The reconciliation bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives includes a federal tax credit voucher that would provide taxpayer-funded scholarships to pay for tuition at private schools and for home-schooled students. This $5-billion tax credit would divert funding that would otherwise go into federal coffers. This part of the reconciliation bill would make vouchers available to students in every state, even in those states where voters have opposed them like Kentucky, Colorado, and Nebraska, most recently.
Florida has lessons to offer about vouchers. Congress should learn from the state as the cautionary tale that it is and act to preserve and support public education for all students by rejecting the House’s proposal.
Beginning in the FY 2023-24 school year, vouchers were made available to all Florida students eligible to attend public school, regardless of income. Proponents touted the program as a remedy for students in underperforming schools that allows money to follow the child from public schools to private schools. However, in Florida, 69 percent of new voucher applicants are students who were never in public schools. The money cannot follow these students to private schools, because they were never there to begin with. Home-school and private school vouchers drain funding from public education for the overwhelming majority of students that choose public schools.
Florida has lessons to offer about vouchers. Congress should learn from the state as the cautionary tale that it is and act to preserve and support public education for all students by rejecting the House’s proposal.
Like Florida’s voucher program before the expansion to universal eligibility, the House bill includes an accelerator clause, which would allow the amount of tax credits awarded to increase by 5 percent per year if 90 percent of funds were awarded in the preceding year. The federal bill states that the amount could never be less than the previous year’s allocation.
A Brief Timeline of Florida’s Voucher Expansion
Florida has had vouchers since the 1990s. Initially, the number of students was small — 12,000 students were served in 2005 — and eligibility was limited to students with disabilities and students in low performing schools. Students with low income were added to eligibility criteria for vouchers in 2001. Since then, incremental changes have been made that increased the number of students receiving vouchers. In 2021, Florida increased eligibility to families whose household income was 375 percent of the federal poverty level.1 Spending on vouchers in the 2021-22 school year was $1.6 billion for the Florida Tax Credit and Family Empowerment Scholarship vouchers. Since Florida’s 2023 expansion to universal vouchers, spending on the program has risen to $4 billion in the current school year (FY 2024-25), and it is projected to increase to $5 billion, including $1.1 billion in tax credit vouchers, in the next school year. The structure of the federal voucher proposal mirrors that started in Florida. In Florida, the voucher program started with small amounts of funding and limited eligibility of students plus incremental changes in scope that over time have resulted in universal eligibility and explosive growth.
Federal Voucher System Would Demand No Accountability and Run the Risk of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse
Also like Florida’s program, under the House bill, there would be little or no accountability for student outcomes or return on investment. Voucher students are not required to take the same standardized testing as public school students and so outcomes cannot be compared directly. Private schools in Florida are not required to be accredited, and the qualifications of teachers described in the federal proposal are nearly identical to those in Florida statute that allows “subject matter experts” to be teachers rather than certified instructors. The lack of transparency around expenditures of education savings accounts creates potential for fraud and abuse, which in Florida has resulted in purchases of theme park tickets, kayaks, and big screen televisions.
Like Florida’s Voucher Program, the Federal Tax Credit Voucher Would Benefit Wealthy Families
Tax credit vouchers in Florida currently divert $1.1 billion annually from state tax revenue. Similarly, the federal bill would reduce federal tax revenue by an estimated $23.2 billion over the next 10 years. Like Florida vouchers, which subsidize wealthy families’ private school tuition — 44 percent go to families making over 400 percent of the federal poverty level — the federal voucher program would also benefit families with high income. It does so in a number of ways. First, the federal vouchers would be available to families making up to 300 percent of area median gross income, which varies by county. As an example, the estimated median family income for Florida is $95,300, which means a family making up to $285,900 annually would be eligible for a voucher, making the program nearly universal since 95 percent of households make less than that. The federal voucher also would provide investors full reimbursement of their contribution, unlike other nonprofits whose return is one-third of this amount. It would act as a profitable tax shelter for wealthy individuals who donate corporate stocks (securities) to the scholarship granting organizations, established to administer vouchers, in exchange for a credit — as opposed to selling their stock and paying capital gains taxes.
‘Parental Choice’ is an Illusion When it Comes to Private School Vouchers
Finally, the federal voucher program would perpetuate the misnomer of “parental choice” in describing the educational options of school vouchers. Under voucher programs, private schools choose the students they serve. Parents must still apply and have their student accepted to private schools. In Florida, vouchers do not necessarily cover the full cost of tuition, associated fees, and transportation. Parents bear the responsibility of additional costs beyond those covered by the voucher, which limits their choices when deciding their child’s educational future. Parents in rural areas may have few or no private schools nearby to send their children to, limiting their ability to choose private education.
Note
[1] In 2025, 375 percent of the federal poverty level is $120,563 for a family of four
