Republican political losses this midterm election will have broad consequences for education policy, including one priority for many in the GOP: private school choice.
Democrats notched significant wins in gubernatorial races in states that direct public dollars to private schools and even homeschoolers. It’s a shift that could bring reforms to those programs and even buoy efforts to repeal them.
Private school choice has been an issue that’s united Democrats for a long time, said Michael Petrilli, the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a right-leaning think tank. But as these programs have expanded to pay tuition for wealthy kids and come under fire for loose controls and their ballooning size, some Democrats in Republican-led states seized the opening.
“They were able to link these broader issues around oligarchs and the rich and corruption and money’s role in politics” to niche education policy, Petrilli said.
Support for public schools, school choice oversight were campaign themes for Democrats
Democrats will soon hold a majority of governorships, after flipping offices in states including , Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas—all of which have large private school choice programs that Democrats criticized on the campaign trail. As candidates, the governors-elect in those states campaigned on supporting public schools and increasing oversight of private school choice programs.
These were especially prominent themes in Gina Hinojosa’s gubernatorial bid in Texas and Rob Sand’s in Iowa, as both candidates sought to tie their states’ education savings account programs to broader concerns among the electorate about corruption and policies that disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
It was an approach that proved effective, said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
“In race after race, those who supported public schools and rejected private school vouchers triumphed—statewide in Texas, Iowa, Michigan, and Ohio, and in countless congressional districts and school board races,” she said in a statement.
Hinojosa has called for ending her state’s private school choice program, while others, such as Sand and Amy Acton in Ohio, said they plan to subject their states’ programs to more accountability and transparency.
But private school choice advocates are drawing solace from the fact that not all Democrats who won their gubernatorial races campaigned on ending private school choice. That was the case in Wisconsin where Democratic Gov.-elect David Crowley carved out a position in the primaries that he would not get rid of the state’s voucher program.
That may point to a new approach for the party toward these policies, said Jorge Elorza, the chief executive officer of Democrats for Education Reform, a school-choice advocacy organization.
“In most of those states the programs are established enough that they can’t be repealed,” he said. “You have governors who have expressed concerns with the choice programs but haven’t set out to entirely repeal them. So, what does a progressive version of an education savings account look like? That’s to be determined over the coming years by these executive leaders.”
In addition to now-entrenched programs, Democrats may face other headwinds if they seek to repeal private school choice. That’s especially true in states where one or both chambers of the legislature will remain under Republican control, including Iowa, Ohio, and Texas.
At the same time, Democrats in some cases may be able to leverage other statewide positions they won Tuesday to apply more scrutiny to private school choice programs. In Texas, for example, the state comptroller oversees the education savings account program, and Comptroller-elect Sarah Eckhardt, a Democrat, has said she will audit the program.
Potentially the most vulnerable private school choice program is Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Accounts, the first in the nation that opened to all students in the state regardless of income or disability status.
There, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs won reelection, and her party is in position to wrest control of both chambers of the state legislature from Republicans.
Hobbs campaigned in part on a promise to bring reforms—such as income caps and stricter oversight—to the state’s billion-dollar education savings account program.
The race to succeed Republican State Superintendent Tom Horne, who lost his primary, remained too close to call on Thursday. But the Democratic candidate, Teresa Leyba Ruiz, is leading in the vote count. She has also called for more regulations for the program, and would be in charge of administering it as the state’s chief school officer.
School choice supporters are urging newly empowered Democrats to tread carefully. Nearly 2 million students are enrolled in state private school choice programs, said Tommy Schultz, the CEO of the American Federation for Children, which advocates and lobbies for school choice policies at the state and federal levels.
“Candidates who campaigned on affordability should not turn around and take scholarships from low-income families and students with special needs,” he said in a statement.
With elections over, will Democratic governors opt into federal school choice?
Now that the midterm elections are mostly in the review mirror, advocates for and against school choice are watching to see if sitting Democratic governors will take the Trump administration up on joining a first-of-its-kind federal school choice program.
New Mexico’s outgoing Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, announced the day after the elections that her state would opt into the program. She pointed to potential funding opportunities for literacy and math initiatives, after-school programs, and computer resources.
Democrat Deb Haaland won New Mexico’s gubernatorial race Tuesday and will be sworn in on Jan. 1, the deadline for opting into the federal school choice program.
Democratic governors who leave office in the coming weeks may choose to opt into the program to give political cover to their Democratic successors so they don’t have to publicly back a policy and administration that is unpopular with their core supporters.
The Democratic governors of California, Maine, and Michigan—who haven’t yet announced their intentions with the federal program—also leave office in the coming weeks after serving two terms, and will be replaced by Democrats.
The Federal Scholarship Tax Credit, as the program is called, incentivizes taxpayers to donate money for scholarships for K-12 students. It does that by awarding dollar-for-dollar federal tax credits to taxpayers who donate to approved nonprofit scholarship-granting organizations, or SGOs. Individuals can receive tax credits on donations up to $1,700 and married couples on donations up to $3,400. SGOs, in turn, award scholarships to students to use for approved expenses such as tutoring at their public schools or tuition at their private schools.
So far, every Republican governor save one, Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont, has opted into the program while most Democratic governors have yet to make a decision.
The lasting impact of the Democratic sweep that’s taken over governor mansions will extend far beyond school choice policy, said Petrilli. A majority of the country’s schoolchildren will be in states governed by Democrats, he said.
“The Democratic Party is still very closely tied to the teachers’ unions and other key constituencies within the public education system,” Petrilli said. “It’s going to be tough sledding when it comes to things like high-quality charter schools, differential pay, and certainly private school choice. This is going to be a tough couple years for education reform.”
