the conniving scoundrel that they warned about in the Federalist Papers.

Republicans were not always hostile to the Department of Education. Reagan wanted to abolish it right away, but instead reaped the rewards of a 1983 report called “A Nation at Risk,” which excoriated the nation’s public schools and undermined the public’s faith in them.

Reagan’s successor, his Vice-President George H.W. Bush, did not try to abolish the Department of Education. Instead, he decided to use it to burnish his credentials. After first appointing a little-known president from Texas as Secretary of Education, Lauro Cavazos, President Bush decided that he wanted to be known as “the Education President.” He appointed Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander as Secretary and convened a gathering of the nation’s governors to set national goals. (Secretary Alexander selected me to become Assistant Secretary in charge of the Department’s research arm).

There was no talk of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education during the term of Bush 1.

When George W. Bush became President in 2000, he never sought to close down the Department. His first piece of legislation was called No Child Left Behind, and he expected the Department to help him build his claim to be “a compassionate conservative.”

Again, no talk of abolishing the Department during the eight years of Bush 2.

When Trump was elected in 2016, abolishing the Department was not on his agenda. He appointed billionaire Betsy DeVos as Secretary, and her goal was to use the Department to fund charters and vouchers. She shoveled nearly $2 billion into the creation and expansion of charters but got nowhere with a federal voucher plan.

And then came Trump’s second term, where he allied himself with the most extreme elements of the Far Right. They were there during Trump 1, but in his second term, the extremists are in charge. By extremists, I mean not only the anti-government billionaires like Peter Thiel, but the entrenched rightwing zealots of what used to be called the John Birch Society. When Trump denounces Democrats as “Communists,” “radical leftwing lunatics,” and other bile, I feel as if I’m time-traveling back to the McCarthy era, when unhinged rightwingers flung such insults at their political opponents.

With the Supreme Court’s approval, Linda MacMahon will resume firing employees of the Departnent of Education and sending its core programs to other departments.

If the Supreme Court ever gets around to deciding whether Trump has the legal authority to abolish the Department of Education, it will already be gone.

Categories Education Reform, History, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Molly Ivins: Vouchers Are a Stupid Idea

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2025 //
2

Molly Ivins was a brilliant journalist in Texas, who died far too young (62). We could surely use her wit and insight right now. She wrote for many publications, including The Texas Observer, The New York Times, the Dallas Times Herald, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. She also wrote a nationally syndicated column.

Ivins wrote an article about school vouchers in 1997 that was prescient. All her dire predictions about vouchers were right on target. The strangest part of the debate is that state legislatures now debating vouchers are totally indifferent to the problems they create.

Ivins saw it coming.

She wrote:

Editor’s Note: The Texas Observer published this column in its April 11, 1997, edition under the headline: “Texas: Laboratory for Lunacy.” That year’s private school voucher proposal narrowly died at the Lege.

Three strikes and you’re out? Watch Texas spend more on prisons than it does on schools. Thinking of making your tax structure more regressive? Come to the Lone Star State and see how it’s done. 

The latest brainstorm to afflict our friendly pols in Austin is school vouchers. Consider the beauty of this nifty scheme as it might eventually be worked out under the guidance of the Texas Lege. To improve the public schools (I swear, that’s how the advocates are advertising this lunacy): 

■We give vouchers to all the students who are already in private or religious schools around the state. Right there, before anybody else even gets a voucher, we will have taken, say, $1 billion out of the budget for our public schools. Shrewd move, eh? 

■We also give all the kids now in public school a voucher, thus theoretically enabling these children to attend the schools of their parents’ choice: Unfortunately, private schools might find themselves under no obligation to accept any of our kids; they could be rejected because of their religious affiliation, their disabilities, on the grounds that they’re not bright enough, because the school administrators don’t like their looks—any reason not specifically excluded by law.

The Texas Freedom Network, a normally sensible group of good guys, is running around like Paul Revere, trying to alert the citizenry to this dread downside of the school voucher idea. “Proposed voucher legislation would allow private schools to recruit the best athletes and students at taxpayer expense.” Folks, we’re talking football now! I knew you’d be concerned. Quel horrifying thought: The whole high school football tradition is in dire peril. Stop the madness now! 

