In 1971, Derrick Bell became the first Black man to be awarded tenure at Harvard Law School. As part of his teaching load, he developed a civil rights course that focused on race. In order to meet its topical requirements, Bell wrote an accompanying textbook, , which is foundational in critical race theory. It holds that racism is an ordinary and permanent feature of American society. His claim was viewed by many colleagues at the time as a radical statement, and it remains so for many today. Yet, it carries forward a certain truth that the history of school choice persuasively illustrates.

Having served as a federal attorney litigating desegregation cases, Bell had grown skeptical about forced racial integration and whether it would actually improve student learning. The original edition of his 1973 textbook included a chapter outlining “Alternatives to Integrated Schools” by which “black children might receive the long-promised equal educational opportunity — in predominantly black schools.” The chapter included a discussion of tuition vouchers.

Bell argued that for vouchers to work, poor families would need to receive substantially larger grants than the more fortunate. He also mentioned “free schools.” These were small, private institutions in poor areas supported by foundation grants, fundraising and, sometimes, public dollars. Tuition was charged on a sliding scale, and students whose parents could not pay attended for free. Many of these schools began “deep in the black community.” For example, Bell mentioned a system of schools operated by the Black Muslims that emphasized racial pride, self-discipline and self–sufficiency. He explained that such virtues are not commonly celebrated in the neighborhood public schools Black students attended. He pointed out that students at the Muslim schools performed several grade levels above most Black teenagers who attended public schools. 

Bell saw school choice as the culmination of a series of disappointments in the fight for educational equality. He understood it as a dramatic manifestation of the ways the Black community was losing confidence in its public schools. After numerous false starts to achieve desegregation and equalized funding, many Black activists turned to demands for community control. In 1968, a group of local parents and residents in Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood wrested local control of their school board. When a similar eruption took place in Milwaukee in 1988, those involved issued a call to action — commonly referred to as the — demanding that the state allow them to establish an independent school district. 

To lend a helping hand, Bell traveled to Milwaukee and wrote an op-ed for the Milwaukee Journal. Published under the headline “Control Not Color: The Real Issue in the Milwaukee Manifesto,” it took issue with the better-off liberal activists who condemned the plan. “Can we whose children are not required to attend the inner-city schools honestly condemn the Manifesto writers and their supporters?” Bell wrote. “After all, when middle-class parents — black and white — lose faith in the administration of a public school, we move to another school district or place our children in private schools. Inner-city black parents who can’t afford our options seek as a group a legislative remedy that may after a long struggle enable them to do what we achieve independently by virtue of our higher economic status.” 

Soon after, in 1990, the same Black activists in Milwaukee joined forces with their white Republican governor, Tommy Thompson, and his conservative legislative colleagues to pass the nation’s first school voucher law. The original Wisconsin vouchers were targeted at low-income students stuck in chronically failing public schools. Five years later, Wisconsin became the first state to expand its voucher program to include religious schools.

Bell revisited the topic of school choice in (2004). By then, vouchers had been adopted in Cleveland and Washington, D.C., among other places. He acknowledged that vouchers were “probably the most controversial of educational alternatives to emerge in the last decade,” but that they were also growing in popularity. He understood that many opponents were liberal Democrats with long histories of civil rights activism. These critics alleged that minority parents were being duped, that the real beneficiaries of such programs were private religious schools gaining enrollment. 

Bell recognized these criticisms but was also sympathetic to arguments by free-market advocates who believed that the competition fostered by choice would incentivize floundering public schools in Black communities to improve. He did not deny that the Catholic Church had become a major player in the choice movement to address its own declining school enrollments. But Bell was more impressed with how many Black and Hispanic parents chose Catholic schools over public schools because of their more disciplined learning environments and better academic outcomes. He cited one particular Catholic school in Milwaukee, where 80% of the students were not Catholic and the voucher covered most of the tuition.

Silent Covenants also delves into the topic of charter schools. Bell lauded them as innovative institutions that give options to all students, not just the wealthy who can afford private school tuition. He rejected claims by liberals that the institutions would become bastions for middle-class families who were better prepared to work the system, citing evidence that two-thirds of charter students nationwide were nonwhite and more than half were from low-income families. Critics had also raised concerns that charter schools would discriminate, become racially isolated and drain resources from regular public schools. Bell, unmoved by these claims, was more concerned that charters were receiving 15% less funding than other public schools.

Now, 30 years after the Milwaukee breakthrough, the school choice movement has taken off in a new direction. Republicans who once allied with Black advocates to demand better options for low-income students now rally behind appeals for universal choice, which provides such benefits to all students regardless of family income. Eighteen states have enacted such programs. When awards do not cover the entire cost of tuition, they end up subsidizing better-off families and neglecting those unable to make up the difference. As demands for private and religious schools grow, so does the competition for seats and the incentive to raise tuition. Yielding larger numbers of applications from a stronger pool of students, these initiatives can function more to enhance the choices available to school admissions officers than the most needy students.

A that President Donald Trump signed this year allows a tax deduction of up to $1,700 for anyone who donates to an organization that gives scholarships for students to attend private or religious schools. Like the state-level universal choice programs, the federal initiative does not target low-income students. Assistance will be available to any family whose income is below 300% of the average for their area.

Here is the underlying political irony to the choice debate: For years, when programs were designed to help the most vulnerable students, the major opponents were activists who historically have identified with progressive causes. Now, conservatives are spending with abandon — in many cases, with limited public accountability — on programs that can create opportunities for students who need them the least. In either case, those who get hurt remain the same, and they are disproportionately under-resourced students of color. Derrick Bell would not be surprised. 

In 1980, Bell wrote an for the Harvard Law Review advancing a concept referred to in the scholarly literature as the “interest convergence dilemma” that is fundamental to critical race theory. It holds, “The interest of blacks in achieving racial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interests of whites.” Not very trusting of white collaborators hailing from either the left or right, it deems political alliances temporary and subject to the competing priorities of all pertinent parties, anticipating eventual abandonment. 

And so, that’s the way it is.

State funding of private-school vouchers is primarily being used for students attending religious institutions, with nearly 98% of funding going toward Catholic, Christian, Jewish and Islamic schools.

This year, state lawmakers passed a budget that included a request from Gov. Mike Kehoe to supply the state-run K-12 scholarship program, MOScholars, with $50 million of general revenue. Previously, the impact to the state’s bottom line was indirect, with 100% tax-deductible donations fueling the program.

Donations are still part of MOScholars’ funding, but the state appropriation has more than doubled the number of scholarships available.

During the 2024-25 school year, MOScholars awarded $15.2 million in scholarships.

In August alone, the State Treasurer’s Office received invoices for scholarships totaling $15.6 million, according to documents obtained by The Independent under Missouri’s open records laws.

The invoice process is unique to the direct state funding of the program. The nonprofits that administer scholarships, called educational assistance organizations, were the sole keepers of scholarship funds. But now, the State Treasurer’s Office holds scholarship money derived from general revenue in an account previously only used for program marketing and administration.

The invoices contained data on which schools MOScholars students are attending and the scholarship amount.

Of the 2,329 scholarships awarded in August, only 59 went to students in nonreligious schools.

This number did not surprise Democratic lawmakers, who for years have warned that state revenue was going to be siphoned into religious schools.

“We are simply subsidizing, with tax dollars, parents who would already choose to send their kids to a private school,” state Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, told The Independent. “And now we are using public dollars to pay for schools that are not transparent whatsoever in choosing who to educate and who not.”

Some schools have been criticized for admission requirements that push a moral standard.

Christian Fellowship School in Columbia, which received scholarships for 63 MOScholars students in August, requires “at least one parent of enrolled students professes faith in Christ and agrees with the admission policies and the philosophy and doctrinal statements of the school,” according to its . 

These statements include disapproval of homosexuality.

“The school reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to refuse admission of an applicant or to discontinue enrollment of a student,” the handbook continues.

With around 430 K-12 students enrolled at Christian Fellowship School, according to , MOScholars makes up a sizable portion of its funding. But it is not the only school with a large number of scholarship recipients.

Torah Prep School in St. Louis had 229 K-12 students during the 2023-24 school year. And in August, 197 MOScholars students received funding to attend the school. Torah Prep did not respond to a request for comment.

The high number of students attending religious schools with MOScholars funding is somewhat incidental, somewhat by design.

The MOScholars program allows its six educational assistance organizations to choose what scholarships they are willing to support. 

Religious organizations stepped into the role to help connect congregants with affiliated schools. Only two of the six educational assistance organizations partner with schools unaffiliated with religion.

The Catholic dioceses of Kansas City-St. Joseph and Springfield-Cape Girardeau run the educational assistance organization Bright Futures Fund, which administered nearly half of the scholarships awarded in August.

The educational assistance organization Agudath Israel of Missouri focuses on Jewish education, partnering with four Jewish day schools.

The organization’s director Hillel Anton told The Independent that students are attracted to the program for more than just religious reasons.

“(Parents’) first and foremost concern is where their child is going to be able to be in the best learning environment,” Anton said. “And you may have a faith-based school that is fantastic and is able to provide that.”

The demand for the program has long . Going into August, organizations had waitlists of students eligible for a scholarship but without funding secured.

Agudath Israel of Missouri couldn’t guarantee scholarships for all of the returning students, Anton said, until the state funding was official.

“Because a lot of the funding is done towards the end of the year… we had everyone on a wait list,” he said. “Because we didn’t know necessarily how much funding we were going to have, we weren’t awarding anyone (the funding).”

Because the program was previously powered by 100% tax-deductible donations, the majority of funds poured in around December. But families need the money months sooner, with tuition due at the start of the school year.

Some educational assistance organizations prefunded scholarships, dipping into their savings to front expenses in the fall. Others had schools that would accept students and wait for payment.

The funding from the state, though, has resolved the backlog and allowed organizations to give scholarships to everyone on their wait list.

“Everyone who qualified for a scholarship this year received one,” Ashlie Hand, Bright Futures Fund’s director of communications, told The Independent.

Bright Futures Fund nearly doubled the number of students it serves, from 1,050 to 1,909.

Agudath Israel of Missouri is growing, too. The new funding helped the organization expand from 175 scholarships last year to 277 this year.

Some expect the state funding to continue next year to support this year’s windfall of scholarships. State Treasurer Vivek Malek  that if donations fall short, he will request state funds to support the new students through graduation.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.

Not likely. Yet in Republican-dominated states, that’s exactly what the future holds. This is arguably the most profound change in American education since the development of universal public education over a century ago.

Over the past five years, 14 states have passed laws creating , often known as Education Savings Accounts — public money families can use to pay private school tuition. All are Republican states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. Two more, , have passed refundable tax credits available to all families.

Every family in those states is eligible, or will be within a few years, for somewhere between per student. Counting programs limited to low-income students, more than half of all K-12 students in the U.S. .

This will accelerate the process of the rich getting richer while the poor fall further behind. And now, Republicans in Congress have quietly slipped worth $5,000 per child into their “one big beautiful bill.”

Equal opportunity has always been a fundamental principle of public education: the idea that every child, no matter how poor, would have access to the same quality school. This has long been more an ideal than a reality, but after decades of legal battles, in poor and affluent districts.

States could preserve equal opportunity in a voucher system if parents were barred from topping up vouchers with their own money. But telling Americans they can’t help fund their child’s private school would never fly. So families will add to the value of their vouchers and buy the best education they can afford — because they love their children. 

Other parents will have no money to add. Their kids will attend public schools or the least expensive private schools. And equal opportunity will fly out the window.

Vouchers will segregate students by income, since private school tuition varies widely. Hence, they will no doubt increase segregation by race as well.

Over time, as more and more people use vouchers, the education market in Republican states will stratify by income far more than it does today. It will come to resemble any other market: for housing, automobiles or anything else. The affluent will buy schools that are the equivalent of BMWs and Mercedes; the merely comfortable will choose Toyotas and Acuras; the scraping-by middle class will buy Fords and Chevrolets; and the majority, lacking spare cash, will settle for the equivalent of used cars — mostly public schools.

Meanwhile, the billions spent on vouchers will be subtracted from public school budgets, and the political constituency for public education will atrophy, leading to further cuts.

It’s obvious why vouchers appeal to people who already send their kids to private school, or would like to. But pro-voucher referenda have never won a majority. They have on state ballots, and three of those defeats occurred last fall, even in red states — in .

Yet, GOP funders donate millions to state legislators to support vouchers. And Republican lawmakers are heeding their wishes.

So far, studies have shown in private schools that accept vouchers. This is just common sense: Expensive private schools are often excellent, but cheap private schools are often worse than neighboring public schools.

Yet only one state, Louisiana, denies schools voucher money if their students perform poorly on state standardized tests. In West Virginia, voucher students who fail state tests lose their eligibility for the program. Most states , not even publishing test scores for schools that receive voucher money.

Private schools have the right to select their students, and some will no doubt discriminate — against gay students, transgender students, Muslim students or all of the above. State voucher laws often do not have comprehensive prohibitions against discrimination, and there are reports of bias in Wisconsin’s program, which is only for low-income students.

Finally, recent research suggests another common-sense reality: Heightened demand fueled by vouchers leads schools to .

None of these outcomes would draw support from a majority of Americans. Yet they are happening, and they will surely deepen the growing divide between rich and poor.

Is there an alternative, other than the status quo of struggling public school systems? Indeed there is. States and school districts could reduce bureaucratic controls, empower educators and increase choice, competition and accountability for performance within the public school system, through the spread of charter schools. Cities that have done so, including , have produced some of the nation’s most rapid improvements in student performance.

Voucher advocates are right, in my opinion, to want more choice, more competition, more diversity of school models and more accountability for performance in the nation’s education system. Traditional districts are operating with a centralized, standardized model that emerged more than a century ago, which makes creating quality public schools an uphill battle, particularly in low-income areas.

I also have no problem with vouchers for low-income students who are now trapped in failing public schools. But for too long, American society has been divided — economically, socially and politically — between those fortunate enough to have earned college degrees and those for whom college was out of reach. Turning the K-12 education system into a marketplace, in which the quality of a child’s school depends upon how much their parents can afford to pay, will only widen the gaps between haves and have-nots. Sadly, 16 Republican states have taken a huge step down that path.

