School vouchers continue momentum in state legislatures

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There's a growing movement among conservative state legislatures to launch new school voucher programs, initiatives that often come with fewer restrictions and more benefits than in years past.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who tried but failed to pass a school voucher program last year, claimed victory Tuesday after successfully campaigning against several lawmakers who opposed his efforts. The third-term Republican governor knocked off nine House Republican legislators in this week’s primary election, with several more forced into runoffs in May.

“Republican primary voters have once again sent an unmistakable message that parents deserve the freedom to choose the best education pathway for their child,” Abbott said in a statement Tuesday.

Abbott campaigned on creating a voucher program when he ran in 2022, but last year his proposal failed in the Texas House by 21 votes. The governor wanted to let any Texas student qualify for vouchers, so long as there was enough money for it in the state budget.

One of the biggest sticking points was whether the vouchers should be limited to certain segments of the population, like poor families. Rural Republicans, in particular, objected to the broader program because they feared it would siphon off money from public schools in their districts where private alternatives were scarce.

Scott Jensen, a senior strategist for the school choice advocacy group American Federation for Children and a former speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, acknowledged during a Texas House committee hearing that voucher advocates had shifted strategies over the years.

“We used to [limit participation], in states all across the country, when that was the best we could do for kids in the state,” Jensen said. “But now we have found there is building public support all across the country for these programs to be broad-based.”

If Abbott picks up two more allies in the May runoffs and Republicans maintain their current majorities, the governor would presumably have enough lawmakers on board to pass an ambitious voucher bill in the Texas House when the state legislature reconvenes next year.

The battle lines are already forming. “We are disheartened but not dissuaded,” Kate Johanns, a spokesperson for the Association of Texas Professional Educators told The Texas Tribune. “Our state’s 5.4 million public schoolchildren deserve better from the leaders of Texas, and we’ll continue fighting for them.”

Corey DeAngelis, a senior fellow at the American Federation for Children, told the Tribune the primary results were a “bloodbath” and “the biggest political shift towards school choice in Texas history.”

“School choice was the main dividing line in all of these races,” he said. “It is already sending shockwaves all across the country and the message is clear: Education freedom is a political winner and a GOP litmus-test issue.”

But even as Texans debated vouchers on the campaign trail, lawmakers in other states were advancing their own proposals.

In Alabama, Gov. Kay Ivey signed legislation Thursday to give up to $7,000 in tax credits to use on private schools, tutoring, software and other expenses. Ivey, who made vouchers her top priority this session, called the proposal a “monumental achievement.”

The bill would initially apply to families making less than 300% of the federal poverty level, or about $75,000 for a family of three. It would also give priority to children of active-duty service members in schools with a “D” or “F” on the state’s school report card. And it would cost the state at least $100 million a year starting in 2026.

Democrats slammed the proposal. One Democratic lawmaker said it “breeds segregation.” Another, Senate Minority Leader Bobby Singleton, said the bill didn’t guarantee parents choices because private schools could still choose not to admit students.

“There’s not really a choice here for rural school children, which makes up 40% of this public school system in the state of Alabama,” Singleton said during the floor debate of the bill. “Some 300,000 kids can be left out of this choice. It’s really no choice to those kids who are receiving free and reduced lunches. Whose parents have to go to work early in the morning and cannot travel to the next county to go to school. It’s not a choice, people. It’s not a choice to them. They got to, they got to, they got to, they got to hammer it out.”

An effort by Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, to create a school voucher program sparked acrimonious debate in the Tennessee House, a chamber already fraught with fierce partisan divides. Four Republican lawmakers joined their Democratic colleagues in voting against a voucher bill that came before the House’s education committee, although the measure still advanced Wednesday on a 12-7 vote.

What’s more, the Senate and House voucher bills are substantially different. The Senate’s, for example, costs less and includes testing requirements for students using the vouchers. The House version is more expensive but has no testing requirement, and some of its biggest expenses are add-ons meant to attract public school supporters. It increases state spending on teacher health insurance and buildings and reduces required evaluations of high-performing teachers.

Maryville City Schools Director Mike Winstead, a 2018 finalist for National Superintendent of the Year, remained unswayed, reported Chalkbeat. He said the House bill could disrupt the state’s K-12 education system. “You can coat that with a lot of good things and make it go down a little easier,” Winstead told the House panel. “But in the end, we’re being asked to ingest a poison pill.”

The attention to vouchers and “school choice” in statehouses this year comes after what Georgetown University’s FutureEd project called a “landmark year for private school choice” in 2023, when 17 states established or expanded programs. Eight of those states passed programs with universal or near-universal eligibility, bringing the total number of states with universal programs to 10.  

