Home Minnesota Educator A federal voucher program may be coming. Here’s what you need to know

A federal voucher program may be coming. Here’s what you need to know

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As this issue heads to print before the inauguration, we do not yet know which policies the incoming administration will successfully pass. However, they have strongly indicated that one of their primary policy goals is to implement a national voucher program.

As of early 2024, 28 states and DC have some form of voucher program. Despite how widespread voucher programs are, they are unpopular with the public and detrimental to student success. Even in deep-red states like Kentucky, Tennessee and Nebraska, vouchers have been rejected by voters. In 2024, every single county in Kentucky voted against a ballot measure that would implement vouchers.

When the public knows a program is a voucher program, they don’t support it.

States with one or more voucher program

Source: Education Week, “Which states have private school choice?” Jan. 31, 2024

What exactly is a voucher?

Vouchers are programs that send public tax dollars to private schools. They are often referred to by other names, such as “education tax credits,” “education scholarships,” “education trust funds,” “opportunity scholarships” and others. No matter what the program’s name is, if it siphons public money and sends it to private educational institutions, then it is a voucher program. Supporters use these different names to obscure these programs from the public, because vouchers are deeply unpopular.

It’s most helpful to use the term vouchers when referring to any of these programs. Calling them scholarships or tax credits softens their impact and makes them seem less detrimental than they are.

The impact of vouchers

Vouchers cause significant negative impacts on student achievement.

Evidence that vouchers do not drastically improve academic outcomes dates all the way back to 1991, a couple years after Milwaukee established the first modern voucher program.1 Since that first program, research across the country has shown that beyond showing significant improvements, voucher programs actually have negative impacts on academic outcomes.

“Learning loss by voucher users is on par with learning loss from major disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and the COVID-19 pandemic.”

More recent data from the 2010s shows that test scores for students who use voucher programs to leave public schools have dropped significantly—learning loss by voucher users is on par with learning loss from major disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina and the COVID-19 pandemic. Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University who has spent decades researching voucher programs, describes the impact as “catastrophic academic harm.3”

Vouchers decimate state budgets

Even when implemented with income restrictions, voucher programs inevitably balloon into significant budgetary drains. For example, in 2022 Arizona enacted one of the most sweeping voucher programs in the country, allowing all parents access to the program, regardless of income. As a result, a program that was projected to cost $65 million a year now costs the state upwards of $350 million a year, and Arizona is currently facing a $1.4 billion budget shortfall—much of which is driven directly by their voucher program.4

Types of voucher programs

Education Savings Accounts

These programs directly provide money to parents, set up in a savings account or trust, which the parents can access to pay for private school tuition, homeschooling materials, education therapy services, curriculum materials and more. There is often little oversight on how this money is spent, and audits have found2 that many of the funds are not used for education-related expenses.

Tuition Tax Credits

Tax credit programs allow individuals and corporations to make donations to foundations that turn them into vouchers for private schools. Donors receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits for money donated. Supporters

argue that this is not a voucher because it doesn’t “directly” take money from public schools, but tax credits reduce the amount of state or federal revenue available for programs such as public education.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, similar results have been found in Indiana, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Ohio and Wisconsin. In each of these states, spending on voucher programs more than doubled between 2008 and 2019.

Vouchers do not provide “choice” for most families

While their proponents argue that vouchers increase options available to parents, that is quite frequently not the case. Vouchers do not provide choice for:

  • Lower-income families who cannot make up the difference between what vouchers cover and what tuition costs,
  • Rural families who do not have access to private schools that are covered by vouchers,
  • Working families who do not have transportation available to get their children to and from school,
  • Special education students, who can be denied admission to private schools or denied access to supports that public schools are legally required to provide.

Voucher programs harm special education, rural students and students of color the most

Private schools can deny students for any reason or no reason at all. Unlike public schools, which are required to accept all students, private schools get to pick and choose the students they admit. For special education students, data has shown that private schools will often admit them but then discourage them from returning, since retention data is not as heavily tracked as recruitment data.

Furthermore, the money that is diverted from state budgets for private schools disproportionately impacts low-income and rural students. Students from wealthier areas that are more densely populated will not feel the effects of budget cuts as severely as those in communities that have less resources to begin with. In red states like Kentucky and Texas, some of the biggest opponents of vouchers are rural communities who will see no benefits from vouchers while suffering immensely from the loss of revenue caused by these programs.