Gov. on Saturday signed legislation authorizing a private school voucher program into law, marking the grand finale of an oftentimes ugly conflict that has largely defined Texas politics this decade.

will allow families to use public taxpayer dollars to fund their children’s education at an accredited private school or to pay for a wide range of school-related expenses, like textbooks, transportation or therapy. The program will be one of the largest school voucher initiatives in the nation.

“When I ran for reelection in 2022, I promised school choice for the families of Texas. Today, we deliver on that promise,” said Abbott during the bill’s signing before hundreds of applauding supporters gathered outside the Governor’s Mansion. “Gone are the days that families are limited to only the school assigned by government. The day has arrived that empowers parents to choose the school that’s best for their child.”

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The law will go into effect on Sept. 1, with the program expected to launch in late 2026.

The law’s passage follows years of discord in the Legislature over school vouchers. The Democrats and rural Republicans who fought against it argued that the program would harm already-struggling public schools, a major employer for working families and a resource center for many Texas students — the majority of whom reside in low-income households.

“Remember this day next time a school closes in your neighborhood,” state Rep. , D-Austin, said a few hours before at a news conference with other voucher opponents. “Remember this day next time a beloved teacher quits because they can’t support their family on their salary. Remember this day next time your local property taxes rise because the state government is not doing its fair share of school funding. And if recession comes and we are forced to make even deeper cuts to public education, remember this day.”

Top Republicans like Abbott and Lt. Gov. have forcefully rebutted, saying parents needed more schooling options for their children in the face of COVID-19 health restrictions and frustrations with public schools’ efforts to foster a more inclusive environment for all students. They have insisted that a voucher program and the state’s public education system can coexist.

Those arguments came as voucher programs in other states have largely benefited who already had their kids enrolled in private schools and led to for students.

Here’s a breakdown of how the program will work.

Families can receive about $10,000 to send their children to private school on taxpayers’ dime

Most participating families will receive an amount equal to 85% of what public schools get for each student through state and local funding — roughly somewhere between $10,300 and $10,900 per year for each child, according to a , which included financial projections for the next five years.Children with disabilities are eligible for the same funding as other students, plus up to $30,000 in additional money, an amount based on what the state would spend on special education services for that student if they attended a public school. Home-schoolers can receive up to $2,000 per year.

The money will flow to families through education savings accounts, which essentially function as state-managed bank accounts. In Arizona, for example, which has a program similar to the one Texas is rolling out, families can make education-related purchases through an online platform by the software company .

Texas will spend $1 billion on vouchers in the first two years, but costs could skyrocket

The state can spend no more than $1 billion on the program during the state’s next two-year budget cycle, which begins Sept. 1, 2025, and ends Aug. 31, 2027.

It is not clear how much the program’s costs will rise after the spending cap expires — lawmakers will likely make that determination in future legislative sessions — but state budget experts that the tab could escalate to roughly $4.8 billion by 2030.

Most families can participate, including some of the wealthiest Texans

Almost any school-age child in Texas can apply for and participate in the voucher program, including students already attending private schools. Up to 20% of the program’s initial $1 billion budget could flow to wealthier families who earn 500% or more of the poverty rate — roughly $160,000 or above for a family of four.

Families cannot have their children simultaneously enrolled in the program and a public school. The program excludes students whose parents cannot prove their child is a U.S. citizen. Lawmakers are also considering that would bar the kids of any statewide elected official from signing up for the program.

If public demand for the voucher program exceeds the funding available, it will prioritize applicants in this order:

• Students with disabilities from families with an annual income at or below 500% of the federal poverty level, which includes any four-person household earning less than roughly $160,000
• Families at or below 200% of the poverty level, which includes any four-person household earning less than roughly $64,300
• Families between 200% and 500% of the poverty level
• Families at or above 500% of the poverty level (limited to 20% of the program’s budget)

The voucher program also prioritizes students exiting public schools over kids already in private ones.

The priority system does not guarantee access to the program, however. The legislation does not require participating schools to change their admissions processes, meaning they can still deny entry to any student they determine does not meet their standards. Private schools are also not required to follow state or federal laws regarding accommodations for students with disabilities.

The program launches next year, but other specifics are still unclear

The voucher program will officially launch at the beginning of the 2026-27 school year.

The comptroller — the state’s chief financial officer, who will oversee the program — has until May 15, 2026, to establish the rules and procedures it must follow. In addition to setting up the application process for Texans who want to enroll their children, the finance chief will select up to five organizations that will help Texas administer the program.

Private schools can choose whether they want to participate. The law requires participating schools to and to have operated for at least two years.

Participating students won’t have to take the STAAR test

Enrolled students must take a nationally recognized exam of the private school’s choosing. Private schools, however, are not required to administer the same standardized tests currently issued to public school kids each year — the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR.

The state must produce an annual report that includes data on participants’ test results, satisfaction with the program, and college and career readiness. It will include information on how the program affects public and private school enrollment. Lawmakers will also get a report every year with demographic data on each participating child, including students’ age, sex, race or ethnicity and zip code.

State officials will also be required to work with a private auditor responsible for helping ensure program participants follow the law. The bill directs the state to suspend the accounts of people not in compliance with the legislation’s guidelines and refer to local authorities any organizations or individuals who use taxpayer funds fraudulently.

This article originally appeared in at . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The Utah Education Association , arguing the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program violated the constitution by diverting tax money to private schools that aren’t free, open to all students and supervised by the state board of education.

The $100 million voucher program was created in 2023 by the Utah Legislature. It provided up to $8,000 in state income tax funds to eligible students through scholarship accounts to pay for private schools. 

District Court Judge Laura Scott said that the program not only allows schools to deny students admission because of religion, politics and location, but it provides benefits to private and homeschooled children that might not be available to those in public school, like funds for computers, test prep courses and tutoring.

“Because the program is a legislatively created, publicly funded education program aimed at elementary and secondary education, it must satisfy the constitutional requirements applicable to the ‘public education system’ set forth in the Utah Constitution,” she said. “And because there is no genuine dispute that the program fails to meet these ‘open to all children’ and ‘free’ requirements, it is unconstitutional.”

The ruling comes amid a nationwide push for school choice expansion. On Thursday, the Texas House gave initial approval to a bill that would create a $1 billion private school voucher program. School voucher bills have also advanced this year in Wyoming and Tennessee. 

Utah officials previously argued that the program’s share of tax revenue was less than 1% of the amount allocated for the state’s public schools, according to court documents. Robyn Bagley, executive director of — one of the main organizations that advocated for the program — said in a statement Friday that Scott’s decision was a “temporary setback” and there will be an appeal.

“We knew such a judgment at this level was a possibility, and we remain extremely confident the program will ultimately be ruled constitutional by the Utah Supreme Court,” Bagley said. “Many families are eagerly awaiting the thousands of new scholarships that have just been funded by the Utah Legislature.”

The program paid for the vouchers of 10,000 students — 80% of them homeschooled, according to the . After a waitlist reached 17,000 names, the legislature reduced scholarship amounts for homeschooled students earlier this year.

The Utah Education Association, which represents 18,000 members, said in a statement Friday that lawmakers had overstepped their authority and the union held them accountable.

“This decision protects the integrity of public education, ensuring critical funding remains in schools that serve 90% of Utah’s children and prioritize equitable, inclusive opportunities for every student to succeed,” the union said.

The union has also been advocating against a bill, passed in February, that bans collective bargaining, which some opponents say was created to retaliate against the school voucher lawsuit. Utah union organizations for a referendum to overturn the bill.

In an effort to help Idahoans follow major bills, resolutions and memorials through the legislative process, the Idaho Capital Sun will produce a “legislative notebook” at the end of each week to gather information in one place that concerns major happenings in the Legislature and other news relating to state government. To receive the full extent of our reporting in your inbox each day, sign up for our free email newsletter, The Sunrise, on our website at

Here is our quick rundown of the major happenings during the eighth week of the Idaho Legislature’s 2025 session.

Idaho governor signs House Bill 93

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Idaho Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 93 – which may be one of the most contentious bills considered during the 2025 legislative session – into law on Thursday.

After several years of failed attempts from conservative legislators, it will allow state taxpayer dollars to fund private, religious and home schooling expenses like tuition, tutoring and other costs.

The bill provides a refundable tax credit up to $5,000 for a parent of homeschooled or private school students to pay for expenses including tuition and fees, tutoring, textbook costs, curriculum and transportation. The refundable tax credit is increased to $7,500 for special needs students.

“Idaho can have it all – strong public schools AND education freedom. Providing high-quality education for Idaho students will always be our top priority,” Little said in a press release about signing the bill.

Critics, including Idaho’s Democratic legislators, some Republican legislators and many public school teachers and administrators, say the bill will take away $50 million of public taxpayer dollars from the state’s general fund that could have supported public schools, transportation needs and other important public services.

In a statement by the entire Democratic legislative caucus, the legislators said the governor betrayed promises he made during his Jan. 6 State of the State address that any bill that would use state funds to support private education would “meet standards of fairness, accountability, responsibility, and transparency.”

“HB93 has none of these, but, like so many Republicans, he bowed to out-of-state billionaires instead of prioritizing the needs of real Idahoans,” the Democratic caucus said. “The governor has sacrificed his legacy as a pro-public schools governor and a fiscal conservative by signing a bill that siphons public dollars to subsidize private school tuition for the wealthy. The people of Idaho can now expect what has happened in other voucher states: starved public schools, higher property taxes as local districts will be forced to run bonds and levies, and exploding state budgets that threaten infrastructure and public safety.”

But Little, in the press release, defended his record of supporting increased public education funding every year he has been governor.

“I am proud that we have put close to $17 billion into our K-12 public school system since I took office and increased public school funding by close to 60 percent in just a few years,” he said. “Our investments in education initiatives have increased 80 percent overall since my first year in office. In addition, Idaho ranks first in the nation for our return on investment in public schools.”

Little signs bill that would create mandatory minimum fine for misdemeanor marijuana possession

Little also signed , which would create a $300 minimum fine for adults convicted of possessing three ounces or less of marijuana.

Co-sponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa; Sen. Brandon Shippy, R-New Plymouth; and nine other Republican legislators, including House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, it was the sixth bill to become law during the 2025 legislative session.

Supporters of the law, including Skaug, said the law is a way to be tough on marijuana and differentiate Idaho from its surrounding states of Oregon, Washington, Montana, Nevada and Utah, which have all legalized cannabis use by adults in various forms.

The new law will go into effect on July 1.

Legislation of interest during the eighth week of the 2025 session

• : Sponsored by Sen. Brian Lenney, R-Nampa, and Rep. Robert Beiswenger, R-Horseshoe Bend, the bill would prohibit local governments, health districts and school districts from mandating that an individual must wear a mask or face covering to prevent the spread of an infectious disease. The bill was delivered to the governor on Friday. The Idaho Constitution says the governor has five days – not counting Sundays – after the bill has been presented to him to act on legislation. Little then has three options: to sign it into law, to allow the law to go into effect without his signature or to veto the bill.
• : Co-sponsored by Reps. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, and Rod Furniss, R-Rigby, the bill would repeal age-based child-to-staff ratios for child care facilities in Idaho law. The Idaho House passed the bill on a 54-15 vote Thursday. It now heads to the Senate Health and Welfare Committee for consideration.
• and : The bills sponsored by Sen. Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, and Senate Pro Tem Kelly Anthon, R-Burley, respectively, would combine two immigration-related bills proposed this legislative session. House Bill 83 would allow law enforcement to record a person’s documentation status only if they are already detained or under investigation for a crime. If an individual involved in a crime is found to be living in Idaho without legal authorization, they would face a misdemeanor charge for “illegal entry.” A second offense would result in a felony charge, and a conviction would lead to deportation. Senate Bill 1039 would ban immigration sanctuaries in Idaho, criminalize the presence of “dangerous illegal aliens,” and prohibit their transportation into the state. It would also require law enforcement to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. House Bill 83 was sent to the Senate’s amending order, where the bills may be combined in the coming days of the session.
• : Sponsored by Sen. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, the bill would clarify and add guidance to Idaho coroners’ roles in death investigations. The Idaho Senate passed the bill on a 25-10 vote Wednesday. It may be taken up by the House Local Government Committee in the coming days of the session.
• : Sponsored by Sen. Ben Adams, R-Nampa, the bill would subsidize crisis pregnancy centers in Idaho through a grant program with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, providing more than $1 million in taxpayer funds to qualified centers, with centers receiving a minimum grant of $25,000. The Senate State Affairs Committee voted against advancing the bill on Friday, which may have killed it for the session.
• : Sponsored by Rep. Jordan Redman, R-Coeur d’Alene, the bill would require the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to seek federal approval to exclude candy and soda from foods eligible for coverage by the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP (formerly known as food stamps). The Idaho House Health and Welfare Committee, on an 8-7 vote Tuesday, sent the bill to the House floor with a recommendation that it pass. It is on the House’s third reading calendar and may be taken up in the coming days of the session.
• : Co-sponsored by Reps. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, and Dustin Manwaring, R-Pocatello, the bill would raise the salary for each judicial position in Idaho by $17,000. The House Judiciary, Rules and Administration voted to advance the bill to the full House with a recommendation that it pass. It may be taken up in the coming days of the session.
• : Co-sponsored by Reps. Barbara Ehardt and Marco Erickson, both R-Idaho Falls, the bill would protect the identity of sources who provide journalists with confidential information or documents. The House voted unanimously to pass the bill on Tuesday. It now heads to the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee for consideration.

What to expect next week

Senate State Affairs Committee
: Sponsored by Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle, the bill would create the “Wildfire Standard of Care Act,” which would establish a standard of care through electric utility wildfire mitigation plans, subject to approval by the Idaho Public Utilities Commission for regulated utilities. It would also establish that an electric corporation that substantially complies with a wildfire mitigation plan could not be “found liable in any civil action to recover damages or impose liability, including for death of or injury” to people or property. The bill is scheduled for a public hearing before the committee on Monday.

Senate Education Committee
: Sponsored by Sen. Tammy Nichols, R-Middleton, the resolution would affirm the Idaho Legislature’s support for inclusion of PragerU Kids’ supplemental education resources in Idaho public schools. “This resolution recognizes their value in fostering patriotism, personal responsibility, and a strong appreciation for America’s founding principles while commending the Department of Education for its commitment to educational excellence and expanding innovative learning opportunities,” the resolution’s statement of purpose says. The resolution is scheduled for a public hearing before the committee on Monday.

House Health and Welfare Committee
: Sponsored by Rep. Dori Healey, R-Boise, the bill would transfer decision-making authority about vaccination requirements for children attending day cares and schools from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to the Idaho Legislature. The bill is scheduled for a public hearing before the committee on Monday.

How to follow the Idaho Legislature and Idaho Gov. Brad Little’s work during the session

Here are a few tools we use to track the Legislature’s business and how to let your voice be heard in the issues that matter most to you.

How to find your legislators: To determine which legislative district you live in, and to find contact information for your legislators within that district, go to the and put in your home address and ZIP code. Once you’ve entered that information, the three legislators – two House members and one senator – who represent your district will appear, and you can click on their headshots to find their email address and phone number.

How to find committee agendas: Go to the Idaho Legislature’s website, , and click on the “” link and the “” link on the right side of the website.

How to watch the legislative action in committees and on the House and Senate floors: Idaho Public Television works in conjunction with the Legislative Services Office and the Idaho Department of Administration through a program called “Idaho in Session” to provide live streaming for all legislative committees and for the House and Senate floors. To watch the action, go to and select the stream you’d like to watch.

How to testify remotely at public hearings before a committee: To sign up to testify remotely for a specific committee, navigate to that committee’s webpage, and click on the “testimony registration (remote and in person)” tab at the top.

How to find state budget documents: Go to Legislative Services Office Budget and Policy Analysis Division’s website.

How to track which bills have made it to Gov. Little’s desk and any action he took on them (including vetoes): Go to the governor’s website . You can scroll down to the bottom of the site and enter your email address to get alerts sent straight to your inbox when the page has been updated.

Reporting from Idaho Capital Sun journalists Clark Corbin, Mia Maldonado and Kyle Pfannenstiel contributed to this legislative notebook.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.

Historically, the majority of this funding was only available to students who were low income, had special needs or attended poorly performing public schools. 

Over the past three years, that’s shifted: Today, at least 33 states offer private school choice programs, and of those 12 are “universal,” meaning any student, regardless of income or need, can apply for government funding to subsidize private, religious and — in some cases — home schools. 

Comprehensive analysis of the scale of these initiatives and their implications — both for students and state budgets — has been sparse. But a released earlier this month by , a research think tank based at Georgetown’s School of Public Policy, looks to change that. 

Policy Director Liz Cohen and analyst Bella DiMarco studied the evolution of established or emerging universal programs during the 2023-24 school year across eight states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. 

Their research comes on the eve of an election where school choice measures are on the ballot in three additional states and when disagreement continues to spark over whether these programs give freedom and choice to families who have been historically locked out of private schooling or are part of a larger movement meant to undermine and defund public schools. 

FutureEd’s major finding about how universal choice has played out so far? “Policy design really matters,” Cohen said, in an interview with ����Ӱ��.

While all of the studied programs are universal in that anyone can apply, whether families end up actually receiving money, how much they receive and what accountability measures the participating schools are held to varies greatly state by state. 

They calculated that in total, 569,000 students received subsidies across these states, representing 55% of the students attending private schools with public funding and costing taxpayers an estimated $4 billion. About 40% of the nation’s 50 million elementary and secondary students are now eligible.

Here are five key takeaways.

“Universal” is not necessarily universal, and no two states’ policies look the same. 

“We talk about [universal programs] as such a monolithic thing,” said DiMarco. “I expected there to be more similarities between the programs and to see more similarities in the data. But that just wasn’t necessarily the case.” 

In Ohio for example, families receive funding on a sliding scale based on need, private schools can’t charge low-income families more than what they receive from the state and participating private schools must use the same graduation requirements.

On the other end of the spectrum, in Florida and Arizona no student who applies for funding is turned down and participating private schools don’t need to be accredited. 

“If you listen to the sort of politically charged descriptions of these initiatives you get one fairly stilted perspective— both from proponents and opponents of these,” said Nat Malkus, the deputy director of education policy at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “And when you look at them piece by piece, there’s a good bit of daylight between the arrangements from one city to the next.”

But there are a few overarching themes, some of which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

All states give participating families similar amounts of money, with the average award amount coming in at around $7,000, which is approximately 90% to 100% of state per-pupil funding. 

Most states require some sort of accountability testing — but not all. And most of the students who received the funding across all eight states were already attending private schools.

For example in Arkansas, 64% of students who received funds through the Education Freedom Act in its first year, the 2023-24 school year, were already enrolled in private schools. The majority were students with disabilities. 

“So much of the attention in general has been paid to the fact that the majority of kids are already in private school,” said Cohen. “But that’s actually the expected outcome if you are giving money to kids to go to private school, and anyone can get it.”

She said the bigger question moving forward is examining if that pattern will persist beyond the first wave of funding.

Josh Cowen, education policy expert and author of said he doesn’t anticipate the demographics of participating students to shift much over time, meaning he isn’t expecting an exodus of low-income students from struggling public schools to private school alternatives..

“Put me down for projecting that the next version of this [report] is going to find something very similar and even more stark… [because] no policy that isn’t directly targeted toward at-risk children or families, will remain primarily benefiting at-risk children or families.“

The income level of participating families is murkier than people think: Well-to-do families are signing up, but so are more modest ones.

While these programs continue to serve predominantly lower- and middle-income families, the researchers found that participation among higher-income families increased last year, in every state where eligibility expanded and data was available.

“One of the big sort of headlines you keep seeing around these programs is that it’s all affluent families,” said Cohen. “And I just think the nuance to that is that that’s not actually accurate.”

While it’s true that there are many more affluent families than in previous means-tested programs, there are still significant numbers of lower-income families who are entering these programs. She pointed to Florida where 30% of families participating are low income. 

DiMarco said they saw a lot of middle-income families taking advantage of the funds who were “sort of just above the line” under previous, means-tested programs.

Impacts of funding on state budgets remain unclear.

Because the majority of families who took advantage of this funding were not coming from public schools — and therefore not bringing their per pupil public funding with them — these subsidies represent a new state-level cost.

“They’re new expenses,” said Cohen, “which could ultimately down the road — if state lawmakers don’t really think this through — end up [putting] states in a position where they have to say, ‘We’re not going to build this highway … because we have to pay the bill on this private school choice thing.’”

Goals of the programs are rarely — if ever — clearly stated, making accountability tricky. 

Some states, like Arizona and Oklahoma, have no standardized testing requirements or other performance metrics, making it, “nearly impossible to gauge how much learning is taking place under the state’s private school choice programs,” according to the report.

Other states do have more stringent requirements, although Florida is the only state the researchers studied which has mandated funding to evaluate academic performance of participating students.

“The step it feels like a lot of these states skipped is identifying a clear goal for the program and then a clear metric of how you’ll know if you achieved your goal,” said Cohen. “And without stating those things up front, what are we even trying to measure?”

Malkus sees more of an effort to track student outcomes, though he emphasized additional data would help parents make better-informed choices. 

“I don’t think the testing requirements are as strict as some people would like them,” he said, “but the idea that there’s zero accountability for these isn’t true either. It’s somewhere in the messy middle.”

About 55,000 students are on a waitlist to receive Opportunity Scholarships, North Carolina’s private school voucher program.

Parents rallied on Wednesday to urge the legislature to pass . The bill, which passed the Senate earlier this year, would provide $248 million nonrecurring for the upcoming school year and $215.5 million recurring to support scholarships in the 2025-26 school year.

“Parents watched in utter frustration on July 4 when legislature left town without solving this problem. So parents woke up and said,‘We are not going to take this lying down,’” Rachel Brady, an organizer of the rally, said.

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The House and the Senate adjourned without passing a budget for this year. The two chambers have not been able to agree about investments in both the expansion of voucher and public schools.

“The concern that members have had is that they want to make sure that if we’re talking about education, that we’re doing so comprehensively, that we’re also addressing the traditional schools as well,” House Speaker Tim Moore .

Gov. Roy Cooper urging leaders and communities to support public schools. In other conservative states, cross-partisan agreements have led to investments in both. And conservative leaders are raising concerns about vouchers for the wealthy as well as the disproportionate investment of dollars in urban areas.

In the debate on the bill in a Senate committee, where it passed, legislators discussed and debated the impact on rural counties. According to , in 11 rural counties in North Carolina there are no private schools while in Mecklenburg County there are 96 private schools and in Wake County there are 91 private schools.

Parents urge lawmakers to clear waitlists

The parents at the rally delivered to Senate Pro Tempore Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore expressing their discontent.

“The Opportunity Scholarship gave us needed relief by opening up great educational opportunities for our children,” the letters said.

“Please act now to clear the waiting list of 55,000 students seeking school choice. Since school has started for some and tuition payments are due, we ask that you make funding retroactive,” the letter continued.

“Families are going to need this in the middle of rapid inflation. Working class families at the grocery store are making choices as to what they can buy. And this is hitting us right at home, hitting the people that are needing it most,” said Brady, the organizer.

Caroline Cox is a parent on the waitlist. “When we found out that all of the funding would not come through for families across the state, we were so discouraged by that,” Cox said at the rally. “We really feel after our experience with our kids, that every family in North Carolina — everyone — should have the choice to choose where to send their kids.”

Mary Ellen Merry, another parent at the rally, said that while she works at a public school, she enjoys having her daughter at a different school. She said all families should have an option.

“Our government supports financially the public schools. But I think as parents, we all pay into the system. And we should be able to choose where some of our money goes to,” Merry said.

“So that tells me two things,” said Moore. “One, it’s amazing to me the amount of support and interest there is, I love it. Second, there’s a commitment there.”

“So the key is,” Moore said, “how do we balance making sure we take care of our priorities and not holding parents up because school starts in a few weeks?”

Down the hall, Berger told the parents to convince their House representatives.

“We sent them a bill back in May that does nothing but clear the list, forward funds, everything,” Berger said. “All they have to do is take one vote.”

The legislature briefly reconvened this week and will continue to meet throughout the rest of the year. You can find their schedule .

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Most Texas adults agree with arguments against school vouchers, but in the end, they still would support legislation that makes such programs available to all families in the state, according to a new survey released Monday.

The University of Houston and Texas Southern University survey asked 2,257 adults about their opinions on school vouchers, programs that let families use taxpayer dollars to pay for their children’s private schooling, and , a form of vouchers that state leaders like Gov. have advocated for since last year.

The survey also asked respondents whether they agreed with some of the most common arguments made against and in favor of vouchers. Proponents argue vouchers give families more choices to pick the school that is best for their children while opponents worry they divert money away from already struggling public schools.

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“When they weigh the pros and the cons of vouchers, [respondents came] down on the side of being pro-voucher,” said Mark Jones, a professor at Rice University and one of the report’s authors.

Black adults in particular were more likely to agree with arguments made against school vouchers while still supporting such programs, Jones said.

Seventy percent of Black adults supported creating a school voucher program that all Texas families have access to, and 72% supported school voucher legislation that would only benefit low-income families. Black adults were also the most likely to agree with arguments against school voucher legislation like “vouchers/ESAs funnel money away from already struggling public schools” and “vouchers/ESAs provide funding to private schools and individuals with only limited accountability for how the funds are used.”

“I think it has to do in part with a growing share of African Americans who look at their public schools and believe that their public schools are failing them, and don’t believe that without some type of change, like the adoption of vouchers, that situation is going to change anytime soon,” Jones said.

People who identified as Republicans were much more likely to support legislation that would create a voucher program for all families in Texas and less likely to support a proposal only for low-income families, the survey found.

Meanwhile, Democrats were more likely to support a voucher program just for low-income families. White Democrats were the least supportive of a voucher program for all families.

The survey didn’t find a significant difference in support for vouchers between respondents in rural, suburban and urban parts of the state.

Vouchers were Abbott’s top legislative priority last year. Proposals for an education savings account program by a coalition of Texas House Democrats and rural Republicans, who have traditionally opposed vouchers.

During this year’s primary elections, Abbott campaigned heavily against Republican incumbents who voted against vouchers, . Abbott has said the Texas House now has enough votes to pass a voucher program during next year’s legislative session.

Disclosure: Rice University, Texas Southern University – Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs and University of Houston have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in at .

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

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At the Halfway Market in Franklin, Tennessee, where locals come for a good hamburger and friendly conversation, Republican Brian Beathard works the crowd as a candidate for a high-profile legislative seat ahead of a pivotal session on the future of the state’s education system.

By most standards, Beathard should be a shoo-in to replace departing state Rep. Sam Whitson, a four-term Republican lawmaker who’s retiring this year.

Beathard (pronounced BETH-ard) has served on the Williamson County Commission since 2010 and, as its current chairman, has a record of advocating for government efficiency, competence, and conservatism in a predominantly Republican community.

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He’s been endorsed by top local leaders, including Whitson, three mayors, and a retired sheriff.

And he’s the only one of three Republican candidates for the District 65 seat who has continuously lived and worked for more than 25 years in the affluent suburban county south of Nashville.

But when Republican Gov. Bill Lee handed out endorsements in key statehouse primary races last month, Beathard got bypassed because of his stance on a single issue: private school vouchers.

Lee is betting big on a policy in which he’s had major victories during his nearly six years in office, but has still fallen short of his ultimate goal: taxpayer funding for private school tuition for any Tennessee student who wants it — including those from middle-class and wealthy families — all under the banner of “school choice.”

The governor’s in the legislature this spring, even with a GOP supermajority. Now, in anticipation of a do-over, Lee is taking the unusual step of using his bully pulpit to endorse certain Republican candidates over others.

A proponent of local control, Beathard — like Whitson — opposes the governor’s plan, especially for Williamson County, home to two of the state’s top-performing public school districts.

