An aggressive Republican campaign to pump hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars into private education continues across the country, even after voters in three states rejected the idea.
Texas lawmakers are poised to debate a universal school voucher program next year, following Republican Governor Greg Abbott’s scorched earth campaign to oust GOP lawmakers who thwarted his top priority. Tennessee’s Republican Governor Bill Lee and state legislative leaders have already reintroduced a school choice law to provide private education scholarships to thousands of students, after a similar bill failed last year amid resistance from rural lawmakers.
And North Carolina Republicans this month used the waning days of their legislative supermajority in the state House to override outgoing Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of a bill that will inject more than half a billion dollars in new annual spending into a scholarship program for private schools that has tens of thousands of students waiting to participate.
“It came in over budget because so many families decided to take advantage of this,” Tim Moore, Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives and elected representative, said of the state’s growing initiative. “That says a lot about the popularity of the program.”
It’s a clash between the will of lawmakers, labor groups and voters’ dissatisfaction with a policy trend that has already swept through much of the country. Teacher union leaders are scrambling to roll back new school choice bills in state legislatures — measures they say will decimate funding for public schools. They are also organizing opposition to federal tax credit legislation for private schools, passed by President-elect Donald Trump, which is on track for passage in a Republican-controlled Congress.
Unions hope they can replicate a playbook that prompted voters on Nov. 5 to reject a measure that would have established a constitutional right to school choice in Colorado, reject a bid to approve public funding for private education in Kentucky, and can repeal an important part of the law. a school voucher law in Nebraska.
“We’ve learned a lot from very different states that we know we can apply to the fight ahead,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association. “You can believe we will remind elected leaders, ‘This is what the voters said. Ignore it at your peril.”
The election results in Kentucky highlight the disagreement among voters on this issue. About two-thirds of voters in the state supported Trump, but nearly the same percentage rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow lawmakers to fund private schools with public funds.
That lopsided defeat for private school choice occurred in Kentucky’s seven largest counties (five of which supported Trump) and its most rural areas. In rural Clay County, for example, about 9 in 10 voters supported Trump — while 66 percent opposed the private school measure.
“What struck me is how much the choice community has really minimized this,” said Frederick Hess, education director at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “If Trump wins Kentucky by plus 30 or 35, and half of those voters vote down the elective referendums, I think you have to ask yourself what’s going on.”
Policies that use taxpayer dollars to subsidize families’ private education, homeschooling costs, and other education-related costs have increased across the country in recent years.
More than 30 states have adopted some type of school choice program, including at least 13 states that had so-called education savings account programs on their books as of mid-year, according to a National Conference of State Legislatures that described one popular program type . Arizona set a new standard for its program in 2022 by making it available to every family in the state, regardless of their income — resulting in nearly one in 20 students participating.
But there’s still room for growth — and Texas is poised to become the biggest battleground.
The American Federation for Children, a school choice organization founded by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, which spends heavily on state legislative races, said it spent more than $8 million in the Texas primaries and general elections to promote a voucher-friendly majority in the state house to support the elections. what could ultimately become the nation’s largest school choice program.
Abbott, the governor of Texas, says he now has 79 votes in the state House to support a voucher bill, three more than what is needed to pass legislation in that chamber.
“I made sure that we would elect Republicans to the Texas House of Representatives in sufficient numbers to pass a school choice plan, just as the Texas Senate has passed many times,” Abbott said during a post-election press conference. Christian community. private school where he boasted a “tidal wave of support” for his endorsed candidates for the House of Representatives.
Texas Lt. Gov. Texas Senate President Dan Patrick called on Abbott to prioritize school choice legislation next year as an emergency item, a move that would allow lawmakers to pass such a bill within the first 60 days of enactment. upcoming state legislative session.
Unions vow to oppose Texas’ proposal.
“We will use every tool at our disposal,” including legal challenges, to resist Texas’ efforts, Pringle told reporters earlier this month. “We have fought this fight before in Texas, and we will continue to fight that fight.
Tennessee’s governor and Republican lawmakers will revisit a statewide voucher proposal that failed earlier this year.
This time, the bicameral legislation to authorize up to 20,000 government-funded scholarships for private schools includes potential sweeteners to potential disruptions, such as $2,000 teacher bonuses at public schools and tax adjustments to support public school construction projects.
The NEA also expects North Dakota lawmakers to debate their own bill, more than a year after Republican Governor Doug Burgum, who has since been nominated by Trump as Secretary of the Interior, vetoed the private school grant bill .
There is little evidence that the referendum defeats are causing Republicans to reconsider their support for expanding voucher programs.
“It is important not to overinterpret the referendum result,” said Michael Petrilli, president of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute. “The teachers unions are a very effective political machine and when you vote on these things in direct democracy it is not difficult to demagogue the issue.”
But Petrilli, a school choice advocate who opposes subsidizing wealthy households through broad voucher programs, said lawmakers could overestimate their political support if such initiatives don’t have much to offer to suburban or rural households who might welcome are with their local schools or have no other option.
“The kiss of death in these debates is to play into the mentality that this is somehow about damaging public education,” he said. “There could be a real backlash here… You’re going to piss off a lot of people by writing big checks to wealthy families.”
And despite the anti-voucher energy at the ballot box, conservative lawmakers still have an advantage in states like North Carolina, where voters can’t channel their opinions through ballot referendums.
“People go and vote for their legislators, and the legislators set policy,” Moore said of North Carolina’s system. “And I would say that access to education was an important part of a lot of campaigns, and because that was an important message, Republicans maintained a very comfortable majority.”