On a more sober note, the good private schools we’d all like to send our kids to already have waiting lists a mile long. No public school kid is going to St. John’s in Houston or St. Mark’s in Dallas with a voucher clutched in his or her little hand; those schools cost $10,000 a year, and our little school voucher won’t cover half the cost. 

Now maybe, just maybe, some upper-middle-class folks might be able to afford a fancy private school with a voucher to help, but working-class and middle-class kids are going to be stuck just where they always were. Why should we spend public money to help just that one thin slice of the population when it won’t improve the public schools? 

The rural kids are really going to get burned by this idea. As you may have noticed, almost all private schools are in cities. Hundreds of rural school districts don’t have a single private school, but because of the way state education financing works, they’d still lose thousands of dollars from their budgets for the public schools without a single kid going to private school. 

I realize this means nothing to our Legislature, but it should be mentioned that the whole idea is rankly unconstitutional. 

All in all, this concept is so bad that it has an excellent chance of passing the Legislature. Much as we would like to help the rest of the nation by demonstrating once more just how stupid ideas work out in practice, couldn’t we give this one a miss? 

In case you’re wondering who is pushing this dingbat notion, it’s the religious right, the same charmers who helped elect the right-wingers who now grace the state Board of Education. If you haven’t checked in on the state board lately, you really should. It’s a lot of fun—fruitcakes unlimited, flat-Earthers, creationists, all manner of remarkable specimens. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that there’s even a bill in the Lege to replace it with an appointed board again. 

You may recall that we’ve had this fight before. In keeping with my Theory of Perpetual Reform, I now favor an appointed board. Last time, I favored an elected board. What I really favor is the idea that no matter what we try, in about ten years, it’s always a mess again and we need to try something else. 

Speaking of matters educational, let me take on a sacred cow that is long past its prime: local control. Have you noticed that the people who consider local control of the schools a sanctified arrangement are the same people who are always complaining about how terrible the schools are? If local control is such a great idea, then how come the schools are so bad? Have we considered the possibility that maybe local control is the problem? 

A truism of the everlasting education debates is that someone somewhere has already solved whatever the problem is. Someone somewhere is always doing a brilliant job of teaching physics to inner-city kids, or teaching music to a bunch of rural kids in the 4-H who have heretofore considered Loretta Lynn classical music, or getting bored suburban brats excited about Herman Melville. 

The problem is that we can’t seem to replicate the successes in the schools across the board because there is no across the board. Instead, there’s local control. Sometimes it’s superb, granted. But often, it’s hopelessly knot-headed. Ask the folks in Dallas—they’ve had some lulus lately. It seems to me just possible that maybe what we need to do is take education out of the hands of insurance salesmen, Minute Women and other odd ephemera of the electoral process and put it in the hands of… well, educators. 

Categories Education Reform, Separation of church and state, Stupid, Texas, Vouchers

Carol Burris: Update on the School Funds in Trump’s Big Ugly Budget Bill

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2025 //
0

Most attention has focused on the horrible cuts to Medicaid and food assistance (SNAP) in the bill just passed by the GOP majority in the Senate. It has some differences with the version passed by the GOP House, so there will be changes and compromises.

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Educaruon, wrote this update on the education portion of the Senate bill that passed, called the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA). She refers to the Big Ugly Budget Bill as BBB.

She writes:

Despite the efforts of Democratic senators to get the Parliamentarian to override ECCA entirely, ECCA was significantly weakened in the Senate BBB and is no longer a universal voucher program. 

  •  The $4 billion cap for total contributions was removed. It is now unlimited. However, it is no longer a tax shelter for stocks, making contributions far less attractive. The maximum credit has been reduced to $ 1,700. 
  • States, as well as the Treasury, can now regulate the program; therefore, states without a voucher program are not mandated to have one. Additionally, the credits are only available to individuals residing in a state with an approved Scholarship Granting Organization (SGO).
  • Because the bill allows public school students to access scholarships and the list of allowable activities includes tutoring, payment for courses, and payment for tests (for example, AP exams), I am trying to determine whether states without vouchers could create SGOs for public school students only.
  • BBB needs to go back to the House, so all of this will likely change again. 

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Cruelty, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Inequity, Republicans, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Senate Parliamentarian Removes Vouchers from GOP “One Big Ugly Bill”

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2025 //
2

Politico reports great news for America’s public schools. The Senate Parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, removed the private school voucher part of Trump’s “One Big Ugly Bill,” because it runs afoul of the Byrd Rule. The Byrd Rule prevents the inclusion of extraneous issues that are not directly related to fiscal issues. She also ruled that the Senate’s effort to protect religious colleges from an onerous tax on their endowment had to be removed from the bill. Here is the official history and definition of the Byrd Rule, which applies only in the Senate.

Juan Perez Jr. writes:

A Republican proposal to enact a multibillion-dollar private school tax credit program would be subject to a 60-vote threshold if it is included in conservatives’ domestic policy megabill, the Senate parliamentarian advised early Friday in a significant challenge to what would be a sweeping federal school choice program.

Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough also determined that an effort to carve religious schools — including Hillsdale College in Michigan — out of a planned expansion of the federal college endowment tax does not meet the Senate Byrd rule’s criteria for the filibuster-skirting reconciliation process, according to Senate Budget Democrats.

Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee had proposed a permanent, $4 billion annual tax credit for individuals who donate to organizations that support educational expenses including private-school tuition, which was projected to cost $26.046 billion between 2025 and 2034, according to estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The tax credit scholarship plan, which is based on the Educational Choice for Children Act, would allow scholarships to students whose families make up to 300 percent of the area median gross income.

The committee also aimed to soften the blow of expanded taxes on private college and university endowments compared to a House-passed tax bill, though many qualifying private schools would still be in line to pay a tax rate of up to 8 percent of their net annual investment income.

It’s not yet clear if Republicans would try to rework some of the tax provisions that MacDonough found violated the Byrd rule, effectively blocking their inclusion in a GOP-only reconciliation measure. Republicans have successfully tweaked other proposals to the parliamentarian’s liking, but her rulings this week certainly helped upend GOP senators’ efforts to bring their fiscal package up for a vote.

Categories Education Industry, Vouchers

Stephen Dyer: Vouchers in Ohio Are a Disaster! I Told You So!

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2025 //
18

Stephen Dyer is a public policy expert, a specialist in school finance, and a former legislator in Ohio. He warned 11 years that vouchers would drive the state budget over a fiscal cliff. The court decision a few days ago proves that he was right on target.

Let this be a warning to all the other states that are adopting vouchers (without the consent of the governed, in every case).

He writes:

Proponents have claimed for years that Ohio and U.S. Supreme Court cases from the program’s infancy allows for explosive growth. Judge Jaiza Page warns, “Not so fast.” Just like I did 11 years ago.

Dyer wrote the following 11years ago:

“Overall, the state is sending nearly $144 million to private schools this year. In 2010-2011, that number was $78.85 million — nearly half the amount. Makes you wonder whether the case upholding Ohio’s Vouchers in 2002 would have the same outcome today. Also makes me want to kind of find out.” — Stephen Dyer on 10th Period blog, Jan. 25, 2014

Now he writes:

I guess we found out Tuesday, didn’t we?

To be clear, I had no idea that anyone would actually file a lawsuit against Ohio’s unconstitutional Voucher system when I wrote that on Blogspot 11 years ago (though I really did want someone to do that). But given the Ohio and U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings on vouchers at the turn of the century, I did question whether the state’s explosive funding of vouchers actually was justified under those rulings.

Guess who else agreed with me? Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page. While I focused in 2014 on the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, Judge Page focused on the 1999 Ohio Supreme Court case Simmons-Harris v. Goff. 

Goff reached a similar conclusion as Zelman — that given the program’s then-small educational footprint, both in terms of kids and money — it did not interfere with Ohio’s overall ability to educate its public school students, so the program (which at the time only included Cleveland) was ok.

