Should Public Funds Follow Students to Private Schools?

Private and religious schools accepting public funds face no requirement to admit students with disabilities, to hire licensed teachers, or to report outcomes transparently. In states like Indiana and Louisiana, the majority of voucher schools perform worse on standardized tests than the public schools students left. "Choice" without accountability creates a market for schools that serve parents' cultural preferences, not students' educational needs.

Public schools are the one institution that every community — regardless of income, religion, or political affiliation — must agree to fund and sustain. They serve children with severe disabilities, children in foster care, children who require specialized support that private schools routinely decline to provide. Defunding them to subsidize choice is a policy that concentrates costs on the most vulnerable students.

Arizona's universal voucher program, launched in 2022, projected 15,000 students would use it; 60,000 enrolled in the first year — mostly students already in private schools, whose families received a windfall at taxpayer expense. The net cost to public schools exceeded $500 million without producing a comparable improvement in outcomes for the children who remained. Most studies of voucher programs find that state fiscal savings are consumed by payments to families that would have chosen private school anyway.