Despite Trump’s victory, voters widely reject school vouchers – ProPublica

Arizona voters in 2018 overwhelmingly rejected school vouchers. That year, a measure was voted on that would have allowed all parents – even the wealthiest – to receive taxpayer money to send their children to private, typically religious schools.

Arizonans voted no, and it wasn’t close. Even in a right-leaning state, with powerful Republican leaders supporting the initiative, the vote against the initiative was 65% to 35%.

In this week’s election, Donald Trump and Republicans had hoped to see that kind of popular opposition to “school choice” with new voucher voting measures in several states.

But despite Trump’s big victory in the presidential race, vouchers were again resoundingly rejected by a significant majority of Americans. In Kentuckya ballot initiative that would have allowed public money to go to private education was defeated by about 65% to 35% — the same margin as in Arizona in 2018 and the vice versa of the margin by which Trump won Kentucky. In Nebraskanearly all 93 counties voted to repeal an existing voucher program; even the reddest county, where 95% of voters supported Trump, said no to vouchers. And in ColoradoVoters have rejected an effort to add a “right to school choice” to the state Constitution, language that could have allowed parents to send their children to private schools at public expense.

Expansions of school vouchers, despite support from rich conservativeshave never won when put to voters. Instead, they are losing by margins that are uncommon in such a polarized country.

Candidates from both parties would be wise to “make strong public education a big part of their political platforms because vouchers are just not popular,” said Tim Royers, president of the Nebraska State Education Association, a teachers union. Royers pointed to an emerging coalition in his state and others, including both progressive Democrats and rural Republicans, that opposes these sweeping “school choice” efforts. (Trump voters in small towns are against such measures because their local public school is often an important community institution, and also because there are not many, if any, private schools nearby.)

Still, voucher efforts are more successful when they are not put to a public vote. In recent years nearly a dozen states have introduced or expanded large voucher or “education savings account” programs, which even generate tax dollars prosperous families who could already afford a private school.

That includes Arizona, where in 2022 the conservative Goldwater Institute worked with Republican Governor Doug Ducey and the Republican majority in the Legislature to establish the exact same thing “universal” education savings account initiative that had been so forcefully rejected by voters just a few years earlier.

Another way Republican governors and advocacy groups have circumvented the will of the people on this issue is by identifying anti-voucher members of their own party and supporting pro-voucher candidates who challenge those members in the primaries. This way, they can build a legislative majority to enact voucher laws regardless of what conservative voters want.

In Iowaseveral Republicans stood in the way of a major new voucher program starting in 2022. Gov. Kim Reynolds helped push them out of office — despite them being in her own party — with the goal of gaining a majority to pass the measure.

A similar dynamic has developed in Tennessee and dramatically in Texas, the ultimate prize for voucher advocates. There, pro-voucher candidates for the state Legislature won enough seats this Tuesday to pass a voucher program during the legislative session that begins in January, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said.

The day after the election, Abbott, who has made vouchers his top legislative priority, framed the outcome as a resounding signal that Texans have now shown a “tidal wave of support” for pro-voucher lawmakers. But in reality, the issue was conspicuously absent from the campaigns of many of the new Republicans he helped win, amid polls showing that Texans had complicated views on school choice. (A University of Houston poll A survey this summer found that two-thirds of Texans supported voucher legislation, but an equal number also believe vouchers divert money from “already struggling public schools.”)

In the six competitive Texas legislative races targeted this election by Abbott and the pro-voucher American Federation for Children, backed by former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVosRepublican candidates did not make vouchers a central part of their platforms. Most left the issue off their campaign websites and instead stated positions such as “Stand for public schools“And”Increased funding for local schools.”

Corpus Christi-area Republican Denise Villalobos promised on her website that if elected, she would “fight for more funding for our teachers and local schools”; she didn’t emphasize her pro-voucher-views. At least one advertisement paid by the American Federation for Children-affiliated PAC attacked its opponent, Democrat Solomon Ortiz Jr., not for his opposition to vouchers, but for what he said were his “progressive open borders policies that are flooding our communities with violent crime and fentanyl.” (Villalobos defeated Ortiz by 10 points.)

Matthew Wilson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, said this strategy reflects the belief among voucher advocates that, compared to the border and culture wars, vouchers are not in fact a “slam-dunk winning issue.”

In the wake of Tuesday’s presidential election results, NBC News chief political analyst Chuck Todd said said that Democrats had overlooked school choice as a policy that could be popular among the working class, including Latinos, in places like Texas. But the concrete results of ballot initiatives across the country show that it is in fact Trump, DeVos and other voucher advocates who are out of step with the American people on this particular issue.

However, they continue to advocate for vouchers for several reasons: a sense that public schools are places where children develop liberal values, an ideological belief that the free market and private institutions can do things better and more efficiently than public institutions, and a longstanding – long-term goal of more religious education in this country.

And they know that popular sentiment can be swept aside by the efforts of powerful governors and wealthy interest groups, says Josh Cowen, a senior fellow at the Education Law Center, who recently published a history of billionaire-led voucher efforts across the country.

The Supreme Court could also support the voucher movement in coming years, he said.

“They’re not going to stop,” Cowen said, “just because the voters rejected this.”