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Our public education system rests on a foundation of civil rights protections. Public schools exist to serve every child. They are legally required to accept all students and provide the services they need, regardless of their race or ethnicity, disability status, language needs, sexual orientation or academic performance. 

This obligation is the heart of equal opportunity in our country 鈥� and private school vouchers were built to bypass it. Vouchers to a time when states fought federally mandated school desegregation. Funded by , today鈥檚 state voucher programs extend this legacy by diverting funds to unaccountable schools that pick and choose the students they enroll, and the in them. 

鈥淐hoice鈥� is a compelling slogan, but with private school vouchers, it鈥檚 the school鈥檚 choice, not the families. Participating private schools admissions and enrollment decisions, with little oversight of nondiscrimination compliance. Private schools can kick students out without any explanation or deny admission to students based on religious affiliation, LGBTQ+ status, language proficiency, and more. 

One on Washington, DC鈥檚 voucher program found that students most often did not use vouchers because participating schools lacked services for their learning or physical disabilities. 

This is what happens when public dollars flow into systems that are not built to serve every child. 

Now, the federal government wants to supercharge this exclusion. Last year鈥檚 One Big Beautiful Bill Act introduced the country鈥檚 first national school voucher program. Starting Dec. 15, governors can opt into the program, which allows the use of tax-credit-funded scholarships to underwrite private or religious schools as early as 2027. The program for students who themselves or their siblings have previously received a federal voucher, favoring families already using vouchers.  

Selective admissions isn鈥檛 the only way the federal voucher scheme fails the 鈥渃ivil rights test.鈥� Having data on student and school performance broken down by student subgroups is a necessary civil rights tool, allowing the public to track disparities and target resources. Yet participating private schools do not have to report, test, or be held accountable for the requirements that apply to public schools. 

Most school choice programs students to take state assessments. And not all require that the . It is no surprise that lower-quality private schools are participate in voucher programs than higher-quality ones. When outcomes are hidden families are in the dark about how schools are serving their children. 

Then there is the cost. The true cost of this program to taxpayers and public school budgets is likely underestimated. In states with existing voucher programs, expenses have well beyond expectations, draining and destabilizing state budgets. In one Florida alone, the state voucher program contributed to a $17 million budget shortfall. Duval County serves a majority of students of color, about 40% of students are Black and 17% Latino, underscoring who bears the cost of these funding losses.   

In many places, voters have also rejected efforts to divert public funds away from public school students. In 2024, voters in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska voted against ballot measures that would have directed taxpayer dollars to private school vouchers. 

According to UnidosUS鈥� of the Hispanic Electorate, a plurality of Latino voters oppose diverting public school funds to pay for private or religious school tuition, while found that more than two-thirds of all voters choose funding for public schools over vouchers. 

Despite its clear drawbacks, some supporters argue the new federal program could unlock new dollars for purposes that could benefit public school students, such as tutoring, after-school programs, transportation or services for students with disabilities. The promise of expanded services is appealing, but this, too, ignores key realities. 

Under the new federal tax-credit scholarship program, donors give money to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs), which then provide 鈥渟cholarships鈥� or vouchers to eligible students. It is up to the U.S. Treasury Department to determine whether states can screen and set guardrails for SGOs participating in the program, and the agency has not yet released their proposed regulations. Still early and suggest states won鈥檛 get a choice in which vendors are eligible, which services quality nor which non-discrimination protections SGOs have to uphold. 

That would mean governors couldn鈥檛 prioritize SGOs that serve public school students, ensure quality standards or bar those that offer private school vouchers.

Even if a state is allowed to pick the SGOs that participate in the program, guaranteeing transparency and quality is a complex, demanding and potentially costly endeavor. With new SGOs and vendors entering the market, weeding out bad actors has proven to be a major and costly undertaking for states.  

A state audit revealed that Florida failed to reliably track in voucher funds, making it easy for fraudsters to game the system with fictitious The same audit revealed scholarship granting organizations in the state kept large sums of taxpayer money in their accounts, leaving programs and parents waiting for voucher payments for months. 

The federal program is so convoluted and biased towards private school uses that it is unlikely to serve public school students in practice. Ultimately, the potential harm outweighs any hypothetical good. 

We call on governors and state leaders: Do not opt in. Put the focus on civil rights, strengthening public schools and the proven options within them: tutoring, after-school learning, special education services, dual-language programs, magnet programs, gifted-and-talented programs with fair access and career and technical education. 

The program only passed the U.S. Senate last year by one vote, and Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly of Arizona and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii recently introduced the to repeal the program.

Public dollars should expand civil rights, not shrink them. Public education is the backbone of equal opportunity. Leaders should protect it.

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