Vouchers are bad policy. Legislators can and should look to other states like Arizona and Florida to see the negative effects of vouchers on students, public schools, and state budgets.

Public dollars should stay in public education, but any voucher passed by Texas legislators needs oversight, clear guidelines, accountability, and transparency.

School vouchers are taxpayer-funded subsidies given to private schools and vendors without transparency and accountability for results. They often go by various names, including vouchers, education savings accounts (ESAs), tax credit scholarships, and virtual or special education grants, to name a few.

Regardless of what you call them, school vouchers and ESAs siphon public dollars away from public schools without the accountability and transparency required of traditional public schools.

WHAT CAN TEXAS LEARN FROM OTHER STATES

Public school funding in other states has suffered when voucher or ESA programs have passed. Texas is already in the bottom 10 states in the country for per-pupil funding, and our 5.5 million students across Texas – learning in urban, suburban, and rural cities and towns in more than 1,250 school districts and charter schools – can’t afford to see their schools’ budgets shrunk any further.

Florida is an instructive example. While Florida increased its spending on three voucher programs by 313% from fiscal year 2008 to fiscal year 2019, the state decreased its per-pupil funding for public education over this time period by 12%.

Voucher program costs have also tended to outstrip their promised price tags. Arizona estimated its voucher program would cost $65 million, but the program has ballooned to over $700 million in taxpayer funds.