There has been a lot of concern by educators about Trump’s dismantling of the federal Department of Education. But in the ‘big, beautiful bill’ just passed by the House there is a provision that is probably a bigger threat to public education— a federal school voucher program financed by a lucrative tax break for the rich.

Vouchers give parents public money that they can spend on private schools. Vouchers passed by conservative state legislatures as a strategy for undermining public education have been around a long time. But whenever they have gone up for a vote they have lost— so for a decade the ‘reformers’ turned most of their attention to charter schools. In the last five years vouchers have returned as their primary strategy.  Now the Trumpists have come up with a new— and worse— version of vouchers. It’s based on giving one-for-one tax credits for money donated to non-profit voucher organizations.

Worse? 

• First, the Trump plan is a federal voucher program. States that have rejected vouchers— in many cases in initiative elections— will have them anyway.  
• Second, it hides the fact that the money for private schools comes from taxes— having that in the open was the key political weakness of state voucher plans. 
• Third, the plan would allow the vouchers to go to religious schools in addition to private schools, based on the claim that the money didn’t come from the government— it was ‘donated’.
• Fourth, it empowers the rich to directly control the implementation of vouchers by deciding which voucher organization with which rules will get their donation.
• And of course there are the things that all voucher programs have done— re-segregate schools, close neighborhood schools,  and subsidize the rich. 

Private schools can choose the students they want— and they will predictably leave out ‘difficult’ students, students with disabilities, and students who are not white. Neighborhood schools will lose enrollment, putting them on the chopping block.    And all voucher programs have been a subsidy to the rich; most voucher money goes to students already going to private schools.  If private school costs  $15,000/yr and the voucher is for $8,000/yr, only families that can afford the extra $7,000 can get a voucher at all. The scheme would in effect create a national school system for the rich and leave all other students in the public schools; the powerful and wealthy in every community and state will have less reason to support public schools.

The scheme works like this: 

• Non-profit voucher organizations are set up that actually issue the vouchers.
• They are paid for by donations from individuals.
• The donors are given a one-for-one federal tax credit for the donation.

A really first-class scam! The US Treasury loses a dollar in taxes for every dollar donated to vouchers but it’s not ‘paid for’ by tax money.  The donors are actually not ‘donating’ anything; they donate a million dollars— and get back a million on their taxes. Billionaires can support the reactionary “school choice” organization of their choice at absolutely no cost to themselves. If they donate stock that has appreciated they can do better than one-to-one; they get tax credit for the full value without paying any capital gains tax on the appreciation.  These provisions are far more generous than for donations to other non-profits.  For the details about these vouchers as a tax avoidance scheme see this report from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy. For now the scheme is capped at $10 billion a year (that’s $10,000,ooo,ooo so you can see the zeros) but will increase by 5% a year. 

I don’t think the right wants to completely dismantle public education.  They want to create a system of private schools for the rich and a few other “deserving students” and a system of increasingly under-resourced public schools for all the rest.  This is the way education works in most of the global south.  A  federal voucher system would move a long way toward that goal.

David de Leeuw, OEA retired