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- The GOP movement toward "school choice" is gaining momentum in many states.
- GOP presidential candidates have promised to send more public money to private schools.
- Educators are worried about diverting funds from under-resourced public schools.
The Republican Party is accelerating its push to remake public education, and it's already becoming a key piece of the 2024 presidential nomination contest.
While battles over how classrooms should teach about race and LGBTQ topics have fired up the GOP base, the expansion of school vouchers is taking hold in red states. The vouchers use public dollars to move K-12 students out of public schools and into private, charter, and magnet schools — and sometimes even offset homeschooling costs.
Iowa, Utah, West Virginia, Florida, and Arkansas have moved to make vouchers widely available. North Dakota, Texas, Ohio, Virginia, and Tennessee could be next.
Democrats and teacher's unions view the vouchers as a devastating attack on underfunded public schools, and as yet another issue broadening the differences between red and blue states.
While academic outcomes on vouchers have been mixed, Republicans hail the effort under the banner of "school choice," saying children should not be trapped in failing public schools. Instead, they say, students should be able to attend whichever school is best for them, regardless of their family's income.
The effort isn't new, but it's expanding. Former Gov. Jeb Bush started the push in Florida more than two decades ago. Last month, Gov. Ron DeSantis took it across the finish line by making it available to families at any income level.
"Florida has regained the championship belt in terms of being the leading, most expansive driver of educational choice in the country," Tommy Schultz, CEO of the American Federation for Children, told Insider. "Everybody eyeing higher office is seeing how popular this is and trying to one-up each other."
The American Federation for Children has poured millions into backing voucher laws and 2022 candidates that support them. Billionaire Betsy DeVos, who was education secretary under former President Donald Trump, founded the organization and continues to be a donor.
Aside from the high-dollar backing, the effort has been helped along by Supreme Court decisions that state voucher programs can't exclude families from choosing religiously affiliated schools.
So far, 2024 candidates are embracing it.
Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who just announced a presidential exploratory committee, has been a leading advocate on the issue in Congress. He even made the topic part of his video launch, saying, "I will fight to give every parent a choice in education so their children have a better chance in life."
Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley praised Iowa's expansive voucher program, calling it the "thing that matters the most" in education.
Over in Congress, an education subcommittee in the US House is holding a "school choice" hearing next week.
Proponents credit parental frustration with curriculum topics and virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gallup polling shows public satisfaction with the quality of education in K-12 public schools fell from the time the pandemic started.
"Being affirmatively for educational freedom and school choice for families is a litmus test for anyone who wants to be president," John Schilling, senior advisor at Invest in Education/Invest in Education Coalition, told Insider.
Lynne Sladky/AP Photo
DeSantis has leaned into his record on education as part of 'parental rights'
As with a lot of GOP policy these days, "school choice" started in Florida.
According to the governor's office, about 1.3 million students in Florida get their education from someplace other than their assigned public school. Of these, 145,969 get a scholarship, a budget document shows.
An additional 98,058 students are expected to receive the scholarship under Florida's new voucher law. Students whose families have lower incomes will be first in line, and a waitlist for students who need speech or occupational therapy would be eliminated.
Starting during the next academic year, the state will provide up to $8,000 per student to help pay for tuition outside a public school. Families can also use leftover funds to pay for textbooks, tutoring, or standardized testing fees.
One past recipient of the voucher program was Hera Varmah, who attended a private Catholic school for high school and middle school. She grew up in a large family — with 12 siblings — and her parents were immigrants to the US who couldn't have afforded the school without Florida's tax-credit scholarship.
She and eight of her siblings used the vouchers, while three attended public schools outside of the ones they were zoned for.
"The 12 of us, we all learn differently, and we all went to different schools," Varmah said. "We can't expect kids that aren't all related to each other to all learn the same way and to all prosper in one learning environment."
Varmah is now a communications and events assistant at the American Federation for Children and testified on behalf of Florida's bill in the legislature. She was at DeSantis' signing ceremony in Miami.
