The Blue State Voucher Express

The Democrats' pro-voucher wing is pressing blue state governors to embrace Trump's signature education policy

Arne Duncan, Obama’s education secretary, is now pitching school vouchers.

I was in Florida recently to speak on the damage that vouchers have done to public schools when a local friend made a comment that I often get from my red state pals. You’re so lucky to live in a state that’s free from this crap. Acting on my 2026 resolution to be less of a downer (how’s that going??) I kept myself to myself, resisting the urge to deliver a semi-screed on the looming threat posed by the federal voucher program. And I reflected, once again, upon the irony that even as the GOP increasingly confronts the fallout from voucher programs, creating an opening for Democrats, the pro-voucher wingette of the Democratic Party is trying to muscle blue state governors into embracing Trump’s signature education policy.

What’d I miss?

First, a quick recap. Buried in the 1000 page behemoth known as the One Big Beautiful Bill was the nation’s first-ever federal voucher program. Long a conservative pipe dream, notwithstanding those on the right who staunchly opposed the idea as federal overreach, the new voucher program gives tax-payers a tax credit of unprecedented generosity if they donate to a so-called scholarship granting organization. I’ll get into more on how this will and won’t work below, but the key detail for the purposes of this post is that governors must opt into the bill in order for their states to participate. So far 27 have signed up, leaders of red states all, save for one Jared Polis, the outgoing governor of Colorado. And while the pressure on Democratic governors so far has come from Republican-controlled legislators in states including Kansas and Kentucky, the voucher express is now rolling into blue states.

Which brings us to a recent event that convened, among others, former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, edupreneur Kevin Chavous, and a who’s who of Massachusetts education reform and philanthropy leaders, all rallying around a message for Governor Maura Healey: “sign up for vouchers—for the kids.” For a full play-by-play of the gathering, read every word of this write up by veteran journalist (and longtime friend of yours truly) Yawu Miller. As Miller notes, while the messaging was both muddled and deeply misleading, the new Massachusetts Educational Opportunities Coalition reflects impressive organizing.

The National Parents Union is spearheading the local coalition which aims to pressure Gov. Maura Healey to adopt the tax credit program. So far, the group counts 124 organizations in support, including The Pioneer Institute, The Boston Foundation, the Lynch Foundation, 45 individual Catholic Schools, 18 Montessori Schools, 13 Jewish day schools, the umbrella organizations supporting those types of schools and dozens of YMCAs and Boys and Girls Clubs.

Bad timing

A key part of the sales pitch for bringing vouchers to Massachusetts is that the cause is bipartisan. Which made it all the more awkward that on the very day of the coalition’s debut, 32 Democratic senators, including both Massachusetts senators, dropped a bill to repeal the federal voucher program on the grounds that it will 1) decimate public schools and 2) explode the federal deficit. In a hard-hitting op-ed, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly warned that universal vouchers had “broken” his state. And while the Wall Street Journal was quick to paint Kelly as a toady of the teachers unions, the bill’s co-sponsors include among them some famously choice-y Democrats: Cory Booker and Michael Bennett. Bennett, by the way, is running to replace out-going Colorado Governor Jared Polis, to date the program’s lone blue backer. (Contrary to claims on the coalition’s website, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein has not opted his state into the program.)

Overselling, undertelling

The story told at the Massachusetts event was that this is free money that the state and its children will lose if the governor refuses to opt in. Also, these aren’t vouchers but scholarships that will benefit low-income kids by giving them access to tutoring, after school programs, special education services and something vaguely defined as “tuition assistance.” We’re in pretty serious pinocchio territory here as these are most definitely vouchers, and the income eligibility, pegged at 300 percent of the median area income, means that a family of four in Boston, earning nearly $500,000, will be eligible—kind of a strange definition of ‘low-income.’ But it’s the fallacy of omission that’s working overtime here. You see, because the US Department of the Treasury, which will oversee the program, has yet to release the regulations, the hard sell about the program being “new resources for students” is based on the worst kind of wishful thinking. Moreover, Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and other blue state govs are being pressured to opt their states in without basic info about the program—like, will students who use vouchers be protected from discrimination? And, can states request data to evaluate the success of the program? Who knows????

