Vouch For This

Billionaire-backed campaigns are punishing even Republican lawmakers who oppose the use of public funds for private schools.

In Tennessee this month, a dark money group sent text messages to a local lawmaker’s constituents, warning them that Rep. Todd Warner was betraying parents and aligning with “radical liberals” by “block[ing] millions in funding for local schools.”

But Warner is not a liberal—radical or otherwise. He’s not even a moderate. He’s a solidly Republican representative who opposes a Republican-led effort to divert public money into vouchers for private schools. For this opposition, he and other state-level lawmakers have come under fire by a billionaire-backed campaign to shame public school advocates into submission, or run them out of office entirely.

While groups like Moms for Liberty run loud plays to make public schools more politically hostile, a quieter and better funded movement is pushing to undermine public education entirely by redirecting state budgets into private, charter, religious, and homeschool education under the banner of “school choice.”

This privatization movement has the backing of billionaires like Trump-era Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Pennsylvania political kingmaker Jeff Yass. It’s advanced in multiple states this month, with bills to direct more public funding into vouchers for non-public schools, and with intense electoral pressure on lawmakers who stand in the way.

In Tennessee, Republican legislators are holding public school teachers’ health benefits hostage with a bill that ties them (and money for public school buildings) to a program that would offer every K-12 student $7,000 vouchers to attend private schools. 

Tennessee’s private schools cost an average $11,344 annually, meaning that even with a massive transfer of public funds, voucher recipients would still shell out thousands for school each year. And contrary to conservative claims about vouchers liberating children from failing public schools, Tennessee’s own record suggests the opposite. When the state ran a limited version of the voucher program last year, most of the enrolled students achieved lower test scores in private schools than their former classmates in public schools. New data this month from a pro-charter think tank in neighboring North Carolina points to similar outcomes, with charter school students lagging behind peers in public schools.

Nor are voucher programs even fiscally conservative. Arizona’s Republican legislature passed a universal voucher program last year, only for its costs to balloon. Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs’ office has estimated that, without reform, vouchers for private schools next year will cost the state $822 million, nearly as much as the state’s anticipated budget deficit. 

Instead, conservatives favor voucher programs because they erode a public institution that typically features a unionized workforce, anti-discrimination laws, and secular teachings. Vouchers promise to divert public school resources into religious and private institutions where finances, worker rights, and lesson plans are more opaque, or into homeschooling which requires a parent (often mothers) to forgo some or all paid work.

Right-wing funding of the voucher movement runs deep. When Warner opposed Tennessee's voucher bill, the well-funded organization American Federation for Children texted Warner’s constituents, accusing him of blocking aid for teachers and schools (the text did not mention the voucher program at all). The AFC’s Tennessee arm has spent more than any education reform group in the state since 2009, and counts among its backers Betsy DeVos and Walmart heir Jim Walton, the Tennessee Lookout reports. The Tennessee chapter of the Koch-linked group Americans for Prosperity has also targeted Warner and other voucher opponents in recent months, with billboards and mailers urging voters to inform Warner of their support for “school choice.”

Those pressure tactics have proven powerful in other states. Jeff Yass, a billionaire mega-donor, made headlines this month when Donald Trump’s social media site Truth Social merged with a shell company linked to Yass’s trading firm. Yass is a major advocate for voucher programs, and reportedly discussed “school choice” in a recent conversation with Trump.

In Texas’s Yass’s money is already talking. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott suffered a setback last year when some Republican legislators blocked his plan to offer $10,000 private school vouchers to each student. Yass helped Abbott rally in December with a $6 million campaign contribution—the largest in Texas history, according to Abbott’s office. Abbott then spent the primary campaign season hammering his party members who had opposed vouchers, causing many to lose their elections or face unwanted runoffs.

Last week, Abbott indicated that he was two House votes away from passing his voucher bill, and urged voters to support pro-voucher candidates in the primary runoffs.

The same pro-voucher networks are at work in other states. In Georgia, a long-debated voucher bill finally cleared the state House this month, overcoming past opposition from some Republicans. Those Republicans also faced attack ads from the AFC. In 2022, the pro-voucher group sent out mailers accusing voucher-hesitant lawmakers of being aligned with the “radical left” who “want to cancel your right to choose your child’s school.”

And in Colorado, a new bill this month that would require increased accountability for charter schools has already met opposition from groups like the AFP, which issued a statement claiming the accountability law would “mark the beginning of the end of charter schools in Colorado.”

Conservative proponents of voucher programs argue that private schools allow education to operate like a business (albeit a business heavily dependent on public subsidies). Doing so comes with all the obvious downsides and perverse incentives of running a business. This week, for instance, the founders of Oklahoma’s largest online school (a charter) are going to trial for fifteen felony counts including embezzlement and money laundering. Prosecutors allege that the charter leaders stole tens of million in state funding, siphoning it away from children’s education and into a network of shell companies. Hundreds of thousands in allegedly misappropriated funds went to donations to state and local lawmakers.

Also unspoken in that business equation are private schools’ implicit competitors: the public schools whose resources and enrollments are gutted.

Georgia Republican Rep. Rep Vance Smith, who opposes his state’s voucher bill, argued that Georgia should work on improving its existing public schools, rather than redirecting some funds and students to private schools.

“When the dust settles, you’ve still got children in the classroom," Smith told the Associated Press. "What are we doing for those children that are left in the classroom?”

Hey, thanks for reading MomLeft! This is a reader-supported newsletter. If you liked this edition, feel free to subscribe or recommend a friend. I’ll be back later this week.