“Our schools are our oceanfront property, so we should take a hard pause on anything that could negatively affect our students, our schools, our property values, or our ability to attract business,” Beathard said of Williamson County, where such big companies as Nissan, Mitsubishi Motors, Mars Petcare, and Tractor Supply Co. have their U.S. headquarters.

The governor, who also is from Williamson County and graduated from a public high school in Franklin, instead is backing real estate investor and attorney Lee Reeves, who moved to Tennessee five years ago from Texas. Reeves, who serves on a local zoning appeals board, supports school vouchers, as does candidate Michelle Foreman, a former member of the state’s Republican executive committee.

Whoever wins the three-way Republican primary on Aug. 1 is likely to succeed Whitson.

And Lee is eager to replace voucher opponents like Whitson with supporters to achieve his top policy priority

Governor is ‘taking a risk’ by wading into contested primaries

After his universal voucher proposal collapsed in committees over Republican disagreements about the specifics, the governor pledged to vet GOP legislative candidates this election year based on his school choice agenda.

“I’ve said a lot of times I get engaged in elections, and I get engaged in candidates,” he told reporters in May, promising to “understand who I can be most supportive and most helpful to.”

He’s following the playbook of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who school choice as a litmus test to remove anti-voucher Republican candidates from races, enabling Iowa to pass universal vouchers in 2023 and next year.

But if Lee’s endorsees lose their primary races to candidates like Beathard, the governor may find it even harder to push his education agenda through the legislature in 2025 as he enters his last two years in office, accelerating his lame duck status.

“The governor already put his reputation on the line to get vouchers through this spring and it didn’t work, so now he’s playing hardball,” said John Geer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University.

“But he’s also taking a risk,” Geer continued. “If some of these candidates who didn’t get his endorsement survive, they’ll be even more entrenched” against vouchers.

According to Beathard, Lee and members of his staff didn’t speak personally with him about his position before announcing which candidates he was backing.

“My ears are open if there were a local option so Williamson County can opt out and counties that need that policy can opt in,” Beathard said.

Pro-voucher interests have the governor’s ear

Lee’s endorsements in his home county, as well as a handful of other state legislative races, generally mirror those announced earlier by Americans for Prosperity, a pro-voucher group affiliated with Kansas billionaire Charles Koch’s conservative advocacy network.

“We plan to put the full weight of our grassroots efforts behind each of our policy champions,” said Tori Venable, the group’s Tennessee leader, when rolling out several slates of endorsements in May.

A large amount of money is also coming into the state from pro-voucher interests.

The American Federation for Children for the 2024 elections cycle with at least $10 million to support pro-voucher candidates in state legislative races nationwide.

“If you’re a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school choice and freedom in education, you’re a target. If you’re a champion for parents, we’ll be your shield,” said Tommy Schultz, the group’s national CEO and its former spokesperson in Tennessee.

That’s just one of the concerns of Whitson, the departing state representative.

“The governor’s endorsement in District 65 opens the door for dark money from out of state to get into this campaign, simply so our governor can try to secure one more vote for his voucher program,” Whitson said.

Another voucher vote likely would be close in Tennessee’s House

Lee, who cruised to victory in two elections after campaigning to give parents more education choices for their children, appeared to have enough Senate votes to pass a statewide voucher plan this year, but couldn’t rally the House’s GOP supermajority to do the same.

His 2019 proposal to create a voucher program for Tennessee’s two biggest urban areas after then-House Speaker Glen Casada held the voting board open for 38 minutes to convince Rep. Jason Zachary, of Knoxville, to change from “no” to “yes.” That controversial parliamentary maneuver remains a source of bitterness on both sides of the aisle, according to Whitson.

“There’s still a lot of fallout from that vote,” Whitson said. “But ethically and morally, I consider my ‘no’ vote on that day to be the best vote I ever cast.”

Supporters say universal vouchers would put all Tennessee parents in charge of their children’s education by making private schools a more affordable option.

Critics like Whitson say the policy would destabilize public education, bust the state’s budget, and further segregate schools by race, income, and students with disabilities, setting the stage for discrimination lawsuits against the state and various participating private schools.

“A lot of Republicans feel like the governor is putting us in a bad position with his voucher plan,” Whitson said. “And many are also disappointed at his tactic of injecting himself in the primary races.”

Scott Golden, who chairs the state Republican Party, said Lee has been talking about his passion for school choice since he first ran for governor eight years ago. Lee also has a right, he said, to campaign for issues that are important to him.

“We see it all the time on the national level. Elected officials are free to make their voices heard during an election cycle, just like anybody else,” Golden said.

Hendrell Remus, who chairs the Tennessee Democratic Party, has a different take.

“The governor is willing to tear his Republican caucus to shreds in order to pass one item on his agenda,” Remus said. “But I think voters will step up and reject the candidates who Gov. Lee is trying to prop up. It’s an opportunity for Democrats.”

It’s unclear how the governor’s endorsements will play out this election year.

But for Lucetta Mannion, a Republican voter in Williamson County, Lee’s backing of a pro-voucher candidate helped to bring the issue to her attention — and steered her toward Beathard’s camp.

“I’ve done my research,” said Mannion, whose five grandchildren have attended local public schools. “Our schools are excellent, and I see no reason to have a voucher system for our children. If Brian wins, it will be one more vote in the legislature against it.”

(Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.)

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on and .

OMAHA — The last petition circulators eyeing Nebraska’s November ballot are still chasing voters, days after last week’s deadline for other groups to submit signatures to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Support Our Schools has two additional weeks to turn in signatures because of when the Legislature changed the school choice law that the group’s previous petition had sought to repeal.

The group has until July 17 to collect 61,000 valid signatures from about 5% of registered voters statewide to force a fall vote on repealing the latest iteration of school choice law.

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Tim Royers of Support Our Schools says the group is confident it will collect enough signatures, as well as the legally required baseline from 5% from voters in at least 38 of Nebraska’s 93 counties.

Royers said one of the group’s challenges is explaining to voters that the petition on the same issue that they signed last year doesn’t count for this one, that they need to sign again.

“That honestly has been one of our largest obstacles this time,” Royers said. “Obviously we know who signed last time…. We’ve reached out to them, and we’ve gotten pushback (that they’ve already signed).”

Revised law spurred new petition effort

Sponsoring State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Omaha has acknowledged that she revised the Opportunity Scholarships Act that lawmakers passed in 2023 partly to sidestep a petition drive against it.

She and other supporters of the 2023 law, including State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, touted the importance of giving parents more options for where to send kids who have struggled in their public schools.

“People aren’t putting themselves in a position of parents who have a child who is not succeeding that is miserable and they have an option here that might work,” Linehan said.

Linehan said the new law addressed many concerns some education advocates raised about Legislative Bill 1402’s predecessor, LB 753. Lawmakers also added new funding for K-12 schools, including $1 billion put toward baseline state aid and special education.

LB 1402 will repeal its predecessor, LB 753, in late October and its $25 million-a-year tax credit for people funding scholarships for needy students attending private K-12 schools.

LB 1402 instead to create and fund the state’s first voucher program for students attending private K-12 schools.

Supporters hope to increase the amount appropriated over time and to increase the number of students eligible.

No ‘Decline to Sign’ campaign

Unlike last time, school choice advocates have not organized a “Decline to Sign” campaign. Some pointed to more than $700,000 that Support Our Schools has spent on this petition effort, after having spent $1.4 million on the 2023 push to oppose LB 753.

Much of that funding came from state and national teachers unions, many of which have participated in similar campaigns in other states in previous years.

Linehan has said it is with teachers unions and Omaha philanthropist Susie Buffett, who oppose LB 1402. The choice laws have had the backing of U.S. Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., and former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Support Our Schools has said most Nebraskans do not want public dollars spent on private K-12 education. It argues that such programs impact education funding in other states that have created and grown voucher programs.

Voucher program fears

Public school advocates argue that voucher programs in other states started by offering help to kids with limited means and then expanded to cover mainly kids already attending private schools.

Some have described the programs as a way to weaken support for public schools. Others say they are a boon to religious education at a time of declining church attendance.

Karen Kilgarin of the Nebraska State Education Association, which is helping Support Our Schools, said Nebraskans just want an opportunity to let the Legislature know where they stand.

“It shouldn’t be so hard to let people vote, especially when they’ve already made it clear they want to vote on this issue,” she said.

Public interest in program

Linehan said some parents don’t have time to wait for public school systems to improve. They need help now for their kids, she said, and they lack the financial flexibility to send their children to private schools

More than 2,100 students’ families have signed up for the initial program through the state’s largest scholarship-granting organization for the 2024-25 school year.

Lauren Gage of Opportunity Scholarships of Nebraska said her group has received more than $2.15 million in pledges for scholarship funds and calls from parents seeking more information.

“Contributions have been picking up this summer,” Gage said. “And we expect many more taxpayers taking advantage of the tax credit as LB 753 sunsets.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

Partnership for Educational Choice, a group that “defends educational choice nationwide,” filed a motion this week asking to join the defense of challenging the constitutionality of a new school voucher program.

Four guardians of public school students filed the earlier this month in the Pulaski County Circuit Court. The plaintiffs asked a judge to block enforcement of the Education Freedom Account Program created by the . The complaint alleges that using funds intended for public schools elsewhere violates a Constitutional provision.

The complaint also contends, “If implemented, the LEARNS Act will drain valuable and necessary resources from the public school system and create a separate and unequal school system that discriminates between children based on economic, racial and physical characteristics and capabilities.”

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Current defendants include Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Education Secretary Jacob Oliva, the Arkansas State Board of Education and Department of Finance and Administration Secretary Jim Hudson.

Partnership for Educational Choice is described as “a joint project of the  and .” Both of the listed organizations are nonprofits with a history of defending school voucher programs like the one Sanders championed in 2023.

If the from Partnership for Educational Choice is approved, attorneys would represent three Arkansas mothers who currently use — or intend to use — the voucher program, according to a press release. Those mothers are Erika Lara of Little Rock, Katie Parrish of Paragould and Nikita Glendenning of Van Buren.

“Before I received my Education Freedom Account, my son was being bullied and struggling academically, but now I have the resources to put him into a school where he’s thriving,” Lara said in a press release. “Taking away this program would put my son’s academic and social progress in jeopardy.”

More than 5,400 Arkansas students participated in the first year of the program, which is being phased in over three years. Participation will be capped at about 14,000 students for the 2024-2025 school year. Around $6,600 in state funding was available to each student last year. That will increase to nearly $6,900 this year.

Lawmakers $97.5 million for the state’s voucher program for the 2025 fiscal year. The program could cost upwards of in its third year when it’s available to all Arkansas students, the state finance department has estimated.

Among the reasons for intervention, the motion notes the mothers’ interest in the program is “inextricably intertwined with their fundamental liberty interest in ‘directing the upbringing and education’ of their children.”

Lara and Parrish each have one child that has switched schools using the Education Freedom Account Program. The motion notes that if the program is struck down, the women would be left in a difficult financial situation. Glendenning intends to use the program for two of her four children during the 2025-2026 school year.

“Despite repeated court rulings that these types of programs are constitutional, opponents of educational choice continue to attack these programs,” said Ed Choice Vice President and Director of Litigation Thomas M. Fisher in a press release. “We look forward to defending this program and making clear that it is constitutional.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

The shakeup could set the stage for a statewide roll-out of education savings accounts (ESAs), which allow families to use public dollars to pay for private school.

Vote tallies Wednesday morning — DeWayne Burns, Justin Holland, and John Kuempel — losing to their primary opponents, each of whom had been endorsed by Abbott and state Attorney General Ken Paxton. A fourth, veteran Texas House representative Gary Vandeaver, by a little under 1,400 votes.

The four men had all helped thwart the governor’s push last year behind legislation that would have made ESAs universal throughout the state. Along with House Democrats and a committed faction of rural Republicans, they voted the use of state funding for all forms of school vouchers last spring; in a special session called by Abbott several months later, the same coalition a school choice provision from an omnibus K–12 funding bill.  

In response, Abbott and several major conservative donors took the rare step of backing ESA supporters against the incumbents in state legislative primaries. In March, nine Republicans who’d previously defied Abbott lost the party’s nomination, while four more were denied majorities and forced into runoff elections decided on Tuesday. 

Taken together, 13 Republican ESA opponents were pushed aside, which would be more than enough to flip the 84-63 margin against universal ESAs that prevailed last year.  

But the passage of a new school choice bill is still not guaranteed. The Texas Legislature is out of session until next year; elections in November will determine the body’s partisan composition, and while Republicans are favored to retain control over both chambers, the size of their majorities — and the continuing willingness of anti-voucher Republicans to defect again — will help determine the prospects of statewide ESAs.

Ebullient in victory, Abbott announced that House Republicans now held “enough votes to pass school choice.”

“While we did not win every race we fought in, the overall message from this year’s primaries is clear: Texans want school choice,” the governor in a statement. “Opponents can no longer ignore the will of the people.”

Recent polling suggests that education savings accounts do enjoy the support of large numbers of Texans. While many voters are unfamiliar with the details of particular legislative proposals, that 49 percent of respondents — and particularly African Americans, parents, and churchgoers — favored vouchers, compared with just 27 percent who opposed them. A more recent poll from the University of Texas at Austin found a tighter margin .

Zeph Capo, president of the teachers’ union affiliate Texas AFT, said in that the primary results reflected a crush of spending from deep-pocketed school choice advocates. While the primary campaign had succeeded in its immediate goals, he argued, the fate of ESAs was still to be decided. 

“Just five out-of-state donors have flooded Texas with $33 million, the same as our state’s record-breaking budget surplus last year, in this election cycle,” Capo wrote. “What it’s bought them so far is a smattering of wins for extremist challengers who now must win outright in November.

It’s not often that statehouse elections in rural Texas steer the national conversation about school choice. But things might change later this month.

On May 28, voters will choose Republican candidates in 13 of the state’s 150 House districts. Four are currently held by representatives targeted by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for persistently stymying his attempts to create a statewide system of education savings accounts (ESAs). If the incumbents fall, many believe the plan will be enacted, turning Texas into the country’s biggest school choice marketplace as soon as 2025.

