Four advocates for civil rights in education took The 74’s challenge to write a response to an endorsement of the federal school voucher plan.
“Choice” is a compelling slogan, but with private school vouchers, it’s the school’s choice, not the families. Participating private schools control their own admissions and enrollment decisions, with little oversight of nondiscrimination compliance. Private schools can kick students out without any explanation or deny admission to students based on religious affiliation, LGBTQ+ status, language proficiency, and more.
One report on Washington, DC’s voucher program found that students most often did not use vouchers because participating schools lacked services for their learning or physical disabilities.
This is what happens when public dollars flow into systems that are not built to serve every child.
Now, the federal government wants to supercharge this exclusion. Last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act introduced the country’s first national school voucher program. Starting Dec. 15, governors can opt into the program, which allows the use of tax-credit-funded scholarships to underwrite private or religious schools as early as 2027. The program prioritizes vouchers for students who themselves or their siblings have previously received a federal voucher, favoring families already using vouchers.
Selective admissions isn’t the only way the federal voucher scheme fails the “civil rights test.” Having data on student and school performance broken down by student subgroups is a necessary civil rights tool, allowing the public to track disparities and target resources. Yet participating private schools do not have to report, test, or be held accountable for the requirements that apply to public schools.
Most school choice programs do not require students to take state assessments. And not all require that the data be publicly reported. It is no surprise that lower-quality private schools are more likely to participate in voucher programs than higher-quality ones. When outcomes are hidden families are in the dark about how schools are serving their children.