However, when Goff was decided, the Cleveland Voucher Program cost $5.7 million. The just-passed state budget allocated $2.5 billion over the biennium to the current program.

And that’s where voucher proponents got waaaay out over their skis. I realized this 11 years ago. But now, it’s even more obvious. The programs examined by the U.S. and Ohio Supreme Courts at the turn of the century look very different from the current budget hog Judge Page examined.

And she made that factual difference really clear in her ruling:

“As to the thorough and efficient challenge, the court ultimately held, “[w]e fail to see how the School Voucher Program, at the current funding level, undermines the state’s obligation to public education.” (Emphasis added.) Id. From this language, the Court concludes that the Goff court foresaw a renewed challenge to a larger scholarship or voucher program like EdChoice as an unconstitutional state supported system of private schools. Goff warned that a system that does not create but supports nonpublic schools in a way that jeopardizes the thoroughness and efficiency of the State’s system of public schools violates Article VI Section 2 of the Ohio Constitution.”

Added to this is this incredible fact that was brought out in the court case: 

Not a single penny of voucher money goes to a single parent or student. It goes directly to private, mostly religious schools.

Let me repeat that for those of you in the back:

Not a single penny of voucher money goes to a single parent or student. It goes directly to private, mostly religious schools.

That’s right. This whole money-following-the-kid/parental-choice narrative that voucher proponents are still spilling out is complete, utter Grade A Bullshit.

In 1999, the money did go to parents and kids. Page was quite concerned about this payment change because the Ohio Constitution bans state establishment of religious schools. And if state money flows directly to religious schools that rely heavily on taxpayer subsidies (she mentioned that some private schools have 75% or more of their kids on vouchers), that is establishment and unconstitutional.

“By bestowing participating private religious schools with complete control over prospective students’ participation, the “school choice” here is made by the private school, not “as the result of independent decisions of parents and students.””

It’s as if the original creators of the Voucher program carefully crafted the legislation to pass judicial muster. Then when they got a favorable ruling, the gloves came off.

Oh yeah. One more thing: Not a single penny of the nearly $9 billion we will have spent on vouchers since 1997 has ever been audited. So we have no idea how the money on this unconstitutional program has actually been spent.

But I digress.

Luckily for Ohio’s 1.5 million public school kids, Judge Page recognized the program’s current reality rather than voucher proponents’ fictional account.

Just as your friendly neighborhood blogger did 11 years ago.

Not to brag. 

Well, maybe a little!

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

Ohio: Judge Rules that EdChoice Vouchers Violate State Constitution

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2025 //
0

In 2022, school districts, parents, and public school advocates filed a lawsuit against the state’s EdChoice voucher program. Yesterday, Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page ruled that vouchers for private schools violate the state constitution.

The Constitution of Ohio says that the General Assembly is responsible for funding a thorough and efficient system of common schools. Common schools are public schools. It explicitly prohibits the use of public funds for religious schools. 

Judge Page issued the first ruling on the lawsuit, known as the Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit, which challenged the constitutionality of vouchers. The plaintiffs were a group of dozens of public schools and the Coalition for Adequacy and Equity of School Funding. The state will appeal this ruling. For now, those who led the lawsuit are thrilled.

“We are pleased that the court affirmed what we have been saying all along,” William Phillis, executive director for the Coalition for Adequacy and Equity of School Funding, said. “The EdChoice private school voucher program, which has been diverting hundreds of millions of much needed tax dollars from public schools to private schools, is unconstitutional.” 

Phillis was behind another lawsuit over Ohio’s schools in the 1990s, which ruled Ohio’s system of funding schools did not adequately live up to the Constitutional requirements. The case, DeRolph v. Ohio, ruled the state’s reliance on property taxes and its funding system did not fulfil the Ohio Constitution’s requirement to create a “thorough and efficient system” of public schools.

Page said the state’s voucher program also fails to create a thorough and efficient system. She ruled the EdChoice program directly contributed to less funding for public schools, increased segregation in public schools as more white students participated in EdChoice, and unconstitutionally provided funds to religious schools without oversight.

