As we all know,  state legislators across the country originally justified passing small, experimental voucher programs as a way to help poor kids escape from their so-called “failing” public schools. A year ago, at the end of The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, an authoritative collection of essays by experts on school vouchers, here is what the editors conclude instead:

“As currently structured, voucher policies in the United States are unlikely to help the students they claim to support. Instead, these policies have often served as a facade for the far less popular reality of funding relatively advantaged (and largely White) families, many of whom already attended—or would attend—private schools without subsidies. Although vouchers are presented as helping parents choose schools, often the arrangements permit the private schools to do the choosing… Advocacy that began with a focus on equity must not become a justification for increasing inequity. Today’s voucher policies have, by design, created growing financial commitments of taxpayer money to serve a constituency of the relatively advantaged that is redefining their subsidies as rights—often in jurisdictions where neighborhood public schools do not have the resources they need.” (The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, p. 290)

In states like Ohio, where the legislature made vouchers universal by raising the income eligibility level to 450 percent of the federal family poverty level (with partial vouchers for even wealthier families), the state simply started paying the private school tuition bills that families had been undertaking for generations.  In other states like Arizona, the state has been awarding Education Savings Account vouchers for the private educational expenses of children who are not enrolled in public schools, whether to pay for private school tuition vouchers or homeschooling costs. That program and others like it generally suffer from poor regulation in addition to the overall expense to the state, although the Arizona State Board of Education did deny one family the right to buy three dune buggies for their children as an educational expense when the parents claimed they wanted to teach their children to be more adventurous. Here is the primary fiscal problem of all these programs, according to Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University: “It’s not that there is a mass exodus from public to private schools… (W)hat these states are doing is obligating themselves to expenditures that were previously borne by the private sector.”

Indiana is a classic example of a state that has made its old fashioned private school tuition voucher program universally available. This week for Chalkbeat Indiana, Aleksandra Appleton and Mia Hollie report: “Voucher use has soared in Indiana since lawmakers made nearly every student in the state eligible, with more than 90% of students at more than half of all participating schools using a voucher during the 2023-24 school year…. That was true in just 11% of private schools before lawmakers made the Indiana Choice Scholarship available to nearly every student in Indiana by relaxing income eligibility and removing other requirements to participate…. Since lawmakers approved the expansion last year, the number of schools where 100% of students receive a voucher rose from just one in 2022-23 to 28 in 2023-24.  Last year, in 178 of the 349 private schools that accept vouchers, more than 90% of students enrolled use a voucher to pay for tuition.”  The program cost the state of Indiana  $439 million for the 2023-24 school year.

Last week in North Carolina, Governor Roy Cooper vetoed a bill that would have expanded the state’s investment in private school tuition vouchers.  WUNC‘s Liz Schlemmer reports: “After announcing his veto of House Bill 10, Governor Roy Cooper held a press conference… to make the case that the more than $6 billion the bill commits to fund private school vouchers over the next decade will harm rural schools. “Private school vouchers are the biggest threat to public schools in decades… Vouchers crater state budgets, with rural schools hurt the worst.. Instead we could use this money that House Bill 10 appropriates, give public school teachers an eight and a half percent raise and a $1,500 retention bonus… Plus hire more teacher assistants and counselors and have significant money left over.”

In a scathing short report this week, the National Coalition for Public Education concludes: “When lawmakers consider expanding or creating private school voucher programs, their projections often dramatically underestimate the actual costs. They sell a false promise that vouchers will save money, do not budget adequate funds, and then wind up with million dollar shortfalls, necessitating cuts from public education and even tax increases… First, it costs less than the average expenditure to educate some students, and much more to educate others who need additional support and services—like those with disabilities, English language learners, and low-income students. The students who are most expensive to educate… tend to remain in public schools, because they cannot find a private voucher school willing to accept them. Yet, because of the voucher program, the state now pays tuition for private school students who never attended public schools, which is an altogether new cost for taxpayers. This all adds up to more, not less spending.”

In several states the National Coalition for Public Education tracks the percentage by which new or expanded voucher programs exceeded what legislators in several states projected when they passed the new vouchers: