Idaho, Virginia, Texas, Kentucky, and Georgia. What do the latter red and purple states have in common? All but one of them are governed by very conservative Republican governors. All but two voted for Trump by solid margins in 2020, and all of them have Republican majorities in at least one of their legislative chambers. In 2023, the five states were also a major testing ground where well-funded and powerful interest groups sought to expand existing school voucher programs. In each case, legislators rejected voucher expansion proposals, often by wide margins.
These bills focused on traditional voucher programs, which are state-funded scholarships that help pay for students to attend private schools, as well as the increasingly popular Education Saving Accounts, which establish savings accounts from taxpayers’ money and allow families to use the funds to pay for educational expenses, including private school tuition. Some of these voucher programs are narrowly focused on a small segment of students; others are more universal.
While the voucher schemes may sound confusing, critics often view them as having the same underlying agenda. “They are just different shades of the same idea, which is moving public dollars out of public school classrooms [and] into private school tuition programs,” Mike Journee, communications director for the Idaho Education Association, tells The Progressive.
And the reasons these five states rejected voucher expansion proposals were remarkably similar. They included:
Public schools as bedrock local institutions: This most recent session of the Texas legislature saw the defeat of school voucher legislation, extending the state’s record of blocking these bills. In an interview with The Progressive, Jaime Puente, director of economic opportunity for Every Texan, a progressive nonprofit, says it was not hard to understand why.
“Public schools in rural communities are the lifeblood of those communities, and without public schools and public education, there are no small towns in Texas,” Puente explains, “Rural schools are where people come together. If it is not their church, it is their school.”
Lack of private school alternatives: The Kentucky Education Opportunity Act, a school voucher bill, only narrowly passed the state legislature after two tries, with some Republican legislators voting against it. The Kentucky Supreme Court later ruled the law unconstitutional. In an interview with The Progressive, Pam Thomas, a senior fellow at the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, a left-leaning nonprofit, cited a clear reason why some Republicans opposed it. “In the rural areas of Kentucky, there are no private schools,” Thomas says, “The folks [legislators] in the rural areas just really didn’t see it as a way of helping their constituents at all.”
The lack of private school options was also seen as a factor in the defeat of voucher bills in Texas and Idaho.
The poor track record of many private schools: Numerous studies have shown that many private schools, who would be the beneficiaries of these voucher programs, don’t help their students achieve better academic results than their public counterparts. In Virginia’s last session, voucher legislation did not even pass the Republican-controlled House. “We definitely shared information, with research showing that educational outcomes are not improved by vouchers,” Laura Goren, director of research and education policy for The Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, tells The Progressive.
In rural Texas communities, one of the ways people sustain themselves and become leaders is through the public schools.
In Arizona, a universal school voucher program was originally estimated to cost state taxpayers $65 million. Its cost projections are now $900 million, exceeding available funding by several hundred million dollars. Journee believes that Arizona’s poor track record was a factor in the defeat of seven different voucher bills in Idaho this year.
Poor academic performance and ballooning costs are not the only liabilities private schools have.
“Private schools are under no compulsion to educate all students, or to educate students well,” says Dr. Stephen Owens, education director for the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a public policy research and analysis nonprofit. “Private schools can and do discriminate based on income, ability, sexual orientation, religion—and that is not a good use of public dollars.”
Support for public education by the political establishment: Another factor in the resistance to these voucher proposals was the fact that many politicians who opposed vouchers had careers in public education or had family members that did. “There are a lot of teachers and former teachers, and school administrators and former administrators in our [Kentucky] General Assembly who support public education that are Republican,” Thomas says.
Nor is Kentucky a one-off case.
Puente pointed out that, in rural Texas communities, one of the ways people sustain themselves and become leaders is through the public schools. He felt the odds were high that a significant number of Texas legislators either had a public education background or had family members in public education careers.
School vouchers spread segregation: “Another concern for us about these voucher proposals is that Virginia has a history of discriminatory voucher proposals that were a way of avoiding school desegregation,” Goren says. “Unfortunately, a lot of research shows that vouchers continue to increase school segregation.”
And voucher opponents noted that vouchers did not only increase segregation by race but class as well.
“$6,500 [the voucher amount proposed in this year’s Georgia legislation] is not getting you into a high-quality private school,” Owens says. “That would be really helpful for people who are close or who are already in private schools.”
He believes the argument that existing Georgia state voucher programs were just subsidizing a few wealthier counties at the taxpayers’ expense, was especially potent.
“We have seen reports in other states…that when you create a universal voucher, what happens is that anywhere from 60 to 80 percent of the vouchers goes to people already in private school…it becomes a tax cut for the rich,” Owens adds.
These activists did not see public education as a partisan issue. “Public education could become an issue that could help bridge that increasingly strident gap between parties,” Journee says.
This is not to say that major voucher expansion has been blocked in all red states by these broad coalitions. In the last two years, Iowa, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, Utah, and West Virginia have either expanded existing or created new school voucher programs. And opposition to vouchers alone is not seen as good enough by public education supporters.
“Some of the impetus for voucher proposals comes from real frustrations and concerns about the adequacies and equities of our existing public education system,” Goren says. “As we fight proposals that would make matters worse by diverting funds to private schools, we also need to work on making sure that our public schools are places where every student really can thrive.”