Editor’s note: The article was written by Lily Klam and published by First Focus – a member of CHN, on July 1, 2025.

The Educational Choice for Children Act, which has been wrapped into reconciliation proposals, would create a federal private school voucher program. School vouchers harm public schools, allow schools to discriminate against students for reasons including religion, sexual orientation, and family income, and do not improve academic outcomes. These programs disproportionately serve wealthy families who already attend private schools. Supporters of the legislation claim that it won’t hurt public schools. Here is why they are wrong:

1. When Public Schools Lose Students They Lose Funding: The way that public schools receive funding gives private school voucher programs a direct negative impact on schools. Every state, and the District of Columbia, funds schools according to student count. Some states use enrollment, others use attendance, but all states take the number of students in schools into account. This is the primary reason that claiming that vouchers do not hurt public schools is not true – when schools lose students, they lose funding. This is particularly harmful because there are many fixed costs for schools to operate. Losing funding to voucher programs hurts some schools more than others. For small schools, like many rural ones, even a slight increase in voucher usage by students causes a negative ripple effect through schools. For example, if the average funding a school receives per child is $17,700 (the annual average amount of local, state, and federal resources combined per pupil), then the departure of 30 students could cost over $530,000. If an individual classroom loses a few children, you can’t eliminate personnel like the teacher, the aide, the librarian, the bus driver, the school counselor, or the nurse, without harming all children.
2. The Funding Loss Has No Limit: There is tremendous uncertainty around the potential cost of the program, which creates a permanent and unlimited tax credit. There is no way to know at this point how much this program will cost. As we’ve seen with state voucher programs, the costs are often much higher than expected. The loss of public funding results in lower availability of funding for public schools, at a time when funding for non-defense purposes is very tight and extreme cuts to public schools have been proposed.
3. Education Often Takes a Hit in Budget Cuts:  When there are budget shortfalls, education is often one of the first areas that takes a hit. The reconciliation proposals include significant cost-shifts to states, which means cuts to programs and puts states at risk of budget shortfalls. States are already not receiving the full amount they were promised this year from the federal government – an estimated $6.2 billion in federal FY 2025 funds across several key program has not yet been released by the Department of Education. The loss in state funding and lack of willingness to release promised funds to schools will cause the reconciliation proposal to have a more damaging impact on state budgets, and further harm public schools.