Introducing a Framework for Private School Voucher Accountability

The U.S. public education system was created to educate all children, yet in recent years, it has been infiltrated by privatization efforts that have stripped billions of dollars in funding from public schools, segregated students and parental networks by race and socioeconomic status, and funneled public taxpayer money to autonomous private schools without holding them to the same accountability standards as their public counterparts.¹

Private school vouchers divert taxpayer funds from public schools to private institutions to cover the educational expenses of select students.² Although the use of these vouchers originally peaked in the 1960s after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education,³ since they enabled white families to avoid school desegregation, vouchers took a new altruistic turn in the early 1990s. In Wisconsin, the first modern voucher program aimed to close the educational achievement gap between low-income students and their counterparts.⁴ More states followed suit, including Florida with the launch of a voucher program intended for students with disabilities in 1999.⁵ This focus on the use of vouchers to close the opportunity gap for low-income students and students with disabilities has since shifted. Today, billionaires are lobbying for vouchers of all kinds—including traditional vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax credit scholarships—to support their deregulation interests and further their financial gain.⁶ Meanwhile, the private voucher programs currently being expanded primarily benefit wealthier students, further exacerbating gaps in educational achievement and wealth.⁷

Whether public or private, every parent deserves to know if their child’s school is providing a quality education and fostering a safe and nurturing learning environment. Adopting a rigorous accountability framework for private and faith-based schools that are recipients of public funds will increase both the quality and transparency of private choice programs, ensuring that institutions are delivering a world-class education to all students and using taxpayer funds efficiently and effectively.

More than 80 percent of all pre-K-12 students in the United States—49.5 million students—attend traditional public schools that are supported by state and federal funds.⁸However, there has been a recent upsurge in new forms of voucher programs⁹ that poses significant threats to public education funding by allowing affluent families to receive state and federal government aid to cover their children’s private school expenses, and individuals and businesses to receive tax breaks.¹⁰ These can include programs such as education savings accounts, which provide families with access to public per-pupil funding to use on private school tuition and education-related expenses, and tax credit scholarships, which reduce the income tax liability of individuals or businesses who donate to nonprofitorganizations that provide scholarships for private schools.¹¹ Private school vouchers—the most common form of voucher program—pay, in part or whole, the cost of tuition for private schools in the form of a financial award that is mostly funded by taxpayers.¹² While most private school voucher programs are funded by state taxpayers, there is one federally supported program: the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (D.C. OSP).¹³

Although the number of private schools in the United States has decreased in the past few years, state legislation around voucher programs has been on the rise.¹⁴ Educational choice programs that provide families with private, public, and nontraditional schooling options—not including open enrollment—currently serve nearly 7 million children nationwide,¹⁵ equivalent to about 14 percent of the total public school enrollment.¹⁶More than 1 million of these students are supported by private voucher programs.¹⁷ This is a significant increase from 2010 participation levels, when only about 70,000 students took part in these programs.¹⁸ Furthermore, at least 33 states have one or more private school choice programs.¹⁹ Of the states that currently have private voucher programs, more than half have Republican trifectas in their state governments.²⁰ Despite this trend to implement and expand these programs, the majority of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, support increasing funding for public schools over private school vouchers.²¹In fact, three states—Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska—rejected private school choice measures during the 2024 election.²² Yet some lawmakers in Congress have introduced the Educational Choice for Children Act, which would provide $10 billion in annual tax credits to wealthy Americans for contributions to voucher funds, leading to a combined federal and state revenue loss of $136.3 billion by 2035.²³

While most voucher programs granting financial assistance to private schools were initially intended to help low-income students access a quality school of choice,²⁴ requirements on income and need have been lifted on these programs in 12 states and counting.²⁵ It is estimated that 40 percent of the nearly 50 million students who attend public elementary and secondary schools are now eligible for public subsidies with the introduction of new private voucher programs.²⁶

Research shows that vouchers have a limited effect on students’ academic achievement²⁷ and, in some instances, contribute to a decline in student performance.²⁸ Studies have confirmed that in most cases, these programs also do not increase college enrollment and degree attainment.²⁹ Advocates have also voiced concerns about the risks of discrimination and denial of a quality education for students with disabilities should these programs be expanded without accountability.³⁰ The expansion of private voucher programs would also be detrimental to students in rural communities, where only 34 percent of families live within 5 miles of at least one private school.³¹ Despite these concerns, private school parents—some of whom have used voucher programs³²—report high levels of satisfaction due to their belief that private vouchers offer increased school safety, individualized attention, and better educational outcomes—the latter of which has been refuted by data on student outcomes.³³

