A growing number of Red States has expanded their school coupon programs in recent years, a trend that will likely only accelerate further in the midst of a drive led by President Donald Trump’s government to return education “back to state.”
Conservative education activists praised programs as a way to give more control to parents and families. But public education advocates warn that the expansion of these vouchers programs has an additional risk to the broader school system as it faces the risk of Trump dismantling from the Department of Education.
“Many states have entered this government with a history of attempting to privatize education, and I think they see this movement to dismantle and turn off President Trump’s department and support from school privatization as a green light to be more expansive in his approach advancing,” said Hilary Weth, an economist, an economist, an economist, an economist, an economist At the Left Economic Policy Institute, which closely studies the impact of vouchers programs on public education.
Last week, Texas promulgated a private school coupon program throughout the state, becoming the 16th state to offer some form of a universal program of school choice. In private school vouchers programs, families can receive a certain amount of public money to use in private elementary and high school or school supplies. In some states, these programs have previously come with limitations, including narrow eligibility, such as private schools that can accommodate families with children who have special needs or families below certain income levels.
The proponents of the program in Texas and others like it doubts it from a “Universal Voucher” program because there are no restrictions on who is eligible. Under the program, any family in the state can receive about $ 10,000 to pay for their private elementary and high school education. The Texas program will be launched in the school year 2026-27.
Vouchers programs across the state are far from a new phenomenon. But they have exploded in recent years amid a growing political effort of conservatives at local, state and federal levels to increase the “school choice” – the notion that parents should have many more options than just public schools in the neighborhood.
Sixteen states offer at least one coupon program that has universal eligibility, while 14 others offer coupon programs with eligibility requirements, according to the Education Law Center, a public education defense group that criticizes coupon programs.
At least three states, Texas, Idaho, and Tennessee, have promulgated their universal programs this year, while in eight other states, attempts by conservative legislators to create new voucher programs or expand stagnants or failed, according to the National Education Association, the largest teacher union in the country.
“Although this is not a new explosion of vouchers laws, this year the vouchers explosion continues … and even if USdoe [dismantling] It is not necessarily the only driving force, it is definitely connected, ”said Jessica Levin, director of litigation of the education law center, who is helping in lawsuits that challenge Trump’s movements to dismantle the education department.
The most prominent argument made by coupon programs critics is that they receive public money that would otherwise be allocated to help finance public schools and deliver it to private schools.
Private schools, they observe, do not face most responsibility requirements that public schools perform under federal laws. For example, private schools maintain the ability to refuse admission to students, do not need to provide individualized education plans for children with learning difficulties and are not required under law to provide students with disabilities or students who face disciplinary measures certain protections or rights of due process.
At the same time, public school financing formulas are predominantly based on enrollment numbers. Thus, as students flee from public schools – even in small numbers – general financing decreases.
“Students who remain in public schools lose resources,” Levin said, while “voucher students lose rights.”
Meanwhile, Levin explained, the public school vouchers exits means “now you are concentrating children with greater need and more cost in public schools that now have less funding.”
These situations are now aggravated by Trump’s measures to end the Education Department, which experts said they will further increase the application of civil rights in schools, as well as the distribution of billions of dollars to help impoverished and disabled students.
The US Department of the US Department, Savannah Newhouse, said in an email to NBC News that “President Trump and Secretary [Linda] McMahon believes that students in our country will prosper when parents have the freedom to choose a school environment that best suits their children’s academic needs. ”
Newhouse added that the government “will provide states best practices on how they can expand educational opportunities and enable local leaders to implement personalized policies that will most benefit their communities.”
While some states have had vouchers -like programs, allowing families to use public money for parish education that dates back to over 100 years, modern vouchers programs have been around 30 years ago, having launched in the 1990s in the midst of a conservative basic movement to increase options for unhappy parents with their local public schools.
But Covid-19 pandemic has emerged as a point of inflammation for conservative education activists, who used widespread anger among parents unhappy with school closure and remote learning as a launch platform for new and expanded coupon programs across the country.
School voucher proponents say programs maximize the choice of parents, who can use funds to subsidize the cost of expensive private schools, which they argue offer better results for students. Supporters also praised programs as offering a market -based approach that helps promote the best schools and argued that they have the potential to benefit low -income families or families with few options for the public school.
Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation of Children, a conservative group that advocates school coupon programs, told Fox News this week that universal vouchers programs such as Promulgated in Texas give parents “freedom of education”.
He praised a similar program that Florida expanded in 2023, claiming that she led the state’s public schools to “have improved”. Schultz denied that the Texas program, or the other, would result in fewer resources for public schools, calling this “the same argument for 30 years” by defenders of public education.
Andrew Mahaleris, the Texas governor’s gate, Greg Abbott, said in an and email that the Republican “has made educational freedom a priority because no one knows the needs of his child better than a parent.”
“When it comes to education, parents are important and families deserve the ability to choose the best education opportunities for their children,” added Mahaleris. “The governor who signs the choice of school is an unprecedented victory for families from Texas, students and the future of our great state.”
But critics point to examples that show that universal school coupon programs are disproportionately used by rich families whose children are already enrolled in private schools or that children in rural areas with few schools have limited options to use money. They also point to studies that refute the claim that private schools offer better results for students.
In addition, enrollment in private schools, even with a voucher to help cover the cost, can still be prohibitively expensive for low -income families, they said.
Epi’s woseting said the analyzes showed that between 60% and 90% of students who take advantage of universal eligibility coupon programs in the US were already enrolled in the private school when they participated in the programs.
She warned about the damage that she said programs like Texas represented.
“As soon as you get rid of income or carveotouts to, say, only low -income families or only disabled students, you basically open the gates of students who are already attending the private school or who already have enough income to attend private school, now using state funding to subsidize their private school,” she said. “It’s the kind of the next step in what we think like this evolution of the voucher.”