Read the decision here.

Stephen Dyer, public school advocate and former legislator, writes on his blog Tenth Period that the decision exposes the lies that the voucher lobby has peddled for years.

Dyer writes:

There have been lots of stories and posts about the historic voucher decision made yesterday by Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page. But I want to take a step back with you, Dear Reader, and explain just how expertly the Judge laid bare the thing I’ve been spitting into the wind over for the past 15 or so years: Ohio school voucher advocates have been lying to you, the public and journalists for a generation. 

Let me point out a few of the most common lies told by voucher advocates.

  1. Ohio vouchers are scholarships. Ohio school choice advocates sometimes are too clever for themselves. Calling vouchers “scholarships” in law doesn’t make them “scholarships”. Yet that’s what these politicians insist we call them. Judge Page went right after this argument in her decision: “The idea that EdChoice establishes scholarships, not a system of schools, and that it funds students, not private schools, is mere semantics … Where EdChoice participating private schools are inexplicably receiving double the per pupil state funding than public schools, it is difficult to say that EdChoice is simply a scholarship that follows and/or benefits the student as opposed to a system that benefits private schools.”
  2. Vouchers are simply a matter of money following the student. This is the kind of EduSpeak bullshit I’ve railed against for years. As I’ve said in this space many times, when 85% of the K-12 students in your state only get 77% of the money spent on K-12 education in your state, money ain’t following the kids. It’s going to private schools. As Judge Page put it: “Where EdChoice participating private schools are inexplicably receiving double the per pupil state funding than public schools, it is difficult to say that EdChoice is simply a scholarship that follows and/or benefits the student as opposed to a system that benefits private schools.”
  3. Vouchers have no impact on public school students. This is obvious bullshit, yet proponents make the claim all the time, even well-thought of ones like the Fordham Institute (who actually argue it helps public school kids!). See, the problem is that when David Brennan started the Ohio Voucher program nearly 30 years ago, he thought he’d be so clever. See, he would (yes, I know legislators did this, but make no mistake about it, Brennan was calling the shots) put the program’s money into the same line item as school district funding. That way, the program could never be line item vetoed, and no matter how much more money the program needed, it would always get the amount it needed because the money would just come out of the state funding for kids in local school districts, who would then have to go for more and bigger property tax levies. But in this case, that cleverness bit voucher advocates in the ass. Because Judge Page can read a spreadsheet. As she put it: “The General Assembly … passed the (Fair School Funding Plan) to fulfill its constitutional directive and address Derolph. Yet, it has shirked that responsibility, by: at best, (1) claiming that the FSFP, a plan of its own creation, is too expensive; or, at worst (2) simply refusing to fund it. Instead, the General Assembly chose to expand their system of private school funding by about the same amount as Ohio’s public schools lost through the General Assembly’s failure to fully fund the FSFP.
  4. Vouchers are a Parental Rights issue.This line of bullshit emanates from the program’s origins — claiming that it would provide poor kids the opportunity to attend the same private schools rich kids do. However, the evidence is clear that’s simply not happening. In fact, it’s the schools — not the parents — that this unconstitutional system empowers. As Judge Page revealed for everyone to see: “Parents only choose which school they apply to. The ultimate decision to accept prospective students, and by doing so receive EdChoice funds, lies with the private school. (So) a private religious school has the discretion and ability to apply for and receive subsidies directly from the government, while at the same time discriminating against applicants on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, or other criteria.”

There will be many more opportunities to go through this historic decision and pick out bits and pieces. But I thought it was important for everyone to recognize the major policy lies voucher advocates have pushed for 30 years were laid bare by this decision. 

Because at its core, Ohio’s unconstitutional voucher program benefits private, mostly religious schools at the expense of the 1.5 million Ohio kids who attend Ohio’s public schools. 

That’s the bottom line. 

And that’s been true since 1997.