So far this year, 90 voucher-style bills have been introduced in 31 states, the group said.

Joshua Cowen, a Michigan State University professor of education policy and critic of voucher programs, said school choice programs have gained traction in conservative state legislatures alongside other culture war issues that center on public schools, such as book bans, LGBTQ protections and diversity efforts.

The new programs tend to be more partisan than the country’s first voucher programs, he said.  And that affects who the programs serve and what rules they have to follow. Take Ohio and Wisconsin. When Milwaukee launched the first voucher program in the nation in 1990, 85% of the users were Black. But after Ohio, which launched its program in 1995, revamped the voucher system last year, nine out of 10 new users were white.

“What we see in the legislation, then, is a real free-for-all,” he said. Schools in Milwaukee and Cleveland once had to clear a lot of administrative hurdles just to be able to accept a child using vouchers. “Now, there’s no performance report, there’s no accountability, there’s no transparency.”

In fact, many of the laws explicitly exempt the schools from anti-discrimination laws, he added, as long as they follow their “creed” or “values.” “Basically, a school could fire an LGBTQ teacher, even though there’s something on the books saying a state employee can’t be fired for being gay,” Cowen said.

One reason lawmakers might be reluctant to include performance metrics for their new voucher programs is because recent evaluations of programs in Florida, Louisiana, Ohio and Washington, D.C., showed “some of the worst academic results for voucher programs that we’ve ever seen for any type of education policy intervention in the last several decades.”

Cowen warned that the vast amounts of money being sent to schools with little scrutiny could result in fraud, corruption and waste.

The Arizona attorney general, for example, announced charges against five people—including three state employees—for defrauding the state’s new voucher program of $600,000 by creating “ghost” children and using their identities to collect money.

Florida’s voucher program, which covers home schooling expenses as well as private tuition, has come under criticism for allowing families to use their allotments on Disney World tickets, big-screen TVs and stand-up paddleboards.

In North Carolina, several schools received more vouchers than the number of students they reported as enrolled, and a reporter couldn’t find one of the schools receiving money despite checking four different addresses for it.

Cowen said even the legitimate expenses could end up subsidizing schools that aren’t financially sound and could go out of business. “We’re not talking about elite academies that are 40 grand a year and sending kids to Princeton,” he said. “These schools are often run out of church basements or double-wides on church grounds.”

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News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

• ELECTIONS: Governors race is set in North Carolina. Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson defeated his two challengers in the Republican primary for the governor’s race on Tuesday. His win proved that his blustering, Trump-aligned style is favored by conservatives who are gearing up for what will probably be the most expensive and closely contested statewide race in the country. Robinson will face Josh Stein, the Democratic state attorney general, whose policies mirror those of Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who is popular but term limited.


• WILDFIRES: Power equipment caused huge Texas fire, investigators say. Xcel Energy—a major utility with operations in Texas and other states—acknowledged on Thursday that its power lines and equipment “appear to have been involved in an ignition of the Smokehouse Creek fire,” which has since grown to more than 1 million acres. State investigators were more definitive. The fire was ignited by power lines, said Linda Moon, assistant director of the Texas A&M Forest Service. The acknowledgement it caused the fire—the largest in Texas’s history—marks the latest instance of a power company being caught unprepared in guarding against ever-more devastating blazes, say energy and fire experts.


• IMMIGRATION: SCOTUS temporarily blocks Texas immigration law. The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily halted a new state law on Monday allowing Texas police to arrest people suspected of crossing the Texas-Mexico border illegally from going into effect. The Supreme Court issued a temporary stay until March 13 while the court considers whether it will allow the state to enforce Senate Bill 4. Meanwhile, Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs vetoed a bill that sought to give the state the power to arrest and deport migrants—legislation nearly identical to Texas’ law.


• AIR POLLUTION: 24 states sue EPA over new limits on deadly pollution. Manufacturers and 24 states sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday over the Biden administration’s decision to tighten limits on fine industrial particles, one of the most common and deadliest forms of air pollution. The state lawsuits are led by Republican attorneys general and argue that the EPA overstepped its authority last month when it lowered the annual limits for fine particulate matter to nine micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from the current standard of 12 micrograms.


• WATER: Colorado River basin states pitch two alternative plans. After months of tense discussion over the future of the Colorado River, Western states that depend on the river’s water submitted two competing long-term plans for how it should be managed on Wednesday. Current guidelines for managing the river expire at the end of 2026. One thing is clear from the competing plans: The two groups of states do not agree on who should bear the brunt of future cuts if water levels drop in the Colorado River basin.


