Tell Congress: No to School Vouchers! Protect Public Education in ESEA Reauthorization
This week both the House and Senate are debating the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). We expect that there will be attempts, in both chambers, to amend ESEA to include private and religious school voucher schemes.
This means your taxpayer dollars could fund sectarian institutions that are not subject to state or federal education and non-discrimination standards.
- The Senate will debate S. 1177, which could include a variety of voucher and portability amendments introduced on the floor.
- The House will debate H.R. 5, which already contains a troubling provision to make Title I funds (money intended for public schools with the poorest students) “portable,” so that students could take that money to other, wealthier public schools, an act seen as a stepping-stone to vouchers. Despite this bill’s failure in February, it is likely that we could see an amendment that would allow these funds to flow to private and even religious schools too, along with amendments to create various other voucher schemes.
There are many reasons to oppose school voucher schemes. Converting education funding to school vouchers would have a devastating effect on children living in poverty, who are the primary beneficiaries of this public money. And while advocates of school voucher programs sell them as a cure for our ailing education system, they are nothing more than a backdoor attempt to defund our shared public schools and funnel the money to sectarian religious schools, many of which freely discriminate in employment and enrollment—including against minority students and students with disabilities—and indoctrinate students with religious-based teachings and pseudoscience.
Study after study has shown that school vouchers simply do not help students and families. Instead of supporting private and religious schools, taxpayer money must be used to support and improve the public school system, which provides a religiously neutral, constitutionally sound, and evidence-based education for all students.
The Center for Inquiry urges you to please use our quick, pre-filled form below to let your senators and representative know that you oppose private school voucher schemes in any form.
