Feeding the new school privatization monster is about to begin
The gluttonous beast has been unleashed.
Texas parents eager to tap into state tax dollars to help pay their kids’ tuition at private schools or help cover their home-schooling expenses can start applying this week (Feb. 4) for the inaugural year of Texas’ new private school voucher program.
The Legislature set aside $1 billion for the 2026-27 school year, an amount that legislative budget experts have predicted will increase to about $4 billion a year by 2030. Then, fasten your seatbelts because before you know it, the program will be costing Texas taxpayers and our public schools untold billions of dollars a year.
Gov. Greg Abbott and other voucher advocates deny the diversion of billions of tax dollars a year to private schools will hurt school districts and their students. Don’t believe them.
Several states with existing voucher programs already have been documented robbing from their public schools to feed their voucher programs, and if you think our current state leaders won’t do the same thing, you haven’t been paying attention to their school privatization campaign.
According to a report, linked at the end of this post, by Public Funds Public Schools, several states with some of the longer records with vouchers have made substantial increases in state funding for vouchers over the years as they cut per-student funding for public schools.
Public Funds Public Schools is a partnership between the Education Law Center and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Examples in the report, released in 2023, include:
- Florida – This state, like some other states, has multiple voucher programs, and spending on three of the oldest programs increased by 313 percent between 2008-2019, while per-pupil funding for public education was cut by 12 percent.
- Arizona –Increased spending on voucher programs by 270 percent between 2008-2019, while cutting per-pupil spending for public education by 5.7 percent.
- Georgia – Increased spending on vouchers by 883 percent between 2009-2019, while cutting per-pupil spending on public schools by 1.9 percent.
- Indiana – Increased voucher spending by 796 percent between 2012-2019 and cut per-pupil spending on public education by 1.5 percent.
- Wisconsin – Increased voucher spending by 119 percent between 2008-2019, while essentially freezing per-student funding for public education.
- Ohio – Increased spending on vouchers by 416 percent, while limiting per-student spending for public education to only 14.2 percent.
As the report noted, “Private school voucher programs are initially proposed as limited in size and scope, then grown as existing programs are expanded and/or additional voucher programs are established. This results in greater and greater amounts of public funding diverted to private educational institutions and private corporations. At the same time, as noted, funding for public schools in these states has largely decreased.”
Meanwhile, most students in these states and in Texas are attending public schools, which are losing money to the privatization monster. Its appetite will also grow in Texas if public education advocates don’t start working to slay it, beginning with this election year.