Categories Education Reform, Extremism, Lies, Ohio, Vouchers

Trump Tax Bill Harms Public Schools by Funding Private Choices

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2025 //
9

Matt Barnum and Richard Rubin of The Wall Street Journal describe the harm that Trump’s One Big Ugly Budget Bill will do to public schools.

They wrote:

Republicans’ tax-and-spending megabill would give the school-choice movement a major, long-sought victory—and deliver an unusually generous tax break to wealthy taxpayers.

The bill includes a new way for taxpayers—whether they are parents or not—to direct tax dollars to private-school scholarships instead of the Treasury. There is an extra twist: It could deliver virtually risk-free profits to some savvy investors.

The proposal has excited school-choice advocates, infuriated public school leaders and stunned tax experts.

“Overnight, this would give millions of students access to the school of their choice,” said Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children, an advocacy group pushing the provision. “This is a revolution within the tax code.”

The American Federation for Children is the far-right wing group created by Betsy DeVos to promote charter schools and vouchers.

The incentive is structured as a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit. Give to a charity known as a scholarship-granting organization and you would get the same amount subtracted from your federal tax bill. 

It is equivalent to redirecting your taxes to a scholarship-granting organization (SGO), with the benefit capped at 10% of adjusted gross income or $5,000, whichever is greater. That is a far better deal than what is offered by normal charitable donations, which generally just reduce your taxable income and only if you itemize deductions….

For people with appreciated stock, the proposal could be even more attractive than a dollar-for-dollar credit, potentially creating net profits. 

Consider someone who bought a stock for $100 that is now worth $1,100. Selling that stock would trigger capital-gains taxes of up to $238. But under the bill, he could donate the $1,100 stock to an SGO. The government would give $1,100 back and he wouldn’t pay capital-gains taxes. 

He could then buy the same $1,100 stock on the open market. The result? He’s better off than when he started, spending nothing to erase a potential capital-gains tax liability. 

“In terms of something that is deeply offensive to basic tax logic, it’s hard to beat this,” said Lawrence Zelenak, a law professor at Duke University who expects donors to line up every Jan. 1 to take advantage. “Unless you actively hate the charity, you would want to do it…”

A federal program would expand private-school tuition subsidies into states such as New York and California that have resisted school choice programs….

The House bill caps credits at $5 billion annually, which would climb by 5% in subsequent years if the program is heavily used. That bill would run from 2026 through 2029. The Senate version released Monday includes $4 billion annually, starting in 2027 but without an expiration date. 

The credit would mark a significant injection of resources to private education as the Trump administration separately seeks to cut federal grants for public schools. Still, it would pale in comparison to funding for public schools, which receive several hundred billion dollars annually, mostly from state and local governments. 

Democrats hope the breadth of the policy changes will prompt the Senate parliamentarian to determine that it’s out of bounds for the budgetary fast-track process Republicans are using.

Public school advocates say the program would benefit better-off families at religious private schools. “The federal government needs to fund the neighborhood school that serves children from every walk of life,” said Sasha Pudelski, a lobbyist with the school superintendents’ association.

Opponents also say the idea has been rejected by voters. In November, three states voted down school-choice ballot measures.

Note: not only were vouchers defeated in three states last November, voters have rejected vouchers in every state referendum since 1967.

The new tax credit could become a model for Congress to direct money to other causes through the tax code, said Carl Davis, research director at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive group that criticizes the plan.

Civil rights laws prohibit certain forms of discrimination in schools that receive federal funding, but it isn’t likely this would apply to private schools that benefit from the proposed tax credit, said Kevin Welner, a research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. The House bill includes a provision barring discrimination against students with disabilities in school admissions; the Senate version doesn’t. 

State voucher plans do not bar discrimination in voucher-receiving schools. They can and do discriminate at will. Some require that families are members of their faith. Some bar LGBT students and families. Some bar students with disabilities. Some bar students with low test scores.

Trump’s funding of school choice is the fever dream of Christian nationalists. With one blow, they eliminate the separation of church and state, they get funding for religious schools, and they gut civil rights laws that barred discrimination.

