Keeping Public Education Public: New Strategies Against School Voucher Programs
Quality public education for all is a centerpiece of the American promise and an aspiration to which generations have worked to fulfill. During Reconstruction in the 1860s and 1870s, one of the very first things Black policymakers in the South did once elected was to institute universal, compulsory public education for all children, regardless of race or wealth. The subsequent campaigns of terror that undid much of Reconstruction's achievements and inaugurated Jim Crow across the South segregated those schools, creating two separate and unequal systems of education.
In many states during the 1960s, school vouchers were used as a way to get around Supreme Court decisions like Brown v. Board of Education and perpetuate that segregated system by allowing white parents to send their children to segregated private schools at taxpayer expense.
Regardless of intent, the effect of private school vouchers is the redirection of public funds to private educational uses, diverting critical resources away from public schools, depriving students of important civil rights protections, and harming communities.
This webinar introduced Public Funds Public Schools, a joint campaign of Education Law Center and Southern Poverty Law Center that seeks to ensure public funds for education are used to maintain and support public schools. We will discuss the history and varied forms of private school vouchers and the strategies we are using—including litigation, advocacy, and research—to halt and roll back voucher programs. We also shared specific examples of our work and the many ways that public education stakeholders can support efforts to keep public funds in public schools that are open to all students.
Speakers included:
- Bacardi Jackson, Senior Supervising Attorney for Children’s Rights for the State of Florida, Managing Attorney of the Miami Office for the Southern Poverty Law Center
- Jessica Levin, Senior Attorney for the Education Law Center (ELC)
- Dr. John H. Jackson (moderator), President & CEO, Schott Foundation for Public Education