While presumptively on hold until January, when the legislature will next come into session, the proposal could gain irresistible momentum if the elections are decided in Abbott’s favor. Almost immediately, lawmakers and educators alike would begin seriously considering the fallout from what could be to school enrollments and financing.

The election is the culmination of a yearlong campaign by Abbott and his allies that has migrated from committee hearings in Austin to front-porch campaigning in East Texas. In March, knocked off nine Republicans who had blocked a push during last year’s legislative session to allow universal eligibility for ESAs, which provide state funds for families to use for educational expenses like private school tuition. Another handful were denied majorities, triggering runoff elections against opponents who have largely been endorsed by the governor. Abbott has openly predicted that if two more anti-voucher incumbents are defeated, the legislation can be revived and passed.

That victory, if achieved, would result from the interplay of local and national political pressures.

Abbott would immediately gain a critical policy win after multiple previous bids to expand ESAs, all of which have been thwarted by the same coalition of Democrats and rural Republicans. But national donors and advocacy groups have also taken a close interest in the electoral fight, to the tune of millions of dollars in the hopes of extending a generational winning streak for school choice that has unfolded over the past few years. 

Monty Exter is the director of government relations at the , a non-union organization that strongly opposes the governor’s ambitions. He said the success of voucher rollouts in other red states presented something of a “street cred issue” for Abbott, one of the most prominent conservative leaders in the country.

“Texas is the biggest red state in the country, and Abbott is the long-serving governor here,” he said. “He has clearly made it a huge priority where it hasn’t been a huge priority for him in the past. And it’s certainly not a new issue.”

Rural pushback

Indeed, the roots of this month’s extended primary fight extend far into the past, even predating Abbott’s time in office.

In 2007, 2009, and 2013, in response to prior Republican governors’ voucher designs, the Texas House of Representative adopted budgetary rules that explicitly prohibited the transfer of public funding to private schools. In 2017, an ESA bill passed the Senate only to be torpedoed in the lower chamber. And just last spring, Abbott’s renewed effort — sweetened with offers of extra per-pupil funding for traditional public schools — fell short again in the face of familiar bipartisan resistance. 

The overriding obstacle cuts against traditional partisan loyalties: A key faction of Republican legislators are perennially skeptical of the potential disruption of voucher programs to small-town school districts, often their communities’ largest employers. Local officials fear that families will quickly abandon public schools after receiving an ESA, leading to a collapse in both student enrollment and funding.

Those concerns weren’t allayed even after Abbott called last fall to force further consideration of the proposal. In the months following, he turned to the primary ballot, supporting a host of challengers to the House Republicans who defied him. He was joined in his endorsements by high-profile allies , while Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton whose leaders he accused of whipping up opposition to pro-ESA primary candidates. (While of those later resolved the complaints with the attorney general’s office, against administrators accused of using school resources for electioneering purposes.)

According to survey results, the public stir around school choice made little impact on Republicans around the state. In a February poll from , a research institute housed at the University of Texas at Austin, of potential Republican voters listed ESAs as a top issue influencing their primary vote. Asked which politicians’ endorsements might sway them, only 7 percent named Abbott. 

But the governor’s energetic campaigning clearly a healthy proportion of the state GOP’s biggest ESA critics in the March 5 primary. So did the heavy spending of conservative donors — including billionaire TikTok investor and school choice maven Jeff Yass, who in December to spend on the campaigns.

“What made this cycle different was that the governor decided to stake so much of his political capital on the passage of a school voucher program in Texas and — upon failing to achieve that goal — committed to spending significant amounts of money to unseat these incumbent legislators,” argued Joshua Blank, the Texas Politics Project’s research director. 

It remains to be seen whether the same recipe will unseat the four additional incumbents fighting runoff battles this month. Cal Jillson, a professor of government at Southern Methodist University and a longtime observer of Texas politics, said that runoff elections tend to draw a smaller and more ideologically committed electorate. That could be a bad sign for Abbott’s targets.

“We did see a lot of these incumbents go down in the primary,” Jillson noted. “With the low turnout in a runoff race, it’s usually the most motivated people who will end up turning out and casting ballots, and those tend to be people who are deeply committed to the party and social conservative issues.”

‘A clear message’

For now, ESA proponents are using every edge to grab more seats in an already-conservative chamber — particularly money.

In addition to the individual contributions made by Yass and other wealthy activists, the conservative challengers have drawn deeply from the coffers of the , a right-leaning advocacy organization based in Washington. Through an affiliated Super PAC, the School Freedom Fund, in the March primaries; they’ve dropped at least as much in the three months since.  

In a statement, Club for Growth President David McIntosh said the group jumped into the little-publicized legislative primaries not just to shape Texas policy, but also to send a message to all Republicans guilty of “denying parents and kids choice in education.” The organization might look for similar opportunities in places like Georgia and Tennessee, he added. 

“This election will send a clear message to Republicans in every state that you should retire or expect to lose in your next primary,” McIntosh warned. “We are also hopeful that this will push school freedom allies in other states to reform failing public schools, and we are looking at replicating these efforts in other states.”

That nationwide perspective has grown as more red jurisdictions have acted to establish or expand families’ eligibility for private school choice. In all, 11 states now boast , and with each newly adopted law — Alabama became the latest to pass its legislation in March — it has become more noteworthy that Texas still lags behind.

Jillson said he believed that vouchers would be all but inevitable if the embattled incumbents lose their elections next week. Even if a few survive, he said, they will be “sobered” against continuing to stand in the way of ESA expansion.

“I suspect that some of these four will be defeated. That will provide Abbott with a slim majority in the next regular session, which could grow if other members who’ve opposed vouchers in the past say, ‘I can’t do this anymore or he’ll come for me.’ ”

COLUMBIA — The state will award taxpayer-funded scholarships to 2,880 K-12 students for 2024-25, meaning just under half of the available slots could go unused for the program’s inaugural year, according to data the state Department of Education provided Wednesday to the SC Daily Gazette.

The total of awarded scholarships means 64% of the 7,907 students whose parents applied by the March deadline were denied. Most of those applications were rejected because they either came in after the deadline or they weren’t completely filled out, according to the agency.

In the inaugural year, students had to qualify for Medicaid to be eligible. One of every 10 applications was rejected because the parents’ income was too high.

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The law creating the private school choice program provided $6,000 scholarships for a maximum of 5,000 students for the coming year — to be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis to all eligible parents.

In in the House touted the high number of applicants as a reason to greatly expand the program before it even starts. But the final numbers suggest that was unnecessary. (The Senate never took up the bill.)

What’s in the budget?

Both the House and Senate set aside $30 million in their spending plans for the fiscal year starting July 1, assuming that all 5,000 slots would be taken. An agreement between the chambers’ budget plans won’t be worked out until next month. Regardless, that money is locked in, since it’s the same amount in both versions.

The 2,880 approved students will require less than 60% of that allocation.

By law, all awards had to be decided by mid-April, 30 days after the application deadline.

But denied parents can still correct errors or typos in their applications, which could result in a slight increase in approvals, according to the agency. However, the data it provided shows zero applications still in process.

Legislators may approve a clause in the budget overriding that deadline and allowing the state department to continue accepting applications and awarding eligible parents throughout the year.

Parents already notified can start accessing their $6,000 scholarships in July through an online portal that allows them to direct the money toward , mostly private schools and tutors.

That is, unless the South Carolina Supreme Court decides before then that the law violates the state constitution’s ban on public money directly benefiting private schools, as opponents in March. That lawsuit did not block the law’s implementation pending a ruling.

Advocates and critics respond

Supporters pointed to the 7,907 applications as proof that families are interested in the program. They suggested fewer students will be denied in the coming years as the agency works out the kinks, eligibility expands, and parents become more familiar with the application process.

The , which has been lobbying for the school choice program for years, said it’s not discouraged by the rejected applications.

“They prove what we have been saying for months: South Carolinians crave flexibility and customization in their children’s education,” the conservative think tank said in a statement to the Gazette.

For critics, however, the fact that the department approved less than 40% of the applicants suggests demand was exaggerated, particularly among poor families eligible for this first round.

“To me, this is indicative that South Carolinians are already happy with either their public schools or the choices we have available,” such as public charter schools, said Patrick Kelly, a lobbyist with the Palmetto State Teachers Association and a high school teacher.

House Education Chairwoman Shannon Erickson said the large number of denials could be explained by parents not understanding the process or not knowing about it in time to complete it. The two-month window for applications started in mid-January. The process could have been too confusing, she said.

“I understand a learning curve,” said the Beaufort Republican. “Perhaps we need to put a little more IT assistance into the process.”

Erickson proposed the budget clause allowing the empty slots to continue to be filled.

“That would stop the department from not letting students in because of an arbitrary date,” she said.

Kelly countered the date isn’t arbitrary: The March 15 deadline was put in the law to ensure public schools had enough time to create class schedules, he said.

If students decide to use the money to transfer to private schools during the school year, schools could end up scrambling, he said.

“I understand and appreciate the heartbeat behind the rolling window, but it could cause logistical issues,” said Kelly, a teacher at Blythewood High School.

The Palmetto Promise Institute, on the other hand, lauded Erickson’s proposed budget clause as a way of filling the remaining slots and ensuring the full $30 million set aside for the program goes to students. Even if it doesn’t, the state should celebrate the fact that many students got financial help, said the think tank formerly led by state Superintendent Ellen Weaver.

“We should not lose sight of the victory: Two thousand, eight hundred, and eighty South Carolina students are now able to choose the education that best fits them, an opportunity they likely could never have afforded otherwise,” the institute’s statement read. “That alone is worth celebrating.”

Eligibility and denials

For the coming school year, eligibility was limited to families making 200% of the federal poverty level, or $62,400 for a family of four.

Students also either had to be currently attending a public school or just starting kindergarten. The latter accounts for one of every five students approved for the program.

Under the law, the income and participation caps increase over the following two years. By the 2026-2027 school year, up to 15,000 students from families making up to 400% of the poverty level will be eligible.

The so-called passed by the House would’ve allowed students already in private and home schools to get scholarships and removed income eligibility rules by 2026. It called for the yearly cap on the number of participating students to be set by legislators through the budget process.

But less than 11% of the denials were due to parents’ incomes being above the limit.

In about 8% of cases, the students were either not yet old enough for kindergarten or too old for high school. Two students were denied because they don’t live in South Carolina.

Because the pool of eligible students was smaller this year, it made sense that fewer families would receive money, Erickson said.

“It was the least possible people” who could receive the money, she said.

An expansion, she said, would help families who earn just above the income limits but are still struggling. She pointed to the 539 students whose application were denied because their parents earned too much.

But Kelly pointed out that advocates for the program have touted it for decades as a way to help poor families stuck in failing schools afford another option for their children.

The fact that fewer of those families took advantage of the program than expected suggests that, even if numbers increase in coming years, it will be difficult to know how many disadvantaged students are using the money, he said.

“I think it paints a really compelling argument that there is no need for something like (universal school choice) in the near future,” Kelly said.

Editor’s note: The percentage of applications rejected due to deadlines has been corrected to 79%. 

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

Gov. Brian Kemp signed a suite of education-related bills into law Tuesday, including a controversial measure that will allow parents of children in low-performing schools to claim $6,500 in state education funds to pull their children out of the public system and enroll them in private school or teach them at home.

Supporters say expanding school vouchers will help kids in schools that don’t meet their needs succeed academically. Opponents say they siphon needed dollars from underfunded public schools to private institutions with less oversight.

Kemp thanked the bill’s author, Cumming Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal, and House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones for working on the bill for years before it finally passed this year.

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“I am grateful for that dedication because this legislation has always been about one thing, providing every Georgia child the opportunity to get the education that they deserve,” Kemp said. “To ensure that participating schools are living up to that promise, they must demonstrate their own sound financial footing and submit student performance data before enrolling students, and they must administer an education savings authority approved assessment to ensure quality student performance.”

Those additions Kemp mentioned were sweeteners added to help convince Republican holdouts in the House to support the measure. Other additions make temporary teacher pay raises approved over the last few years permanent and allow public schools to use state capital construction dollars to build or renovate Pre-K facilities.

The program is set to go into effect for next year’s fall semester and is limited to students zoned into the lowest 25% of Georgia schools. Except for kindergartners, participants must have been enrolled in public school for at least a year to qualify. The cost to the state is capped at 1% of the cost of the Quality Basic Education formula used to determine the state’s school funding share, which now equals more than $100 million.

Though some House members needed convincing, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones indicated the Senate is ready to move further.

“As a longtime proponent of school choice, I am proud of the General Assembly for passing the most substantive initiative in decades,” Jones said. “I want to thank Gov. Kemp for his support for school choice and education freedom within our state. Today’s signing of SB 233 is a great step in the right direction, however, there is still more work to be done to give parents the choice and resources that can meet their child’s unique educational needs. I look forward to working with Governor Kemp and my colleagues in the General Assembly to ensure educational freedom in Georgia.”

Many education leaders were not cheering as Kemp affixed his signature to the bill. Teachers and education lobbyists have long complained that the voucher bill will leave already cash-strapped schools with less money. In a virtual news conference hosted by the Intercultural Development Research Association Association following the bill’s signing, activists lamented what they called a rushed and non-transparent process that led to the bill’s passage and predicted that it will do little to help the families proponents say it will because $6,500 is not enough to pay for tuition at most Georgia private schools, which tend to be clustered around major metro areas.

Elijah Brawner, a divinity student at Emory University, said every private school in his area is Christian-based, which would further alienate some students.

“So if you can get a public school voucher and that lets you leave your supposedly terrible public schools and take your money with you, first of all, the voucher doesn’t cover the whole tuition,” he said. “So now you’re only letting people come through who can already afford to pay partial tuition through subsidizing students above a certain income level, and you’re not subsidizing any students that are of a diverse faith background.”

Tracey Nance, the 2022 Georgia Teacher of the Year, said she is concerned that families who take advantage of the program may be exposed to legal discrimination and give up rights that public school families would have.

“The private schools that accept these publicly funded vouchers are not held to the same standards as public schools, and they are in fact even legally allowed to discriminate,” she said. “They have little oversight students will not be required to take the same accountability test as the rest of Georgia students, they will not be held to the same instructional standards. Even more when parents use this voucher they waive all rights to federal protection and public education services, including services for students with disabilities and services such as transportation and school meals.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on and .