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires that all local education agencies adhere to statutory accountability indicators and to the reporting requirements of their state’s accountability system.³⁸However, private schools are not fully bound by these requirements, which they often only meet if they choose to receive equitable services by participating in programs such as Title I, II, III and IV of ESSA. Equitable services are based on need and determined in consultation with the local education agency. They include supports such as professional development for teachers in core content areas and instruction outside of the regular classroom through academic enrichment programs such as summer learning.³⁹ Given the unprecedented expansion of voucher programs that are costing taxpayers billions of dollars, it is critical that education stakeholders demand and policymakers pursue a comprehensive accountability framework for private voucher programs in exchange for autonomy and public aid. At minimum, an accountability framework for private schools that benefit from public funds should include the following six indicators:

1. Attendance, cost, and financial need
2. Academic achievement
3. Student growth and effort to close the opportunity gap
4. School climate, safety, and belonging
5. Postsecondary and college and career readiness
6. Fiscal management

State agencies should develop a public resource such as a digital dashboard to provide reporting on these data points for individual schools participating in voucher programs. A statewide council of education leaders, private school educators, and parents may be established to achieve consensus on indicators and measures and to identify appropriate weights for each.

1. Attendance, cost, and financial need

Student enrollment trends and the gap between tuition cost and family financial need can be measured through:

• Enrollment rates: Due to concerns of discriminatory admission practices and policies at private schools, including discrimination against students with disabilities, these schools should be required to report on admissions data, screening processes, and enrollment rates—including the number of students applying and percentage of acceptance by student demographics (e.g., disability, race, religion, language, and socioeconomic status).⁴⁰ Since students with disabilities are subject to lose federal protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act when they attend a private school, it is important to evaluate whether their needs are being met at these institutions.⁴¹ Requiring private schools to report on admissions and enrollmentrates will increase transparency for families and stakeholders to ensure that all students are receiving equal access to a quality education and that these institutions are not engaging in discrimination.
• Transfer and dropout rates: Annual reporting should also include retention data that tracks transfer and dropout rates to identify whether private schools are retaining students supported by vouchers. This measure will help illuminate disparities among students that are leaving these schools and returning to the public school system or that are dropping out before graduation without a return on taxpayer investments.
• Cost and financial need: Voucher programs should seek to support families with a financial need rather than wealthy families. Yet the gap between voucher award amounts and private school costs may contribute to student attrition or outright deny access to underrepresented students. This may present an opportunity for private schools to offer need-based scholarships to voucher recipients. As depicted in Figure 2, in 4 of the 5 states with voucher programs that the authors examined, the average private school tuition exceeded the annual voucher amount. This gap creates a barrier for many low-income families who may not have the resources to cover the difference in cost and leads to wealthier families extracting the benefits from private school choice programs.⁴² A private voucher accountability framework must include a measure that ensures vouchers are being awarded to families with a financial need and that the gap between tuition cost and median need does not exceed what a family is able to contribute.

2. Academic achievement

In 2019, the most recent D.C. OSP evaluation report to date found that there was no significant difference in reading achievement scores of students who were offered the voucher scholarship or used the scholarship when compared with peers in a control group.⁴³ In fact, there was a statistically significant negative effect on reading achievement. Students who used the scholarship also scored statistically significantly lower in math achievement when compared with their control group peers. These results should sound the alarm for lawmakers.

Like public schools receiving financial assistance through state and federal governments, private schools that receive public aid through voucher programs should be required to administer comparable standardized assessments that measure students’ proficiency in core subjects such as English language arts, math, science, and social studies/civics. Currently, out of 15 states⁴⁴ with universal private school choice programs, all except for Arizona and Oklahoma require academic assessments, but barriers with public transparency of the data continue to be a challenge.⁴⁵ Some states, such as Florida and Arkansas, allow the use of different assessments than those that are administered to public school students, which makes it difficult to draw comparisons.⁴⁶

A proposed accountability framework for private voucher programs should require statewide assessments for voucher-supported students and make private school students’ assessment data publicly accessible to inform school improvement plans. Private school assessments, whether standardized or performance based, should align with those administered in public schools to allow for comparability. Additionally, private school students and users of private vouchers should be required to participate in national statewide assessments such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress to evaluate and compare achievement of these students with their public school peers.⁴⁷

3. Growth and an effort to close the opportunity gap

Private schools receiving public aid through voucher programs should be required to report on year-to-year student growth on annual standardized assessments in core subjects. Various approaches should be considered, including a review of how well students are progressing toward standards; a value-added approach that looks at how students have progressed from their baseline score; and reporting on overall growth percentiles that show how students are faring compared with their peers. Private schools should also prioritize eliminating achievement disparities between subgroups—including low-income students and students with disabilities—and implement early identification of at-risk students to ensure that they receive additional interventions such as tutoring.

4. Climate, safety, and belonging

Unlike traditional public schools that must abide by statewide discipline codes and district regulations, discipline policies vary across private schools.⁴⁸ Since these schools have discretion to set behavior codes of conduct,⁴⁹ their policies may not seek to identify and address specific incidents such as bullying and harassment. They may also allow the use of exclusionary practices, which research has shown to contribute to poorer academic and health outcomes.⁵⁰ As of August 2024, 17 states permitted the use of physical force such as corporal punishment in schools.⁵¹ While school districts that receive federal financial assistance⁵² have been required by the Civil Rights Data Collection to report discipline data annually, private schools have not been subject to such reporting requirements.⁵³ These institutions should also be required to use multiple assessment instruments such as site visits, climate surveys, and focus groups with students and families to evaluate the overall climate and safety of the school environment. They should also collect and report data on their school discipline policy, including office discipline referrals and suspension and expulsion rates, and use of corporal punishment to ensure that no student or subgroup is being disproportionately affected by harmful practices.

5. Postsecondary and college and career readiness

Accountability systems should seek to provide families with information they do not already have. As federal and state policymakers consider an accountability framework for private voucher programs, assessing postsecondary outcomes and college and career readiness must be a key component. A private education is an investment, and when taxpayer-funded vouchers are the primary source of payment, this investment must be justified. Private voucher programs should annually collect and report on their students’ enrollment in dual credit college courses, Advancement Placement courses, and International Baccalaureate courses. In addition, these institutions should report on the readiness of students for postsecondary options, including through measurements such as college admission rates, military enlistment rates, and rates of enrollment into other postsecondary programs. Institutions should also collect data on postsecondary employment and earnings of their graduates over time to demonstrate the return on investment, a requirement that has been instituted by the state of Connecticut as part of its ESSA accountability system.⁵⁴

6. Fiscal management

With the large amounts of funding⁵⁵ being invested in private voucher programs and increasing flexibility in how and where funds are used—including the use of vouchers on microschools⁵⁶—an accountability framework should establish guardrails to prevent the fraud and abuse that has been prevalent in the voucher and private school choice movement.⁵⁷ One instance of this fraud and abuse took place in South Carolina, where nearly 1,000 students each mistakenly received $1,500 of taxpayer-funded voucher money, despite their ineligibility for the program.⁵⁸ This error was discovered by a state oversight agency.⁵⁹

Nonpublic schools receiving aid through voucher programs should be required to complete and provide an annual financial audit to state agencies and lawmakers. To ensure fiscal integrity, state agencies should also conduct frequent reviews of financial policies and ensure fiduciary compliance of the governing boards of these institutions. This may include review of financial procedures, financial reports, board meeting minutes, bylaws, and even periodic site visits. Most importantly, states must establish guardrails to ensure that funds provided through private voucher programs are being properly allocated to support students’ education rather than for nonacademic purposes.

Accountability systems reveal how well schools are educating students and preparing them for life beyond high school. These systems are also essential to improving student outcomes, and they should not be punitive but rather serve as a mechanism to identify and deliver additional support to schools. As the Trump administration seeks to deploy government funding to expand private choice and voucher programs, and as bills to expand private choice advance through Congress, it is critical for federal lawmakers and state legislatures to prioritize adequate funding for public education over vouchers.⁶⁰ Should private choice programs be considered, they must have state and federal oversight along with requirements for assessments and accountability. This must include congressional oversight for D.C. OSP, which has not been evaluated since 2019,⁶¹ despite the Scholarships for Opportunity and Results Act’s annual evaluation requirement of the $17 million program.⁶² At the state level, legislatures have the authority to pursue an assessment and accountability framework consisting of academic and nonacademic measures for state-supported voucher programs. These data points are necessary to improve student outcomes and school quality and to help families make informed educational choices.