Reporting for Baptist News Global, Jeff Brumley highlights some of the opposition to the federal voucher bill.
Dozens of religious groups and hundreds of faith leaders are speaking out against a federal school voucher program currently under consideration in the U.S. House of Representatives.
If approved as part of a legislative funding package, the Educational Choice for Children Act would funnel $5 billion annually to home schooling, for-profit virtual education and private school tuition. Passage also would fulfill President Donald Trump’s executive order vowing “education freedom” for American families and the goal of Project 2025 to dismantle public education.
But opponents argue the measure would divert unprecedented levels of public funding for private, mostly faith-based education and deny adequate education to Americans in low-income and rural communities.
And it would provide tax cuts to the wealthy by enabling them to make contributions to organizations established to underwrite private K-12 education, according to religious groups including Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, Alliance of Baptists, Interfaith Alliance and Pastors for Children, who warned leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee in a May 12 letter.
“This would essentially create a direct transfer of taxpayer funds away from the public trust and into private schools,” the letter says. “The only people who win in this scenario are wealthy, sophisticated investors who would make money while our students lose.”
The “tax credit scheme” also will cause harm to churches, food banks, homeless shelters, veterans’ groups and other grassroots nonprofits by incentivizing contributions to vouchers instead, the faith groups said. “Because of our rich tapestry of beliefs, we cannot sit idly by and allow a policy that would line the pockets of the wealthy at the expense of our children and our faith communities. We therefore come together to urge you to reject any effort to include private school vouchers in the reconciliation process.”