School Vouchers Are a Big, Fat Tax Break for the Wealthy

Newsweek

15-05-2025

Tucked within House Republicans' 389-page budget reconciliation package, which President Donald Trump has dubbed his "big, beautiful bill," is a nationwide private school voucher proposal called the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA, H.R. 833, S. 292). If passed, ECCA would trigger a massive and unprecedented transfer of public dollars to private, mostly religious schools—$136 billion over the next 10 years.
For all their talk of "parental rights" and "returning education to the states," the bill's supporters evidently see no irony or issue with a plan that would have the federal government impose school vouchers on all 50 states and Washington, D.C., overriding the authority of legislatures and overruling the will of voters.
In a recent Newsweek piece, Rep. Elise Stefanik claimed "entrenched special interests" are blocking the advancement of school privatization policies. But the reality is the American people have rejected vouchers every time and in every state they've been on the ballot. Just last November, voters in Kentucky, Nebraska, and Colorado all rejected voucher schemes.
A construction worker looks on as educators and various organizations from across the state of Tennessee march to the Amazon headquarters in downtown Nashville in protest of Governor Bill Lee's school voucher program on March...
A construction worker looks on as educators and various organizations from across the state of Tennessee march to the Amazon headquarters in downtown Nashville in protest of Governor Bill Lee's school voucher program on March 12, 2024, in Nashville, Tennessee. MoreGiven vouchers' abysmal track record with the public, it's understandable their proponents would like to avoid having a full and fair hearing on ECCA. By stuffing it deep inside a giant budget package, politicians are counting on us not noticing that just beneath their winsome title and talking points is yet another giveaway to the wealthy and another gutting of our public institutions.
They hope we'll be fooled by tired tropes and long-busted myths. Distasteful as it is, this tactic, too, is understandable: When decades of peer-reviewed, independent research have shown vouchers don't work, what's a school privatizer to do but spread propaganda and empty exhortations like, "We know educational choice works," and, "Let's seize this opportunity to give every child—not just the lucky few—a real shot at success."
Voucher proponents' talking points are specious at best. At worst, they're downright defrauding.
The truth is, time and again, studies find students using vouchers tend to fare worse academically than their public school peers. And while voucher proponents like to talk about the limitations of zip codes, they ignore the fact that these programs do not magically create more educational options for millions of rural Americans who don't have a private option nearby. In reality, they don't actually improve access for folks in urban centers either, since it's private schools, not parents, that select Stefanik's "lucky few" and reject the rest.
Unlike public schools, which are required by law to serve all students, private schools can — and too often do—discriminate. They deny students based on disability and ability, religion and nonreligion, sexual orientation, gender identity, and more. A parent or guardian's refusal to endorse an anti-LGBTQ+ "statement of faith," for example, could be grounds for the exclusion or expulsion of their child. And in states that have passed voucher laws, some private schools have raised their tuition to continue pricing out lower-income families.
Students with disabilities are particularly vulnerable to discrimination by private schools and are disproportionately disciplined and excluded by charter schools. Yet, in order to participate in voucher programs, their families are compelled, usually unwittingly, to relinquish the rights and protections they are entitled to under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), including due process and dispute resolution.
Stefanik and others promote the privatization of schools by telling a familiar tale about heroes (vouchers) rescuing victims (students) from a very scary villain ("failing government schools"). It's riveting stuff, a heart-tugger, but it's fiction. In state after state, the data show 70 percent of voucher recipients are not switching from public to private but were already attending private schools without state aid.
Vouchers are neither an evidence-based education policy nor a benevolent gift to low-income families fleeing community schools. They are a tax scheme designed to benefit the wealthiest Americans at the harm and expense of most everyone else. Above the law and the locally elected boards that govern our nation's public schools, privatization programs are rife with the very fraud, waste, and abuse this administration has pretended to care about chainsawing from the federal budget.
In a bill brimming with handouts for the wealthy, ultra-rich voucher supporters could net billions of dollars every year under ECCA. That's because, in addition to cash contributions, the proposal also permits donations of stock, meaning donors could actually turn a profit by claiming both the tax credit and avoiding capital gains tax. In fact, the tax shelter ECCA offers is so lucrative, it's all but guaranteed the bill's escalator clause will be triggered each year, meaning the program will grow bigger and costlier whether the program achieves anything it purports to. How efficient!
And while public school teachers crowdfund classroom supplies and your local district hosts a bake sale to support the band, it's worth remembering all those billions of dollars would otherwise be taxable—the fair share owed by those wealthy individuals and corporations. Instead, if ECCA passes, that revenue will no longer be used to support the public goods and services that benefit and answer to us all but be siphoned into a discriminatory, unaccountable, and sectarian system.
Proponents have long invoked civil rights language to promote vouchers, a disturbing rhetorical choice given vouchers originated as a tool for southern white parents to avoid the Supreme Court's desegregation order in Brown v. Board of Education. As we approach the 71st anniversary of that landmark decision, we've learned vouchers continue to promote racial and socioeconomic segregation.
Today's privatizers have adopted a different but still disconcerting tone, insisting "educational freedom" is a "sacred" and "moral" right. But ours is a democratic—not a theocratic—nation, governed by a godless Constitution that guarantees each of us the religious freedom to believe and worship whatever and however we choose. By subsidizing private faith and sectarian instruction, ECCA would infringe on that foundational civil right for nonreligious and religious Americans alike.
It is a fundamentally un-American proposal to compel taxpayers to support religions with which they do not agree. It is, however, perfectly on brand for religious nationalists, dominionists, and integralists.
So, the next time a politician says things like, "It's time to start defending the future of our children," or, "Parents—not politicians—should determine what's best for their kids," while advocating for demonstrably harmful legislation that would force budget cuts in the classrooms where the vast majority of American students learn, I hope you'll recognize the rhetoric for what it is: a big, ugly lie.
Melina Cohen is the director of strategic communications & policy engagement for American Atheists, a national nonprofit working to protect civil rights, advance political equality, achieve social inclusion, and empower atheists and other nonreligious people through advocacy, education, and community building.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.