AUSTIN, Texas — In rural Texas, public schools are the cultural heart of small towns. People pack the high school stadium for Friday night football games, and FFA classes prepare the next generation for the agricultural life. In many places, more people work for the school district than for any other employer.

For years, many rural Texas school districts, often barely scraping by on lean operating budgets, have relied on their local representatives in the Republican-led state legislature to fend off school voucher programs. Some of these GOP lawmakers, along with many of their liberal colleagues from larger cities, have argued that giving families taxpayer dollars to send their children to private schools or to educate them at home would drain money from the public schools.

That wall of resistance is now on the verge of collapse, thanks to a multimillion-dollar political offensive led by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and heavily funded by billionaire out-of-state allies committed to spreading school choice nationwide.

Six of the Republican House members Abbott targeted for opposing his school choice initiative were defeated in the March 5 primary election, and four others were thrown into a May runoff. Abbott said last week that his side is within two votes of enacting a school choice program in Texas.

“Even individuals who voted against school choice who won need to rethink their position in light of Abbott’s success on the issue,” said Matt Rinaldi, outgoing chair of the Texas Republican Party. “It’s sure to pass after these election results.”

Similar dynamics have been on display over the past two years in other states where rural opponents, sometimes aligned with labor groups and teachers unions, have sought unsuccessfully to head off the widening push. School choice can come through vouchers, refundable tax credits or education savings accounts.

In Arkansas, lawmakers sent  to Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders last year for her signature after proponents overcame years of opposition from rural Republicans allied with Democrats.

In Oklahoma, Tom Newell, a former Republican state legislator who works for a  that advocates for school choice, said rural resistance has steadily diminished in that state, too, enabling lawmakers to equip parents with education tax credits that became effective this year.

Rural Texas educators who have long opposed school choice are now bracing for it. “We really are the heart, soul and backbone of Texas,” said Randy Willis, executive director of the Texas Association of Rural School Districts, which has long opposed school choice. “We’re going to be left with a lot less resources as this progresses and goes through.”

In the small Texas Panhandle community of Booker, which has two blinking traffic lights and is closer to Cheyenne, Wyoming, than the state capital of Austin, school Superintendent Mike Lee has similar concerns.

“In all likelihood, that makes it where Abbott could pass vouchers,” Lee said of the primary election results.

Like many other rural school leaders, Lee said any loss of funding would make it even harder for his district to pay for basic operations and new, state-mandated safety programs launched in response to school shootings.

Primary battles

Despite the concerns of school officials such as Willis and Lee, school choice proponents say the rapid spread of the concept in Texas and other states dismantles the perception that rural residents oppose it.

“There’s been a myth in Texas that rural Republicans do not want school choice,” said Genevieve Collins, state director of the Texas branch of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group. Voters “put that myth to bed” in the recent Republican primary, she told Stateline.

Abbott said during a speech last week that parents frequently approached him on the campaign trail “begging” and “pleading” for school choice. “Any Republican House member who was voting against school choice was voting against the voice of the Republicans who voted in that primary,” he said.

School choice advocates argue that giving families public education dollars to pay for private school allows everybody — not just the wealthy — to choose the school that is best for their child. Though most Republicans support school choice and most Democrats oppose it, the issue doesn’t break cleanly along party lines: Just as some rural Republicans oppose vouchers, some Black and Hispanic Democrats support them, arguing that families should have an alternative if their local public schools are substandard.

“When you look at this, you can see that the majority of parents want school choice. They just want to be empowered with the decisions of their children’s future,” Hillary Hickland, a mother of four who defeated Republican incumbent state Rep. Hugh Shine of Temple, said of the primary results. Shine was one of 21 Republicans who voted to take vouchers out of the education bill last year,  to The Texas Tribune, and the governor endorsed Hickland.

“I think the arguments against school choice are based in fear and control. Ultimately, we have to do what’s best for the students. That’s the purpose of education,” said Hickland, who added: “For the majority of families, public school will always be right and best, and that’s great. We’re not giving up on our public schools.”

Janis Holt, a former teacher in the Silsbee Independent School District northeast of Houston, defeated incumbent Republican state Rep. Ernest Bailes, another voucher opponent who earned Abbott’s ire. Holt said she is reassuring rural superintendents in her district that she is a staunch supporter of both public school funding and school choice.

“We’re going to make sure that we protect the students that will be in our public schools, our teachers and administrators, but will also give parents opportunities to get their kids out of a failing school when they need to,” Holt said.

Republican state Rep. Gary VanDeaver, one of the House members targeted by Abbott, hasn’t wavered from his opposition to school choice initiatives. VanDeaver survived in the first primary round on March 5 but wound up in a May 28 runoff against an opponent backed by the governor.

“I’m just going to try to dodge all the bombs that are dropped on me and keep working to get a positive message out there and make sure everybody understands what’s at stake,” said VanDeaver, a former school superintendent.

He fears Abbott’s school choice drive will redirect billions of dollars a year from rural Texas school districts to urban and suburban ones. “The economies of the small communities are struggling as it is,” he said. “There’s just a lot of reasons that something like this is bad for rural Texas.”

Rapid spread

School choice programs have spread rapidly in recent years, aided by groups such as the American Federation for Children, which was founded by the billionaire family of former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Americans for Prosperity, affiliated with the conservative billionaire Koch family.

“Nationally we really saw that momentum take off a couple of years ago,” said Chantal Lovell of EdChoice, a nonprofit group that tracks and promotes school choice. “After 2023 there was no stopping it, and it’s clear that universal educational choice isn’t a fleeting trend, but here to stay.”

As many as 73 programs have been implemented in 32 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, including 11 with a comprehensive statewide reach and 62 that serve various portions of the population, according to EdChoice.

Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a program into law earlier this month, and a bill is awaiting the governor’s signature in Wyoming.

Texas emerged as the most closely watched school choice battleground after Abbott last year made the issue one of his top priorities and called repeated special sessions in an attempt to overcome opposition from a coalition of rural Republicans aligned with Democrats.

Abbott unleashed millions of dollars from his campaign funds and traveled into the home counties of resistant Republicans after a school choice initiative collapsed in the Texas House.

Other dynamics were also at work, including endorsements by former President Donald Trump, who has equated school choice with civil rights, and Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sought to settle scores against House members for initiating an unsuccessful effort to oust him through impeachment.

Big money

An avalanche of campaign dollars from both inside and outside the state helped propel Abbott’s offensive, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit research organization that tracks political spending.

Billionaire Jeff Yass, a megadonor investor based in Pennsylvania and one of the nation’s leading school choice advocates,  the governor’s campaign more than $6 million, which Abbott officials described as the “largest single donation in Texas history.”

Abbott, who is not up for reelection until 2026, was one of the biggest spenders in the undertaking, drawing $6.4 million from his campaign fund to help finance opposition expenditures against incumbents on his hit list.

The AFC Victory Fund, a super PAC the American Federation for Children created in September, directed its resources into 20 Republican primary races in Texas, opposing 13 Republican incumbents, supporting six others and financing a 20th candidate for an open seat, according to Scott Jensen, a former Wisconsin House speaker who is now a senior adviser to the American Federation for Children.

For many of the targeted legislators, the political attack was insurmountable. “We gave it everything we had, but you can’t overcome being outspent over 4-to-1,” said Republican state Rep. Travis Clardy, who lost to Joanne Shofner, former president of the Nacogdoches County Republican Women.

“We spent more money in this campaign than all my other campaigns combined,” said Clardy, a Nacogdoches attorney who first won election in 2012. “But the money aligned against us and the power and political clout behind it were too much.”

Among other things, targeted incumbents said, the AFC Victory Fund financed a bombardment of mailings and ads that often went beyond school choice to focus on other issues, such as being lax on border security. One mailing was fashioned like a wanted poster.

Republican state Rep. Drew Darby, who prevailed over his challenger and doesn’t have a Democratic opponent, said the tactics were out of bounds and called Abbott’s involvement in his race “sad” for the state. “That’s a situation I’ve never seen in my political career,” said Darby.

Jensen said the AFC Victory Fund spent almost $4 million in Texas and plans to spend $15 million nationally on state school choice campaigns during the 2024 election cycle.

“Welcome to politics,” Jensen said of the criticism from targeted lawmakers. “These guys are long-term incumbents. I’m sorry if they haven’t been in a tough race for a while, but everything we said was accurate. And I don’t think any of it was misleading or unfair.”

At least 70% of the AFC Victory Fund’s communications, he said, focused on school choice.

In the Robert Lee Independent School District in West Texas, which has one campus and about 250 students, Superintendent Aaron Hood fears the potential impact on his district.

As with other districts, inflation has put a whammy on operating expenses, leaving Robert Lee with a budget deficit for the second year in a row. And because state funding is based on average daily attendance, if any students were to transfer to a private school under a school choice plan, Robert Lee would face a drop in state funds. (The nearest private school is 30 miles away, in San Angelo.)

For now, Hood says, it’s a bit too early to assess the potential impact of the primary results. But if Abbott prevails in the next round of electoral combat, he said, “then I would say that choice is coming to Texas.”

Jimmy Cloutier of OpenSecrets provided data on campaign contributions and expenditures for this article.

This story was originally published by , which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on  and .

Gov. on Wednesday urged school voucher supporters to make the final push in the May primary runoff elections to bring a pro-school voucher majority to the Texas House.

Delivering the opening speech at an annual conservative policy conference in Austin, Abbott declared that the school voucher movement was “on the threshold of success” after the March 5 primary. The election saw several anti-voucher Republican incumbents lose to pro-voucher challengers, putting pro-voucher members on the verge of a majority in the Texas House, the last legislative roadblock to the policy.

“We are now at 74 votes in favor of school choice in the state of Texas. Which is good, but 74 does not equal 76,” Abbott said, referring to the number of votes he needs to pass the bill into law. “We need two more votes.”

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The Texas Public Policy Foundation, which hosts the annual Texas Policy Summit where Abbott spoke, embarked with Abbott more than a year ago on a “parent empowerment” campaign to bring school vouchers to Texas, holding events across the state to rally voters behind their effort. However, the pro-voucher campaign is running out of time to chip away at the anti-voucher side, as Abbott says the final vote count on school vouchers in next year’s legislative session will be decided in this year’s primary runoffs.

“This is not a time for you to sit on the sidelines and applaud the success that we’ve achieved,” Abbott said. “This is a time when all of us must come together, redouble our efforts knowing that the final vote count is going to be determined by what happens in just two months from now.”

The May 28 Republican primary runoffs carry more opportunities for the “school choice” movement to pick up more voucher-supporting members, and Abbott said “we should be able to win that.” However, those votes aren’t guaranteed, and that tally assumes no surprises in the general election in November.

Abbott likened the effort to get a majority to a football game in which the outcome could be decided by a single kick.

“We don’t want to rely upon a field-goal kicker,” Abbott said. “We want to make sure that, when these runoffs are over at the end of May, that we are ahead by more than two points, or three points or four points.”

Abbott’s campaign began as an effort to motivate voters and win legislative support among members. But after the House voted to kill his voucher proposal, he shifted to an election campaign against anti-voucher Republicans. The governor endorsed 11 challengers to anti-voucher incumbents. Abbott backed his most recent endorsee, Katrina Pierson, after she earned a plurality against state Rep. Justin Holland, R-Rockwall, and kicked off his runoff campaign tour on Tuesday at an event supporting Pierson.

House leadership, including Speaker Dade Phelan and the Republican caucus campaign apparatus, are financially backing Holland and his fellow anti-voucher incumbents. However, not everyone in leadership is supporting the anti-voucher members.

At a Texas Policy Summit panel that immediately followed Abbott’s speech, state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, said he’s tired of “playing nice” on negotiating for anything other than “full universal” vouchers.

“I hope every one of the people that win that runoff are pro-school choice, and if you’re supported by a teacher union, I don’t want you back,” Cain said. “It’s that easy.”

This article originally appeared in . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy.

Following five years of unsuccessful attempts by Georgia Republican lawmakers to expand the state’s school voucher program, GOP Senators on Wednesday cast enough votes to send the latest version of the controversial plan to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk to be signed into law.

On Wednesday, several Republican House Majority Caucus members joined their colleagues in the Senate chamber to celebrate the so-called Georgia Promise Schools Act’s passage by a 33-21 party-line vote. The measure allows families with students enrolled in Georgia’s K-12 public schools to remove $6,500 of state funding provided to local school districts in order to attend private schools or to homeschool.

Critics of the vouchers continued the debate on Wednesday whether $6,500 would be enough for o afford cost of tuition at many of the state’s better private schools.

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Sen. Greg Dolezal, a Cumming Republican, said that $6,500 is close to the state’s median private school cost, which should entice parents of students attending low-performing schools to send their children to a private school.

According to , the average private school tuition in Georgia is $11,893 per year, and tuition in the state ranges from $1,042 to $57,500.

Dolezal praised the GOP leadership in the House and Senate as well as Kemp for fighting to get across the finish line ahead of the March 29 deadline for this year’s Legislative session.

“I remember my freshman year 2019 when this bill failed on the floor of the Senate,” Dolezal said. “It means the world to me that five years later we united around this tailored bill that we can all agree is a step in the right direction.”

Different versions of so-called school choice proposals as a number of Republican legislators joined the majority Democratic lawmakers to block a plan they contend would divert taxpayer funding crucial to public schools to cover private schools.Several conservative state lawmakers from rural areas in the past have frequently criticized the expansion of a voucher program that local school officials contend will cost them funding that will be hard to cover with local money.

Senate Bill 233’s notable changes this year are intended to address recurring criticisms of voucher programs by attempting to ensure vouchers are available to students from low income families and hold private schools accountable by reporting to the state how those students are performing academically.

According to the bill, private schools must administer standardized tests to students enrolled in the program. In addition, vouchers will be prioritized for families with household incomes under 400% of the poverty level, amounting to $120,000 for a family of four.

If signed into law, the promise scholarship vouchers would first be available in the fall 2025 school year. Gov. Brian Kemp said earlier this year that the voucher program was a top legislative priority this year.