The biggest beneficiaries of voucher programs are wealthy families who have never sent their children to public school

Proponents of vouchers argue that they increase opportunities for students of color and students from low-income families.

However, the people who use vouchers the most are families that were already sending their children to private school. In Indiana in 2017, over half of voucher recipients had never attended private schools and 60% of recipients were White suburban families.5 In Florida in 2023, 69% of recipients were already attending private schools and 44% of recipients have household incomes of $120,000 or more.6 Finally, in Arizona, 80% of voucher applicants in 2022 did not attend a public school – which means the vast majority of applicants were already sending their students to private school.

Private schools and voucher programs often have little financial oversight and accountability measures, which attracts amateurs and grifters

While many people envision voucher programs as a mechanism for lower-income parents to send their children to high-performing private schools, that is not what usually happens.

Private schools are not required to publicly disclose their budgets the same way public schools are. Their financial decisions are also not regulated as robustly as those of public schools. Because private schools have so much financial leeway, voucher programs provide a strategic opening for grifters looking to make money.

All too often, the types of schools that take advantage of voucher programs are not affiliated with a larger institution. They tend to be hastily established and poorly run. In Milwaukee, which has had a voucher program for over 30 years, 41% of schools that received a voucher between 1991 and 2016 eventually failed and closed their doors.

The history of voucher programs

Segregationist goals have been a fundamental component of voucher programs for over 70 years. Vouchers first emerged in Prince Edward County, VA, in the aftermath of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that required schools to desegregate. To avoid integration, the Prince Edward County school board abolished their public education system and set up a series of payments to White families, who simultaneously began raising funds to operate private schools for White students.

These efforts were bolstered by the work of economist Milton Friedman, an economist who championed free markets and opposed government interference. Friedman’s work “The Role of Government in Education” outlined what would become the modern voucher movement and provided a framework for segregationists to advocate for racist goals by obscuring it as a free- market economic issue.

In the years following the Brown ruling, private schools (known colloquially as “segregation academies”) popped up across the country, often with accompanying voucher programs.7

How to talk about vouchers

Whether or not a federal voucher program is implemented, vouchers will become part of the conversation around public education over the next few years. Below are some talking points that you can use in your conversations about voucher programs.

  1. Voters reject vouchers whenever they can, including in states like Kentucky and Tennessee.
  2. Instead of sending money to private schools, we should focus on public schools – which 90% of students attend.
    a. An overwhelming majority of students attend public schools nationally and in Minnesota. According to state statistics, 90% of students attended public school for the 2022-2023 school year.8
  3. Public schools serve all students, while private schools can cherry-pick their students and discriminate against students of different faiths, students with disabilities and students of color.
  4. Vouchers only provide “choice” to private and religious schools, not families.
  5. Vouchers reduce transparency and accountability of public funds.
    a. When taxpayer dollars go to private schools, those taxpayers have no idea how those dollars are being spent because private schools don’t have to disclose their budgets.
  6. The best way to improve academic outcomes and support students is to fully fund public schools.
    a. With more funding, support and resources, public schools can meet the needs of Minnesota students and ensure that every child can be successful.

The evidence on vouchers is overwhelming: they lead to terrible academic outcomes, result in segregated schools and benefit wealthy families while hurting the most vulnerable Minnesotans. Whether a federal voucher program becomes law or not, it is important to urge our elected officials to fully fund public schools and provide the resources, support and revenue for every school to meet the needs of their students and ensure that every student can be successful, both in the classroom and beyond.

  1. Cowen, Josh. The Privateers: How billionaires created a culture war and sold school vouchers. 2024
  2. AZcentral.com, “Parents spent $700k in school voucher money on beauty supplies, apparel; attempted cash withdrawals”
  3. Cowen, Josh. School vouchers: there is no upside. Albert Shanker Institute, 2023. https://www.shankerinstitute.org/blog/school-vouchers-there-no-upside
  4. ProPublica, “School vouchers were supposed to save taxpayer money. Instead, they blew a massive hole in Arizona’s budget.” https://www.splcenter.org/ fiscal-consequences-private-school-vouchers
  5. NPR, The promise and peril of school vouchers.
  6. Central Florida Public Media, Florida Policy Institute asked for school voucher data. Here’s what Step Up for Students provided.
  7. Center for American Progress, “The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers”.
  8. Minnesota Department of Education, “Minnesota Education Statistics Summary.”