• CRIMINAL JUSTICE: House GOP advances bill blocking D.C. from changing sentencing laws. Washington, D.C., criminal justice policies were again in the crosshairs Thursday, as the House Oversight Committee advanced legislation on a party-line vote that would take away judges’ options to issue more lenient sentences to young adults and restrict the D.C. Council’s ability to change sentencing laws. House Republicans argued that D.C. was not going far enough to respond to the rise in crime—especially carjackings—committed by juveniles or young adults and aimed to harden the district’s approach to sentencing them. Unlike votes that blocked D.C. legislation last year, this standalone federal bill would be subject to the Senate filibuster, requiring support from 60 senators to advance. And Democrats, observers warn, are unlikely to be willing to restrict the council’s authority. 


• HEALTH CARE: States consider menthol cigarette bans. Menthol cigarettes can be more addictive than regular cigarettes because the menthol masks the harsh burn, making the smoke easier to inhale. More than 80% of Black smokers prefer menthol cigarettes, and they are more likely to die of smoking-related disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For years, public health experts have advocated for higher sales taxes on menthol cigarettes or even an outright ban. But following heavy lobbying, President Joe Biden in December delayed the final decision on a ban. The delay has drawn fierce criticism from public health organizations. Now, some states are acting on their own. California and Massachusetts ban menthols. This year, bills that would ban menthol and other flavored tobacco products have been introduced in at least four states. That is down from at least 10 states last year.


• TRANSIT: Maryland’s Purple line delayed again, cost increases yet again. Maryland transit authorities are seeking an additional $425 million to fund construction of the Purple Line, putting the long-delayed project more than $4 billion over budget. The Purple Line, a 16.2-mile light-rail line with 21 stations has faced numerous hurdles because of lawsuits, unfavorable economic conditions and logistical issues. Had everything stayed on schedule, the Purple Line, which started construction in 2017, would have begun carrying passengers throughout the Washington suburbs by now. It is currently anticipated to open in late 2027—more than five years late—barring any further delays.


• GUNS: S.C. governor signs permit-less carry bill into law. Any South Carolinian 18 and over who can legally buy a handgun can carry it without needing a permit after Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill into law Thursday. The law goes into effect immediately. The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division will spend the coming months preparing to offer the free classes for gun owners the Senate added to the bill as a compromise, according to a statement from the department. South Carolina is the 29th state to allow permit-less carry. It closely follows Louisiana, which signed its own bill into law Tuesday.


• GIG ECONOMY: Minneapolis City Council boosts pay for Uber and Lyft drivers. A measure passed Thursday that would increase wages for drivers of ride-hailing services to an equivalent of more than $15 an hour—which opponents say may increase costs to customers and fears that Uber and Lyft will follow through on their threats to leave the area altogether. Council members passed the measure in a 9-4 vote despite Mayor Jacob Frey’s promise to veto the measure. If the mayor does so, the council could override his action if they have support from at least nine members.


• SOCIAL MEDIA: Meta inaction draining law enforcement resources, officials say. Forty-one state attorneys general penned a letter to Meta’s top attorney on Wednesday saying complaints are skyrocketing across the U.S. about Facebook and Instagram user accounts being stolen, and declaring “immediate action” necessary to mitigate the rolling threat. The coalition of top law enforcement officials says the “dramatic and persistent spike” in complaints concerning account takeovers amounts to a “substantial drain” on governmental resources, as many stolen accounts are also tied to financial crimes—some of which allegedly profits Meta directly.

Picture of the Week

It’s March, and that means spring break is upon us. But not everybody is excited. Last month, Miami Beach announced it is breaking up with spring break. “Fed up with unruly crowds, lawless behavior and a string of violent acts in recent years,” said a press release, “the City of Miami Beach is implementing tough new measures aimed at putting an end to spring break.” The city is implementing bag checks, restricting beach access, putting up DUI checkpoints. and heightening police enforcement for consumption of alcohol in public, drug possession and violent behavior. The entire month of March has been designated as a high-impact period in Miami Beach, which means additional measures will be taken with respect to traffic, staffing and public safety. This weekend and next are expected to generate the largest spring break crowds of this year.

What They’re Saying

“We’re not going to do that fake meat.”

—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in support of a bill that the GOP-controlled House of Representatives approved on Wednesday prohibiting the manufacturing for sale and distribution of lab-grown or “cultivated meat” in the Sunshine State. Under the legislation, violators would be subject to a misdemeanor of the second degree. While several states have passed laws regarding the labeling of cultivated meat in recent years, no state has gone as far as the Florida Legislature in banning it outright—though there are similar proposals currently moving in Arizona, Alabama and New Hampshire. The nation of Italy also banned cultivated meat last November as well. Advocates for cultivated meat say that the product could provide a viable alternative to the industrial meat industry, which they maintain is deleterious to the environment.