Bruce Lesley is the president of First Focus on Children. In this post, he outlines the many ways in which taxpayer-funded vouchers fail students and taxpayers.
In recent years, the expansion of private school voucher programs has posed significant challenges to public education. Universal voucher policies, which allow any student to use public funds for private schooling regardless of income or prior public school attendance, have grown from zero to thirteen statewide programs, or more than one-quarter of all states, between 2021 and 2025.
This surge has occurred despite consistent public opposition; since 1970, voters have rejected the creation or expansion of private school vouchers every time they have been proposed.
Beyond their negative financial impacts on public schools, the idea of private school vouchers originates from a deeply troubled history tied to racism and segregation. In the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education (1954), some states, particularly in the South, created voucher programs to fund white-only private “segregation academies” as a way to circumvent desegregation orders.
Unfortunately, research indicates that vouchers continue to promote racial and economic segregation today. Studies have found that voucher programs disproportionately benefit wealthier, white families while leaving public schools with higher concentrations of Black, Latino, and low-income students. Instead of expanding opportunity, vouchers reinforce existing inequities in education.
In a new paper by my colleagues Lily Klam and Chris Becker, “School Vouchers and the Growing Threat to Public Education,” they conclude:
The evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that private school vouchers are a failed policy. Instead of focusing on private school vouchers that benefit only small numbers of students, lawmakers must consider solutions that advance opportunity for the 90% of U.S. students who attend public schools.
Compounding the problem facing students and public schools in the states, Klam also recently highlighted a specific threat at the federal level in her analysis, “The Dangers of Federal School Vouchers: H.R. 9462 and Its Impact on Public Education.” Klam explains that this new federal private school voucher tax credit would cost taxpayers $20 billion, would allow recipients to discriminate against children, creates a system of privileging newly created voucher middle-men to distribute vouchers over other charities, benefit a small number of students who overwhelmingly already attend private schools, reward private schools with poor results and little to no oversight to the tune of billions, and could exacerbate fraud and abuse.
As Klam writes:
It’s important that public funds remain in public schools, that students are not discriminated against in the schools they attend, and that private schools aren’t favored over other charities in our tax code. Evidence overwhelmingly supports the claim that private school vouchers are a failed policy.
The public gets it, which is why, school vouchers remain wildly unpopular with voters.