The bill caps the states’ investment into the program at 1% of the state’s Quality Basic Education formula budgeted for K-12 public education, which now comes out to $141 million annually to cover tuition for about 21,500 students.

The program would have a 10-year window before it expires. Any student enrolled in the program when it ends will keep receiving the payments until they graduate from high school.

Sen. Elena Parent, an Atlanta Democrat, compared the $6,500 voucher to a shiny object to misdirect attention away from how the Legislature has failed to provide many school districts across the state with the financial resources they need to succeed.

“The reality is that a $6,500 voucher doesn’t go nearly far enough to afford any quality, private education,” she said. “The state spends more than that on public schools.

“If you want to talk about real school choice, let’s put our money where our mouth is,” Parent said. “Give every kid $20,000, give $25,000, then we’d actually be talking about real school choice.”

Cobb County Republican Sen. Ed Setzler said the notion of school choice is often exercised by his fellow legislators and many other Georgians who have enough money to attend a strong academically performing public school or be able to afford homeschooling or private school tuition.

“Senate Bill 233 is for those single moms out there working two jobs to keep the lights on who wants school choice for their kids,” he said. “They can’t afford to move to a neighborhood in an area that has a successful public school. They can’t afford to move and sell their house because they’re upside down in their mortgage.”

Sen Nabilah Islam-Parkes said private schools’ autonomy in choosing which types of students they want to accept likely means many students who might benefit most from being in a new environment would be left behind.

“This bill is a thinly veiled effort to segregate and discriminate, under the guise of choice, private institutions free to pick their students will inevitably leave behind those who perhaps need the most support like our special needs kids, our struggling learners,” said the Duluth Democrat.

The nonprofit IDRA, which focuses on equal education opportunities, and the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition labeled it a harmful bill that diverts resources away from the state’s 1.7 million students in public schools.

The legislation was applauded by the conservative-leaning Americans for Prosperity-Georgia’s state director Tony West.

“Every yes vote today was a vote to empower families and students with the choices and resources they need to chart bright futures for Georgia’s students,” West said in a statement. “We applaud the lawmakers who heard from their constituents and made the right choice to expand educational opportunity in the Peach State. This unlocks so much potential for Georgia’s students.”

Georgia Recorder reporter Ross Williams contributed to this report.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on and .

LINCOLN — The next front in Nebraska’s school choice fight could shift toward a proposal by State Sen. Ben Hansen of Blair under which the state would deposit $1,500 a year per student into a new type of state-managed savings account for parents and guardians of students attending private K-12 schools.

Using the language of national school choice advocates, Hansen said his goal is to “fund students, not systems.” He said he has seen other states such as Iowa and Arizona use similar plans to subsidize private school costs.

“Parents are the primary educators of their children, not the government,” he told the Legislature’s Education Committee on Tuesday. “Our role should assist parents in that job.”

would let people use the funds for private school tuition, textbooks, school supplies, therapies, books and academic materials approved by the Nebraska Board of Education. The new educational savings accounts for approved or accredited private K-12 schools would begin in the 2025-26 school year.

The accounts would be overseen by the Nebraska State Treasurer’s Office. But the accounts would offer no tax advantages like the tax-free 529 college savings plans the Treasurer’s Office currently oversees. Instead, under LB 1386, these accounts would act as pass-throughs for state appropriations into a school choice fund that would be created, invested and managed by the state.

One Fremont-area father testified about his difficulties getting a public school to accept his option-enrollment daughter with moderate hearing loss, because she had an individualized education program, or IEP. He and others said the voucher program would make it easier for them to afford private school.

Opponents testified that they wanted public dollars spent on public schools.

Critics point to constitution

The fiscal note said if 80% of Nebraska’s 33,611 private school students applied for the fund it could cost the state $40 million.

The note also estimated the State Treasurer’s Office would need $300,000 to administer the accounts. That includes the costs of an auditor to make sure the funds are properly spent.

Critics of the voucher push said the plan would violate the Nebraska Constitution’s Article VII, Section 11, which says, “No appropriation or grant of public funds or property shall be made to any educational institution which is not owned and controlled by the state or a governmental subdivision thereof.”

Royers said private schools would receive public money, an issue opponents raised last year about the new Opportunity Scholarship Act.

Hansen, reached after the hearing, disagreed. He and State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Omaha said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that state funds can be used this way three times. He explained the Nebraska workaround: The state will be giving state tax dollars to parents and not to private schools, he said.

He said he proposed starting with $1,500 a year because that’s how much state lawmakers funded last year as a baseline level of state aid per public school student. Iowa last session expanded its student savings account for private school students to the full cost of state aid per K-12 student, $7,598 a year.

Royers said other states starting similar voucher programs have learned that the programs largely help offset the costs of students already attending private schools. He said they don’t often create a large influx of new students from public schools who couldn’t otherwise afford to attend. Private school students in Iowa and elsewhere often see large increases in private school tuition rates once state support increases, he said.

And the funding lost to public schools leaves public school students and districts in worse shape, Royers said.

“We should be learning from the mistakes coming out of other states…,” Royers said. “This does not help needy families. It helps private schools.”

Wayne questions Royers

State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha, a school choice advocate, asked Royers why it was OK for the state to subsidize private preschool education and private higher education but not K-12.

“Is there something special about those years?” he asked, after Royers did not answer the first few times he asked.

A representative of the Holland Children’s Movement shared data from its 2023 poll indicating more than 60% of Nebraskans opposed subsidizing private schools with public funding.

Linehan and Education Committee Chairman Dave Murman said they had seen polling that found the opposite, indicating broad statewide support for school choice programs.

“It depends on how you ask the question,” Linehan said.

Hansen expects the bill to reach the legislative floor this session. Bill opponents, including the NSEA, say they will be ready.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

Parents are increasingly considering new schooling options for their kids, according to a survey released this month. After exploring available choices, a smaller number of families ultimately selected new schools but a majority reported wanting more information about school choice. 

Both local and out-of-district traditional public schools remained popular among school-searching families, followed by charter schools, private and religious schools and homeschooling.

The results come from that included 2,595 parents of school-aged children conducted by The National School Choice Awareness Foundation and the National School Choice Resource Center (Navigate), which run . 

They began administering this survey right after COVID hit to learn more about how the pandemic impacted parents’ views around school choice and to determine how to best support families as they navigated their options. 

“The big takeaway here is families want options for their kids,” foundation CEO Andrew Campanella said. “They’re looking at their options, but the lens through which they view choice is significantly different than the way people involved in the policy world look at it.”

Overall, about three-quarters of parents surveyed said they’d at least “considered” new schools for a child last year— a 35% increase over 2022. Ultimately, 44% of parents selected a new school. Just under two-thirds reported wanting more information about their options.

The results were released to coincide with National School Choice Week, which began Sunday and will run through Jan. 27. They also come as public schools across the nation face enrollment declines of over 1 million students, according to an , which showed lasting disengagement from public schools. 

The National School Choice Awareness Foundation defines school choice as empowering parents to select the schools and learning environments that best meet their children’s needs including traditional public schools, charter schools and private schools.

They do not identify as a policy advocacy organization and say they do not promote one schooling option over another. Campanella, the CEO, previously served in a senior-level position at the American Federation for Children, a school choice advocacy group founded by the DeVos family that heavily lobbies for directing taxpayer money toward private school options.

There are a number of reasons that parents are researching new schools, according to Inga Cotton, the founder and executive director of San Antonio Charter Moms, a non-profit advocacy group that supports parents and caregivers as they explore schooling options. 

In San Antonio, for example, she hears from parents who are frustrated that their local public schools are not offering accelerated enough curriculum to prepare their kids for college. In other cases, families of color are grappling with the consequences of redlining and discrimination. In these areas in particular, it can be harder to access advanced coursework. 

Cotton said she also supports families who have kids with disabilities whose schools might not have the resources necessary to support their needs. Finally, some families are looking for schools with values that align with their own, including progressive ideologies, classical education or religious-centered learning. 

Other advocates point to a string of Republican states adopting or expanding tax credit scholarships, education savings accounts or vouchers, which they see as siphoning funds from public schools, coupled with a wave of partisan criticism of public schools and teachers fed by volatile conflicts over remote learning, mask mandates and classroom content.

The survey results note that “traditional public schools remain popular among school searching families” with just over half of parents considering new schools reporting that they visited, asked about or researched their local public schools. Just under 30% reported the same for public schools outside of their neighborhood. The numbers were slightly lower for charter schools (28%), private or faith-based schools (24%), homeschools (20%), and full-time online schools (22%). 

“This almost fake conflict between district-managed schools and schools that are in the public sector but not managed by districts … is really just a function of a policy debate,” Campanella said. “And it’s not what families are experiencing when they go to make their choices.”

Yet broadening the school choice label to include more controversial items like vouchers, which let parents use taxpayer money to send their kids to private schools, is an intentional choice conservative advocacy organizations are making, according to Joshua Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University.

He believes that while there’s strong bipartisan support for a number of school choice policies, “there’s real skepticism on the use of public funding for private education in the K-12 space,” outside of the conservative base he defined as “Trump dead-enders” or “long-standing anti-government types.”

The National School Choice Awareness Foundation asserted, though, that “school choice is far from partisan, at least when it comes to parents making choices.” The evidence: parents who identified as Democrats chose new schools for their children last year at higher rates than Republican parents (56% to 40%), according to its survey.

A 2022 poll from , an opinion and research journal based out of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, found strikingly different results. ​​Support for the general concept of school choice was starkly partisan, according to their data, with 60% of Republicans and only 41% of Democrats expressing a favorable position.

This is a key example of how question phrasing can impact survey results. Particularly when surveys come from advocacy groups it is important to remain skeptical of data, not because they’re “cooking the books” but because questions can be leading, Cowen said. 

“If you ask, ‘Do you support taxpayer dollars going to church-based schools?’ you’re going to get a very different number than if you say ‘Do you think parents should get to choose within a wide variety of educational options for their kid?’” he said. “Clearly, the second one is going to sound a lot better: you’re going to get more support. And if your goal as an organization is to show numbers with more support, that’s the way you do it.”

The National School Choice Awareness Foundation did not explicitly ask about vouchers in its survey, which was delivered to Survey Monkey’s National Audience panel between Jan. 2-4. Campanella said the survey was solely focused on types of schools rather than mechanisms used to access them, such as vouchers.

He noted they used the survey results to help inform the over 27,000 events the foundation supports across the country for National School Choice Week.

Disclosure: Walton Family Foundation and Stand Together Trust provides financial support to The National School Choice Awareness Foundation and ����Ӱ��.

Gov. Kay Ivey Monday reaffirmed her support for creating education savings accounts at a rally on the Alabama State Capitol steps on Monday.

But Ivey and other speakers gave few details of what they would support on the issue, which has already drawn pushback from State Schools Superintendent Eric Mackey and other educators in the state.

“It will be sustainable, responsible and it’s how we will shape the future of education in Alabama,” Ivey told several dozen people at a rally for “School Choice Week,” a push to expand nontraditional public schools and publicly-funded private school options.

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Education savings accounts are similar to vouchers in that they allow the use of money originally intended for public schools to be used for other items, including private school tuition. Vouchers send the money to an educational institution that the student attends. Education savings accounts go to the parents, who can use it for any number of services, including tuition, tutoring and counseling.

Ivey made expansion of education options The Alabama Legislature passed legislation expanding the Alabama Accountability Act, a scholarship program allowing students in low-performing schools to qualify for scholarships to private schools.

The governor told the crowd that her “top priority is ensuring education savings accounts bill crosses the finish line.”

What emerges from the session will be up to the Legislature, and likely Rep. Danny Garrett, R-Trussville and Sen. Arthur Orr, R-Decatur, the chairs of the legislative committees overseeing the Education Trust Fund budget, which would fund any type of Education Savings Account. Messages seeking comment were left with Orr and Garrett on Monday morning; neither man could be seen at Monday’s rally.

Sen. Larry Stutts, R-Tuscumbia, filed , which would have allowed roughly $6,900 to follow a student. The bill, filed late in the session, did not become law.

Rep. Ernie Yarbrough, R-Trinity, who filed a House version of Stutts’ bill, said Monday that he also supported an expansive education savings account option.

“It brings the free market back to education,” he said.

Stutts and Yarbrough tend to be some of the most conservative members of the Republican supermajority Legislature.

Yarbrough lined out his plans for “true school choice:” universal for all students; flexible spending ability; protects autonomy of private and home schools, while making traditional public schools’ curriculum transparent and is not an “attempt” to increase government spending.

“I believe that true school choice does not increase the size or scope of government,” he said.

The bill has not been filed as of Monday morning.

Students and parents spoke about their own experiences with education options in the state at the rally also.

June Henninger, a fifth grade student at the private Montgomery Christian School, said that she benefited from her experience at the school. She said she was grateful for her education and her teachers.

“I’m ready for my next school of my choice,” she said.

Montgomery Christian School students are on scholarships through donations and from scholarships

“School choice” can refer to a number of things, namely charter schools, vouchers and/ or education savings accounts.

, State Superintendent Eric Mackey said that he would want the money to go to schools and would require accountability.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

A top GOP state senator wants to completely overhaul Indiana’s private school vouchers with a grant program that would allow all Hoosier families — regardless of income — to choose where their students get educated.

The proposal will not advance in the current legislative session, but discussion at the Statehouse on Thursday previewed likely legislative momentum in 2025.

, authored by Sen. Ryan Mishler, R-Mishawaka, would bring an end to Choice Scholarships, which allows most Hoosier families to receive vouchers to attend private schools.

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The special education-only Education Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), as well as the newly-established Career Scholarship Account (CSA) Program, would also come to an end.

Instead, Mishler is seeking to merge those programs into a new “Indiana Funding Students First Grant Program” for students ages five to 21.

The bill removes all income caps on current “school choice” grants and allows any Hoosier parent to apply for an annual grant that can be used for “qualified” education expenses. That includes tuition and fees, exam fees, services for students with a disability, transportation, payments for tutoring, and costs associated with extracurricular activities, apprenticeships or other programs.

