In the U.S., lawmakers are pushing for more public money to be used to pay for private school tuition and homeschooling costs, even as they try to figure out how to make a budget during a recession.
Voucher programs worth $1 billion a year that the Texas Legislature sent to the governor last week and a longshot effort in Congress to make vouchers available across the country, even in states that have turned them down, are drawing attention to the problem.
Some states already have programs that pay for most students’ private schooling, but the cost has quickly eaten up more of their budgets as income growth has slowed or stopped. Besides Texas, Tennessee also started a program this year. North Dakota also thought about starting one, but a ban last week probably put an end to those plans for this year.
Every year, states have to make spending plans that don’t go over the money they bring in. Since most of the government money from the pandemic has been phased out, people who are against voucher programs are worried that they will hurt other areas of education, like public schools.
Pew researcher Page Forrest, who looks at state budgets, said, “Even if they’re getting money from different sources, it can feel like school choice programs and public schools are competing for the same slice of an increasingly smaller pie.”
The prices of scholarships and savings accounts have gone up very quickly.
Up until five years ago, the most daring school choice programs were only for kids from low-income families and those with special needs. Recently, scholarships and state-funded savings accounts that most or all families can use have become popular, especially in places where Republicans are in charge.
At least in the short run, this method costs a lot more. Studies of the programs in several states have shown that most of the first kids to sign up were already going to private schools and weren’t getting any help from the government before the choice programs started.
Florida taxpayers will have to pay almost $3.9 billion for voucher programs this school year. That’s about $1 out of every $13 that comes in from the state’s general income fund. It’s almost 5% of Arizona’s overall spending.
The Associated Press looked into it and found that the costs in Iowa, Ohio, and Oklahoma are now or will be over 3% of each state’s general spending this year.
In states that are still building up their grant programs, spending is a smaller part of the budget. Arkansas, Indiana, North Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia are some of them.
More states are beginning to offer scholarships.
A lot of campaign money from people who support vouchers has been a big part of getting Republican politicians to support school choice plans, even though they were hesitant to do so before the COVID pandemic. This is especially true now that people want more school options.
It was passed last year in Alabama and Louisiana, and it will be available for the next school year in Tennessee, where Republican Gov. Bill Lee said the $447 million program would be available.
A bill in New Hampshire that would raise the income limits for a program that is already in place has been moving through the senate.
A bill was sent to the governor of Texas on Thursday that would give more than $10,000 a year to kids in accredited private schools. The most it would cost is $1 billion for the 2026–27 school year, which is a little more than 1% of the state’s yearly general fund. But by 2030, a legislative study found, it could cost $4.5 billion a year. A little over $800 million could be saved because there would be fewer public school kids to pay for, which could help offset some of that cost.
The Texas House also gave the public school system a nearly $8 billion boost, which supporters say doesn’t cover the rising costs of education.
GOP Gov. Kelly Armstrong vetoed an education savings account program in North Dakota, which depends on oil, because it wouldn’t give all kids more options and there were problems with how it would be put into place. He has since said that the idea is still important to him.
An organiser with North Dakotans for Public Schools named Erin Oban said that now is not a good time to start a voucher program because of the costs and the fact that the state’s financial future is unknown.