During a book tour stop this week, DeSantis said education was one of the issues he's "most proud of," adding, "Parents have the right to direct their children's education."
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Teacher's unions oppose vouchers, saying they're designed to destroy public schools
Lawmakers in Tallahassee are still crunching the numbers for its voucher program, but the Florida Senate is estimating it'll spend more than $800 million on new vouchers and is planning to put aside another $305 million in reserves. That means the total spending on vouchers, with existing students, would be $2.2 billion.
Teacher's unions say the money would be better spent on existing and under-funded public schools that are facing dire staff shortages.
Florida ranks 44th in the US for spending per student on public schools, according to the Florida Education Association. And despite the push for vouchers in the state, 87% of K-12 students remain in public school, FEA President Andrew Spar said.
"The biggest concern we have with vouchers in Florida is that our public schools continue to get shortchanged," Spar told Insider. "If we actually funded our public schools appropriately in the state of Florida, if we dealt with the massive teacher and staff shortage, I wouldn't have anything to worry about — because our public schools are where parents want their kids."
FEA has asked the Florida legislature for an additional $2.5 billion a year for the next decade, but the Senate's current budget allocates just over half that amount for the forthcoming year.
The FEA says its funding proposal would bring Florida into the top 10 tier of funding in the US, and also help hire more teachers and bus drivers, nurses, and mental health counselors. It would pay for textbooks, athletic programs, and lab equipment.
Other than the financial aspect, critics of vouchers have raised concerns about discriminatory practices at non-public schools, where admission can be denied or revoked to LGBTQ students or based on other factors such as religion, academics, or disciplinary records.
Public schools also have numerous requirements, standards, and regulations to abide by, including staff credentialing, in contrast to the schools getting vouchers. Spar said vouchers amounted to "using taxpayer money to go to private schools and home schools with practically no accountability."
Overall, teacher's unions — who overwhelmingly give to Democratic politicians — say they see the voucher push as a broader threat by far-right Republicans to attack and replace public schools.
They point to certain GOP state leaders who pushed schools to reopen during the pandemic before they said they felt safe, and lawmakers' efforts to limit curriculum topics and remove books, and gut the power of unions.
"The Betsy DeVos wing of the school privatization movement is methodically working its plan: Starve public schools of the funds they need to succeed. Criticize them for their shortcomings. Erode trust in public schools by stoking fear and division, including attempting to pit parents against teachers," American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. in March. "Replace them with private, religious, online, and home schools."
Mic Smith/AP
GOP candidates are likely to back a federal scholarships bill
Teacher's unions aren't the only ones concerned about vouchers. Republicans in rural areas, where public schools are major employers and community gathering places, have opposed them. A vouchers measure failed in Georgia, and similar opposition is rising in Texas, despite the fact that it's a priority for GOP Gov. Greg Abbott.
Other hurdles are emerging. A court blocked the West Virginia program. In Arizona, advocates are working to put the voucher question before voters through a ballot measure.
As the push to spread vouchers nationally takes shape in the 2024 election, proponents want to see the federal Education Choice for Children Act made into law.
The bill, which counts Scott among its cosponsors, would provide $10 billion in tax credits to people and corporations who donate to scholarship-granting organizations that help pay tuition for private schools.
Such a move is estimated to pay tuition for 2 million students across the US, including in 19 states that don't have voucher programs. Operationally, families could couple available state vouchers with education grants, "increasing purchasing power for parents," Schilling said.
Trump backed vouchers as president but never got to implement the program he promised, particularly given that the GOP-controlled congress he had during his first two years in office focused first on trying — and failing — to repeal the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare. Then they put all their energy into tax reform.
DeVos introduced the scholarship concept in 2018, when, Schilling said, "the real effort began." She got more than 120 cosponsors on board by the middle of 2020. As Congress then turned its attention toward COVID pandemic relief, at least one bill that didn't pass had funding for private schools and homeschooling.
But Schilling said school closures during the pandemic did more for winning supporters to their effort than they ever imagined. "It was like a lightbulb going off," he said, "more and more families complaining, that really crystallized things."
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