Students already participating in the state’s choice programs would be unaffected and continue to receive funding to attend their desired schools.

“It’s a work in progress. We’re going to start the discussion on the issues within the bill … we have a year to try to decide what we want to do,” said Mishler, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Mishler said the legislation “mixes” various school choice concepts. The intent of hearing the bill now, he added, “is to gather information.” Even so, testimony on the bill lasted less than an hour on Thursday due to scheduling restraints.

“The goal here was to give parents more flexibility,” said Mishler, who noted that many Hoosier students continue to struggle with foundational curricula in schools, even though the state “keeps putting more money into K-12 education.”

“When we drafted the bill, we felt like every type of student would benefit in some way,” he continued. “But we’ll be working on this over the summer to try to perfect things, so we have plenty of time for discussion.”

A universal ‘school choice’ landscape

As currently drafted, the bill sets up a two-year pilot program. Mishler said that won’t be the case when it’s refiled next year, though.

Rather, Indiana’s treasurer would be tasked with running the Funding Students First program.

“This bill is an option that lets parents control education dollars. This bill is a tool that gives parents more than two choices. This bill is an opportunity to allow parents the freedom to customize their child’s education,” Elliott continued. “We have found that when parents control the flow of dollars to their children’s education, they’re more engaged, more focused on their child’s needs, and in the best position to make sound educational choices.”

In 2022, state lawmakers expanded the Choice Scholarship and open to almost all Hoosier families. Private school voucher program in the current school year — in the number of students in 10 years.

Under the new proposal, participating families with students attending private school would get 90% of the amount of money per child that their neighborhood public school gets from the state, identical to the existing Choice Scholarships available now.

Families would get 50% of the state’s base funding for students who are enrolled in a public school. In those instances, grants could be used for services outside of the public school’s jurisdiction, such as tutors, disability service providers and occupational therapists, among other education-related costs.

Rolling out Mishler’s new plan is expected to increase state spending by upwards of $46.5 million, according to a legislative fiscal analysis. But that estimate is based only on a pilot program.

Exact projections are dependent on changes to the state tuition support funding formula in the next biennium and changes to the number of students who participate in the school choice programs.

Given the significant financial impacts — and the Republican majority’s refusal to open the budget during the 2024 short session — Mishler’s proposal will remain on hold. In 2025, the measure must get approval from both the Senate education and appropriations committees before it can be passed to the House for additional consideration.

It’s not clear where the opposite chamber stands on the proposal.

‘Many’ questions still to be answered

Denny Costerison — representing the Indiana Association of School Business Officials, the Coalition for Indiana Growing and Suburban School Districts, and both the state superintendent and school boards associations — said the groups are so far neutral on the bill, pending interim discussions about the new program’s funding mechanisms and likely impacts on local school districts.

Searching for some answers now, Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, questioned how students would juggle multiple learning opportunities provided by the grants, both logistically and academically.

For example, one student could use a grant to attend both public school classes and receive lessons from an outside, private music teacher during the school day. Another student might apply the state dollars to online schooling and an apprenticeship.

“How is that all going to happen?” Yoder asked.

Homeschool parents also spoke before the Senate committee, asking lawmakers to ensure the new grant program won’t infringe on their autonomy to educate their children as they wish. Mishler promised to honor that request.

But Donnie Bowsman, superintendent at the Randolph Southern School Corporation, cautioned that the grant program would cause more students to leave public schools — in some cases, because parents want to “avoid the hassle of dealing with school officials or being responsible or accountable to their child’s education.”

“We’re going to talk about paying people to take their child out of my school,” Bowsman said. “There needs to be parameters on this, and guide rails, especially if we’re talking about state funding and appropriations.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

During a heavy snowstorm Tuesday that caused schools to close all over Wisconsin, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly spoke by telephone with the Wisconsin Examiner about the health of the state’s public education system, student achievement, the growth of school vouchers, political attacks on diversity and her hopes for the coming year.

Parents bill of rights

As we spoke, Republican legislators were preparing to hold an executive session Thursday on , a “Parents Bill of Rights” that encourages lawsuits by parents who feel that their rights have been violated because they were not informed about medical services offered at school or about the discussion of “controversial subjects”  in class, including gender identity and racism, or because they were not given the authority to determine the names and pronouns used to address their children.

Under the bill, a parent or guardian who successfully asserts a claim “may recover declaratory relief, injunctive relief, reasonable attorney’s fees and costs, and up to $10,000 for any other appropriate relief.”

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“The reality is that meaningful parental engagement is happening every single day between our teachers and their students’ families and caregivers,” Underly said. The Parents Bill of Rights “is designed to shut down discussion and creates an environment of fear for our educators because it inserts them into a culture war that no one should be fighting in the first place.”

She sees the bill as part of a larger pattern of attacks on public schools and democracy itself.

“You think about the things that the Legislature picks up on,” Underly said. “Let’s attack libraries. Let’s attack the curriculum. Let’s attack teachers, let’s attack school boards because they wanted to wear masks during the virus. … I think it’s really a way to make sure that we instill distrust in our public institutions.”

There is “a lot of misinformation out there,” Underly added, propagated by people and groups insinuating that schools provide inappropriate materials to kids. “That’s by design. Misinformation is designed to stoke outrage.”

Another Republican bill, , would require public schools to comply with written requests from residents in their districts to inspect a textbook, curriculum or instructional material within 14 days.

“That’s really burdensome,” said Underly. “Let me just say right now, if you have a question about curriculum, you can access that. You contact the school, the principal and the teacher will work to get you the information.”

School voucher lawsuit

The message that public schools are “failing” and do not adequately serve Wisconsin families has been promoted for decades by advocates for school privatization, including the Bradley Foundation, which also Milwaukee’s first-in-the-nation school voucher program. That program, which started out serving 350 kids, has mushroomed to include more than 52,000 students in the statewide, Racine and Milwaukee programs.

In December, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to hear a challenging Wisconsin’s private school voucher program. The suit, sponsored by Minocqua Brewing Co. owner Kirk Bangstad, named Underly, in her official capacity, as a defendant. It charged that taxpayer-financed private school vouchers are a huge financial drain, pushing local public school districts into a “death spiral” and that they violate the state constitution’s promise to provide high-quality public schools for every child.

Asked to comment on the lawsuit, Underly said she couldn’t speak to the constitutionality of school vouchers. But, she added,  “I believe that we cannot afford two school systems.”

“We need to robustly fund the system that serves all kids,” she said, “and that’s our public schools.”

(Late last year Underly another recent Supreme Court lawsuit, filed by teachers and other public employees challenging Act 10, the 2011 law that took away most collective bargaining rights from most public employees: “Returning collective bargaining rights to public sector employees will strengthen our educator workforce, and strengthening our educator workforce will improve our children’s education and create a stronger future for our state,” she said in a statement.)

Even though the voucher lawsuit was kicked back down to lower court, Underly said it could still help raise awareness  that, unlike public schools, which are open to every child, Wisconsin’s school choice programs “are allowing these schools that accept vouchers to discriminate against students, students with disabilities, students who are LGBTQ+.”

Worrying about LGBTQ kids

Underly said she worries “all the time” about the well-being of LGBTQ kids in Wisconsin. She cited data showing that “these kids who struggle to feel included or to be seen, you know, their mental health struggles are higher.”

“At the heart of all this I think what I would like people to realize, and I think many people do, [is that] at the center of all of this is a child.”

“And when we attack them,” she added, “when we tell them, you know, their identity doesn’t matter or we have to take down symbols that show that they’re included, that’s hurting them. … It’s saying that you don’t belong here or you’re not wanted. … I just want to tell people, these are kids. These are human beings. And they deserve love and empathy.”

Missing the Regents’ vote to cut back DEI

Along with recent efforts to ban books and remove LGBTQ Pride flags, Wisconsin schools have been at the center of a battle over diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs. Underly, who serves on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, was absent for the vote in which the Regents reversed themselves and agreed to legislative Republicans’ demands that they eliminate DEI positions in exchange for promised funding for faculty raises and capital improvements.

Underly was out of the country, traveling with her elderly mother in Austria, on a vacation she said she’d had to reschedule several times, when the Regents voted 9-8 to reject the deal limiting diversity positions on Saturday, Dec. 9. She was still out of the country the following Wednesday, Dec 13, when the Regents reversed their decision in a second vote.

Between votes, Underly issued a statement asking that the second vote be postponed so she could attend. She had intermittent internet access, she explained, and wouldn’t be available at the meeting time. But the Regents went ahead without her.

“Part of my frustration with that is that my position on diversity, equity and inclusion is very clear,” Underly said. “I think people knew how I was going to vote. Unfortunately, I couldn’t make it …  I wasn’t part of any of the discussions.”

Like Gov. Tony Evers, Underly doesn’t believe there should have been any further negotiations between the Regents and the Legislature over funds that were already approved as part of the state budget.

Now, as Assembly Speaker Robin Vos pledges to eliminate every trace of DEI throughout the state, Underly said, “It’s definitely that slippery slope argument. You give in on one thing, and they certainly will want to take more.”

Still, she added, “these programs aren’t going to go away. … They exist to make sure that every citizen in the state of Wisconsin has access to higher education. That includes veterans. That includes kids from rural Wisconsin who want to study to become doctors. It includes women. It includes kids who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.”

Will UW hold onto minority scholarship programs and other targets of Republicans in the Legislature, and somehow meet its agreement to eliminate the language of DEI without actually getting rid of programs that promote diversity?

“I don’t know,” Underly said. “I guess in my role as Regent what I do look forward to is having these conversations and in many ways protecting these positions [including] the scholarships and [other] components.”

What about voucher schools that serve underserved kids?

On the flip side, what does Underly make of the argument made by school choice advocates like Madison’s One City independent charter school founder Kaleem Caire, that Wisconsin’s between Black and white students is unacceptable and the lack of diversity among teaching staff contributes to a lousy environment in the local public school district for Black kids?

“I’m not going to say that his heart’s not in the right place,” said Underly. “We want all kids to be successful, and he is in a community and he interacts with children of color and their families all the time.”

Still, “I don’t think the answer is pulling kids out of public schools and funding private schools,” Underly said. “I would argue the opposite and say we need to put the resources in the public schools so that all kids can be successful.”

Working on teacher training, curriculum, adjusting the length of the school day or the school year are all “ways we could address the achievement gap, and the opportunity gaps that we see, especially among children of color,” she said.

“This is really where we get at the root of what equity is,” Underly added, “getting the schools what they need, so that their kids can be successful, and that’s not going to be the same thing in every school or in every community.”

Poverty and student success

Among the biggest equity issues public schools must address, Underly said, is poverty.

Children facing housing insecurity and hunger are “not going to score as well on a standardized test,” she said.

“What public schools have done is they’ve tried to level that playing field. They have provided food for kids, they provide stability, whether it’s for in-school or after-school programs, they provide the art and the music and these enrichment classes that kids in poverty perhaps can’t afford to get outside of school.”

The whole purpose of public schools is to create a more equitable society by providing opportunity to kids whose families live in poverty. “That’s a fundamental value of democracy,” said Underly. “That’s inclusion — making sure that not just the wealthy have access to these things.”

Fundamentally, Underly agrees with the plaintiffs in the anti-voucher lawsuit that the private school voucher movement undermines democracy. “Public schools are among the most democratic institutions that you can think of because they accept everybody, regardless of their language, their socioeconomic status, their gender, who their parents are, their immigrant status. Because that’s what inclusion is. And when you have these outside groups attack public schools, they’re really attacking that democratic institution.”

School report cards

The latest round of released by DPI showed students test scores continuing to improve after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.

None of Wisconsin’s school districts is rated as “failing” in the latest assessments and 94% of districts meet or exceed  expectations. But critics say DPI is setting the bar too low. Will Flanders of Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty told : “While DPI may tout there has been an increase across the board, we still have districts like Milwaukee where proficiency rates are less than 20% and somehow that seems to be meeting expectations.”

Public school student proficiency rates for 2022-23 were better than in 2020-21 and 2021-22. But they still seem low:  38.9% were proficient in English language arts and 37.4% were proficient in math. Students participating in the state’s Private School Choice Programs, however, had even lower proficiency rates of 22.1% in English language arts and 17.9% in math in 2022-23.

Student assessment scores are only one factor in determining district report card scores, a spokesperson for DPI explains. For districts with high percentages of low-income students, growth is weighted more significantly than achievement — a .

“Our public education system should be about getting every kid what they need – in the way they need it – in order to achieve success,” Underly said.

In announcing the latest assessment data, DPI pointed to a that found Wisconsin’s performance standards in reading and math were among the highest in the nation, corresponding to higher levels of proficiency as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).

Big financial challenges for public schools

Still, schools face big challenges, particularly those with large numbers of low-income and special education students and English language learners. The biggest challenge, Underly said, is revenue.

After more than a decade of school funding that , and a less than 30% state reimbursement for special education — a mandatory cost that is eating up school districts’ budgets, driving deep cuts in other programs, public school advocates with the latest state budget.

Gov. Evers had adopted DPI’s proposals in his own budget, including a big increase in the state reimbursement for special education from less than 30% to 60%, lifting local revenue limits and providing a total funding increase of $2.6 billion. The Legislature stripped that down to $1 billion, and left 40% of school districts with less funding this year than they had under the previous, zero-increase budget.

Remaining hopeful part of the job

Despite the existential challenges facing Wisconsin public schools, including the elimination, next year, of the cap on enrollment for voucher schools, Underly said she has a lot of hope for 2024.

“When we talk to kids, especially the ones that remember COVID — middle school, high school kids — they have a lot of hope for the future.”

She is already working on her next budget proposal, which will include teacher recruitment, increasing funding for mental health and, once again, an increase in the state’s special education reimbursement, as well as programs including free meals that address poverty.

“We need to get kids what they need, so that they can be successful and making sure that they’re not hungry is really critical for them to be able to focus and concentrate,” she said.

“I think it’s important that we continue this hopeful outlook because that’s what our schools need,” Underly added. “Our schools don’t need to be attacked. Our students don’t need to be attacked. So just supporting our schools, supporting our students and supporting that hope is part of supporting their education.”

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