08/22/2026
I am a student of history and the lessons we can/should learn from the experiences of others. No surprise then that I am a fan of Heather Cox Richardson’s daily Letters from an American series. In today’s post she describes the evolution of the attack on public schools and the economic results of voucher programs. I support the original intent of vouchers as money that might help low income families afford better alternative programs for their children. I don’t support what the program has morphed into: an outrageously expensive and poorly supervised program anticipated to cost nearly $51M next year. Richardson lays out the results of the program in other states. The question is, will we learn from them, and return the program to its original intent with better oversight? Or not?
I need your vote to protect public school funding.
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“The drive to push tax dollars from public schools to private academies through a voucher system remained a top priority for those on the right….The coronavirus pandemic sped up the push to defund public schools [and]helped to change the nature of vouchers from ones targeted at students from poor families or students with special needs toward vouchers for everyone. In 2022, Arizona lawmakers passed the biggest school voucher program in the nation.
Advocates claimed that the new program would “save taxpayers thousands per student, millions statewide,” but in fact, as Eli Hager of ProPublica explained in 2024, the parents most likely to apply for subsidies already had their children in private school or were homeschooling them, using the vouchers to replace what they had been paying in the past. The state’s spending on vouchers ballooned to $886 million in 2024–2025 as families from wealthier, whiter school districts used vouchers for children who were already in private school. The costs blew a hole in the state’s budget: in 2024, Arizona faced a shortfall of $1.4 billion, forcing the state to slash spending for water infrastructure, road repair, and community colleges…
In May 2025, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed into law a voucher program in Texas under which, beginning this fall, families will receive about $10,000 a year for each school-age child to spend at a private school or $2,000 for children being homeschooled. The program is capped at $1 billion in its first two years, but experts predict it will rise to almost $5 billion by 2030.
The measure had faced opposition from Democrats and also Republicans from rural districts who worried about money draining from their public schools. It passed only after national pro-voucher advocates poured money into replacing the Republican state legislators who had stood against a voucher system with pro-voucher candidates.
Earlier this month, Jaden Edison and Sneha Dey of the Texas Tribune explained that a report from the state comptroller showed that of the more than 100,000 families participating in the new private school voucher program, most are white and from urban areas.… About 70% were already attending private schools or being homeschooled.
Austin Democratic state senator Sarah Eckhardt said the report “proves this program is a billion-dollar handout to exclusive private schools concentrated in big cities, while public schools across the state are underfunded and closing at an alarming rate.”
In Arizona, opponents of the voucher program tried to put onto the ballot this fall a measure that would have limited eligibility for the program by income and cracked down on the misuse of funds by homeschoolers, who used voucher money for ninja warrior training centers, trampoline parks, pianos, and so on. But voucher supporters sued over the signatures on the ballot measure, and on Tuesday the Arizona Supreme Court decided in their favor, throwing the measure out of this fall’s election.
Elvia Díaz of the Arizona Mirror wrote: “Arizona school vouchers that are pulling $1 billion away from students in K–12 public schools are here to stay, whether we like it or not.” She noted that “the real challenge is a public school system left underfunded and a voucher system left unchecked.”
Heather Cox Richardson, 8/21/26