It also permits the revival of school segregation, under the once-discredited banner of school choice. White Southerners who don’t like “race mixing” have dreamed of this day since May 17, 1954.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Trump, US Education, Vouchers

Arizona: Cost of Universal Vouchers Reaches $872 Million per Year

By dianeravitch
June 17, 2025 //
0

The Grand Canyon Institute has been tracking the growth and cost of vouchers and charter schools in Arizona for several years. The vast majority of students who take vouchers (almost 3/4). But this year, a larger share were drawn from district schools and charter schools.

The report contains a number of excellent graphics. Open the lin to see them.

This is the Grand Canyon Institute release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Cost of Universal ESA Vouchers

Contact: Dave Wells, Research Director, dwells@azgci.org or 602.595.1025 ex. 2.

Summary of Findings

  • 73% of Universal ESA voucher enrollees have never attended district or charter schools (including adjustments for students entering Kindergarten).
  • In FY2025, however, net new Universal ESA voucher enrollees primarily came from charter and district schools.
  • While the total cost of the overall ESA program in FY2025 is expected to be $872 million, the net cost after adjusting for where students would have otherwise attended is $350 million for those in the universal ESA voucher program. This represents a slight increase from the $332 million estimated by the Grand Canyon Institute last year.

The Grand Canyon Institute (GCI) estimates a $350 million net cost to the state’s General Fund in FY2025 (July 2024-June 2025) for the universal component of Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) voucher program based on a student’s school of origin. This represents a slight increase over the estimated FY2024 cost of $332 million. The estimate assumes basic student funding weights. 

The Joint Legislative  Budget Committee currently estimates the total annual cost of the ESA program to be $872 million, which includes the original targeted program and the universal component. Because student-level data on the universal program is not separated out by the Arizona Dept. of Education, GCI must estimate the origin of universal program enrollees. GCI’s estimate reflects the net cost the state would have incurred if the universal ESA voucher program did not exist. Almost every single child in the original targeted program had to attend a district or charter school for at least 45 days before enrolling in the program. GCI uses historical data on where the targeted students had come from previously, dating back to FY2017, along with current data on where all ESA students have left district or charter schools to estimate the distribution of students across district and charter schools for the original targeted program and the remainder are allocated to the universal program. 


In FY2025, the net growth in the universal ESA vouchers was 7,660 of the total enrollment of 61,688. GCI estimates that 73% of ESA universal voucher recipients never attended a district or charter school, slightly lower than the rate of 80% in FY2025. This includes estimates for kindergarten students using ESA universal vouchers. 

The primary driver of the change in FY2025 was a significant increase in the portion of net new enrollees from district and charter schools. GCI examined the marginal changes since last year and estimates that nearly half the net gain in universal participants of 7,660 from FY2024Q2 to FY2025Q2 came via Kindergarten. Analyzing changes in the portion of students previously attending a district or charter school, GCI estimates that less than 10% never attended (or would have never attended for Kindergarten) while half came from charter schools and just over 40% came from districts.

This change helped lessen the growth of the net cost of the program. GCI presumes that Kindergarten students do not have a record of prior attendance but would mirror the same distribution.  Given that charter school enrollment is about one-fourth of district enrollment, charter schools have been significantly disproportionately impacted by the Universal ESA program.

Despite the change in FY2025, the majority of participants in the universal ESA program never attended a district or charter school should be self-evident. For FY2025, the Quarter 3 Executive and Legislative ESA report identifies that of the total 87,602 students enrolled in the ESA voucher program (targeted and universal), regardless of when they first enrolled, only 33,942 students  moved from charter or district schools to an ESA. Virtually all targeted participants must first enroll in a district or charter school first. The universal program does not require prior attendance. 

Access the full report here.

The Grand Canyon Institute, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization, is a centrist think tank led by a bipartisan group of former state lawmakers, economists, community leaders and academicians. The Grand Canyon Institute serves as an independent voice reflecting a pragmatic approach to addressing economic, fiscal, budgetary and taxation issues confronting Arizona.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Data, Education Industry, Funding, School Choice, Students, Vouchers
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »