Forbes42%
Will Federal Vouchers Usher In A New Era Of School Voucher Regulation? 86%
By Peter Greene98%
7/22/2026, 12:31:23 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Anecdotal, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 39.4% saturation with 388 hits. Analysis detected 1,868 faulty-reasoning hits from 985 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 78.4% and a BS Rank of 86% (2,883 of 19,443 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 85.20% of the article peer group.
State level school vouchers have enjoyed a period of growth largely free from regulation and oversight, but the advent of federal vouchers has the potential to change that.
Most states have voucher laws that explicitly forbid the state from interfering in any way with how a voucher-receiving school conducts business.
Education Savings Account style vouchers provide parents with a grant of funding they can spend on many sorts of education-related expenses, but again, these programs often come with little oversight.
As the Florida Department of Education announces on their website:
The Florida Department of Education does not have jurisdiction over private schools.
Legislative intent not to regulate, control, approve, or accredit private educational institutions, churches, their ministries, religious instruction, freedoms, or rites, is explicit.
The owners of private elementary and secondary schools in Florida are solely responsible for all aspects of their educational programs,
The One Big Beautiful Bill created a federal voucher program, a program that may help further the voucher advocate goal of pushing voucher programs into states that have resisted vouchers.
Yet those states may move to insure that federal vouchers do not bring with them the fraud and abuse seen in other states.
In Arkansas, the LEARNS Act allowed students to qualify for a voucher for students with disabilities with nothing more than a note from a doctor.
Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S.
Cohen reported for ProPublica on a private school that had students attack a fellow student, under the direction of a school leader whose only qualification is a degree in occupational therapy.
Arkansas does not review private school curriculum or the qualifications of the school leaders; anyone is free to open a private school.
In Florida, ProPublica found that the state of Florida had stripped a teacher of her license for sexual abuse of a 16-tear-old boy a decade ago, then, last year allowed her to open a private school.
Arizona’s taxpayer-funded school vouchers have been plagued with misuse.
State auditors found in 2018 that $700K in voucher money being spent on cosmetics, clothing, and other inappropriate items.
Craig Harris reported at 12News that the level of fraud and unallowable purchases was not the 1% declared by voucher supporters like state Schools Chief Tom Horne, but closer to 20%.
According to the Department of Education’s own records, of 385,000 purchases made with voucher dollars, 84,000 violated the rules governing what is allowed.
When Harris followed up in 2025, he found voucher money still being spent on a variety of items such as iPhones, smart TVs, jewelry, hotel stays, airline tickets, diapers, gift cards, lingerie, and other unallowable expenses.
In November 2025, the Department of Education began automatically approving all voucher spending requests because it had become swamped with a backlog of such requests.
Utah has already added some guardrails to its program, and other states are also seeing a push for greater accountability and transparency.
In Arizona, a proposed ballot initiative will likely call for greater accountability for the state’s voucher program.
In Pennsylvania, the House passed a bill that left voucher funding untouched, but add transparency and accountability.
State Rep.
Matt Bradford said, “No one should ever fear transparency," and has argued for more oversight, according to Maddie Hanna and Gillian McGoldrick at the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Vouchers also bring with them questions of taxpayer-funded schools that pick and choose which students to accept, what Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center has called an “outsourcing of discrimination.”
Voucher-funded schools have, in some states, reserved the right to reject students for coming from homes have an atmosphere “that is counter to or in opposition to the biblical lifestyle.”
There are also examples of schools that reject students with academic or behavioral struggles.
There are at least two cases currently working t hrough the courts that seek to establish a private school entitlement to state funding even as they violate the state’s laws forbidding discrimination against LGBTQ persons.
All of this serves as an indication to governor’s considering signing on for the federal voucher system may want to make sure that they put legislative guardrails in place to protect both the academic integrity of the education system as well as the rights of marginalized student communities.
Some voucher supporters are already anticipating that outcome.
It would not be the first time; as Jennifer Berkshire reported in In These Times, some of the strongest opponents Governor Greg Abbott’s Texas school vouchers were conservatives, who see in vouchers a way for government to extend control over schools.
That may go double for federal vouchers.
Writes American Enterprise Institute fellow Daniel Buck, “The greatest risk in my mind is that in time this program will become a stick that the federal government can wield to thwack private schools into submission.”
Yet currently, there are no sticks attached to the federal voucher program.
When Governor Tony Evers vetoed the Wisconsin legislature’s attempt to force participation in the federal voucher program, he stated
This nationwide voucher program has no student achievement metrics, no school accountability measures, no minimum or maximum scholarship size, no certain end date, and no cap on how much the federal government can spend.
Republicans in Washington have given private voucher expansion carte blanche to run roughshod over public education in this country — and a blank check to do so at taxpayer expense, clearly without any regard for whether it actually does what is best for kids.
School vouchers occupy a unique policy position; no voucher program has ever been put into place by the voters.
Instead, these programs have always been installed by legislatures working around the voters.
Now the federal government has launched a voucher program by making an end run around state legislatures.
It will be up to those legislatures to install guard rails to protect the interest of their taxpayers and students.
Analysis
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