How most school choice policies will allow government to ‘destroy’ private schools: Nonprofit president
Sheri Few, president of U.S. Parents Involved in Education, warns that most school choice legislation being passed will end in a regulatory crackdown on private schools.
Popular school choice policies making their way through state legislatures across the country will result in government control over private and Christian schools and even homeschooling, said the head of a nonprofit focused on giving parents more authority over their children's education.
"Putting government money in private and Christian schools will likely destroy them," Sheri Few, president and founder of United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE), told Fox News. "We don't want to see private and Christian schools harmed, we don't want to see homeschool parents regulated, and that's exactly what's going to happen."
The decades-old fight to give parents more control over kids’ education gained renewed momentum during the COVID-19 pandemic after remote learning allowed parents to hear the lessons their children were being taught, leading them to question the quality of public education. A record 20 states passed school choice legislation in 2023, creating new choice programs or expanding existing ones, and bills are expected to be introduced in many other states this year, according to National School Choice Week.
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"The movement has grown because COVID led to parents actually seeing what their children were learning," Few said. "They have realized that their children are being harmed by what's being taught in government schools."
Since 2020, classroom lessons about issues like race, gender and sexual orientation became controversial focal points, leading traditionally mundane school board meetings to become heated rhetorical battlegrounds. And after test scores dropped during the COVID-19 lockdowns, academic success has largely failed to rebound, with half of students performing below grade level in at least one subject, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Several types of school choice policies exist, but the vast majority of new legislation provides education savings accounts (ESAs) or other voucher programs, which both involve giving parents public funds to spend on education expenses including homeschooling costs and private school tuition. More than 80 ESA bills were introduced across the U.S. last year with 10 states passing new ESA legislation, according to National School Choice Week.
Critics argue school choice siphons money away from the public school system, degrading its education and pushing less privileged students into the worst schools. They also warn that it will lead to higher tuition at private schools.
And despite many conservative think tanks and Republican legislators pushing ESAs and other voucher systems as the solution to freeing families from government-run schools, Few said these policies will have dire consequences for non-public schools.
After National School Choice Week, which ran Jan. 21 to 27, Sheri Few warns that many of the education reforms being passed will "destroy" private schools. (Getty Images)
"Leaders of these private institutions need to be fully aware of what they're getting into, the potential of being regulated down the road," she said.
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Any program that involves schools accepting public dollars puts them at risk of government control, Few warned.
"We don't want private schools to accept money, no strings attached initially, get dependent on it and then the government starts throwing down these regulations in exchange for the funding," she told Fox News. "Then they're stuck having to make a choice of either closing their doors or compromising their values in order to continue to accept the federal and state funding."
She pointed to the Supreme Court's 1984 decision on Grove City v. Bell, ruling that higher education institutions that accepted any type of government funding, even in the form of public grants and loans, were required to follow federal and state regulations.
"The precedent’s already been set," Few said. "That's the way the government would influence private and Christian schools and ravage them in the same way that they have government schools."
Arizona expanded its ESA program in 2022, becoming one of nine states to pass universal school choice. But just over a year later, the state’s new governor, Katie Hobbs, said the program "lacks accountability and transparency." Earlier this month, the Democrat proposed a plan requiring private schools accepting ESA students to meet a slew of regulations to "increase student safety, promote financial accountability, and hold private schools receiving taxpayer dollars to similar standards as public schools."
Few said these are the consequences USPIE has been trying to warn conservatives about.
"Now they have a Democrat governor and she's saying, ‘I'm going to regulate. I'm going all the way down to homeschools,’" Few said. "This is what we warned about, and now we're seeing it happen."
USPIE believes the safest way to ensure school choice without risking government overreach is through tax credits at the federal and state levels. Increasing federal child tax credits will leave parents with more money to spend on tuition at a school of their choice, Few said. Similarly, income tax states should also provide a credit for parents who want to educate their kids outside the public school system.
South Carolina lawmakers introduced a tax credit bill that would allow parents seeking to enroll their kids in private schools to use income tax credits for tuition. (iStock)
For families who don’t pay any income taxes, an earned income credit model could be applied, Few added.
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With the help of USPIE, South Carolina lawmakers introduced the "Tax Credits for Parental Choice in Education Act" to the state Senate and will soon propose a companion bill in the House.
"We're testing the waters here in South Carolina with our tax credit bill," Few told Fox News. "It's for $3,000, which is not nearly enough to pay a private school tuition, but it helps."
"It's a good start and I think we can build on that in future legislative sessions," she added.