Steve Nuzum explains how the pro-voucher crowd isn’t about to let democracy stand in their way.
Vouchers— as the term is used to describe any of the various schemes to divert public funds to private schools— are unpopular across political parties.
In Kentucky, where 62% of voters supported President Donald Trump, a comfortable majority of rural and urban voters rejected a ballot measure to change the state constitution to allow school vouchers.
Similarly, in Nebraska, rural and urban voters rejected a proposed school voucher program. 59% of voters in Nebraska supported President Trump.
States that have successfully passed vouchers have often been met with all-too-predictable outcomes, like Arizona’s $1.4 billion budget shortfall after passing a “universal” voucher program, that are likely eroding much of the support for school vouchers that once existed.
In South Carolina, the first public hearing on S. 62, the state’s voucher bill, saw an unlikely coalition of voices— ranging from outspoken book banners, to homeschool parents, to public and private school teachers— speaking out against the House version of the bill, which would use tax dollars to create a voucher scheme that would become universal within a few years.
This diversity of negative views shouldn’t be surprising: voucher bills like S. 62 simply don’t poll well when the public understands their tax dollars will be used to benefit private schools that are unaccountable to them, and that don’t have any obligation under the law to actually serve all students. .
The SC legislature does not seem willing to let public feedback, or even the majority opinion in the Eidson v South Carolina Department of Education , sway it from its billionaire-backed mission to pass another school voucher bill, even if another Supreme Court challenge is all but guaranteed. (Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass poured more than three quarters of a million dollars into negative attack ads on behalf of Ellen Weaver, a career voucher supporter, in her run for Superintendent; when Eidson struck down the previous voucher language, Yass personally paid for the tuitions of the students who had already qualified under the program. As an aside, wouldn’t it be nice if folks like Yass would stop focusing so much on tax avoidance and more on simply providing scholarships for students, if they believe private schools are the answer to every problem.)