Truth in advertising

For a more candid look at what Trump’s voucher program is really about, let’s head over to the American Federation for Children, the school choice lobby shop established by Betsy DeVos, which recently announced the creation of a national ‘scholarship granting organization’ or SGO—these are the entities tasked with handing out the voucher cash (less a 10 percent 'cut’). And accompanying the new AFC SGO, to be run in partnership with voucher vendor Odyssey, is a $10 million advertising campaign to educate taxpayers about the generous new write off, and parents about their new education options. Now perhaps I’ve grown cynical from my years of writing about this stuff, but I highly doubt that the hearts of DeVos et al are pounding over the chance to provide kids in under-resourced schools with enrichment opportunities. The income eligibility is so high, they note approvingly, that 90 percent of all K-12 students in the US are now eligible for private school vouchers.

Another clue as to what’s really going on comes to us courtesy of a fascinating new profile of ED chief Linda McMahon in the New Yorker. That we now have a federal voucher program turns out to reflect the handiwork of Texas oil billionaire slash “theo-oligarch” Tim Dunn, who used McMahon’s think tank, the America First Policy Institute, to take Texas’ controversial voucher program, which he also spearheaded, national.

At the institute, McMahon ceded policy to others. Before launching the group, she and Rollins visited Texas to enlist the billionaire oilman Tim Dunn as a founder. Dunn isn’t well known nationally, but he is the most powerful man in Texas; in 2023, ProPublica reported, two-thirds of all campaign donations to the state Republican Party came from his political organizations. Dunn has expressed the view that Christians should dominate society. Texas’s first Jewish Speaker of the House has said that, in a private meeting, Dunn told him that only Christians should hold leadership positions. (Dunn has denied this.) For years, his main political project was legislation that siphoned public-education funds to private schools via vouchers. “I call him a theo-oligarch,” Glenn Rogers, a former Republican state representative, told me. Rogers is deeply conservative, but, like many rural Republicans, he was a public-education supporter. Dunn targeted him, and in 2024 he lost his seat. “He desires to eliminate public education and replace it with a private-education system that uses his version of the Christian religion,” Rogers said.

The Death of Education Reform

The Massachusetts voucher coalition is ostensibly led by the National Parents Union, the six year old organization that was started as a counterweight to the teachers unions. But beneath the NPU staffers’ cheerleading at the roll-out rally could be heard a distinctly queasy note. Now, whatever you think about NPU’s somewhat murky origin story, the group’s polling of parents routinely offers genuine insights. Take, for example, this recent survey that found that “the ‘school choice’ parents are willing to support comes with a robust set of conditions centered on fairness, accessibility, and accountability, conditions that existing voucher and ESA programs fail to meet.” Note that the federal program is also lacking these conditions, by design, putting NPU in the awkward position of having to sell the Trump voucher program as something other than what it is. (That’s why, as Yawu Miller reports, the group’s lobbyist urged activists to sell the plan as benefitting public school students.)

I suspect that real driver of this bus is Democrats for Education Reform or DFER, specifically its cretinous chief, Jorge Elorza. If you’re thinking, “cretinous is a rather strong word choice, Jennifer,” take a sec to read up on the misogynistic behavior in which this gentleman appears to traffic. Did you get to the paragaph where the former staffer who is suing DFER claims that she became the target of Elorza’s wrath after questioning his decision to “join a Koch-funded right-wing coalition that seemed contrary to the organization’s best interests and mission”? As the New York Times reported this summer, DFER’s decision to embrace the Trump voucher program has caused a deep split within its ranks. Despite the addition of high-profile new supporters, including Arne Duncan and Netflix honcho Reed Hastings, the group appears to be in free fall.

Lessons learned

DFER’s pivot was on vivid display at the Massachusetts voucher coalition coming out party. Tasked with sounding the alarm about the dire state of the nation’s public school was Kevin Chavous, the president of Stride K12 Inc, the for-profit virtual school behemoth so mired in poor-performing, cash hoovering scandal that it had to change its name. If Chavous seems like an odd choice to wave the student achievement banner, consider that the Trump voucher program doesn’t actually have anything to say about student achievement.

As for Arne Duncan, who recently joined DFER as a “senior fellow,” a sinecure from which he’ll be proffering sage advice on the Democrats’ education strategy, count me as not all that surprised by his trajectory. A decade ago, Duncan touched down in Massachusetts as part of a last-ditch effort to sell a ballot initative that would have dramatically expanded charter schools at the expense of public schools. I went to hear him deliver the closing pitch for Question 2 in his trademark ‘fast folksy’ style, replete with anecdotes about students who really didn’t care what kind of school they attended as long as they achieved.

The ballot question went down in flames, despite a huge money advantage for Team Charter, a stinging defeat from which Massachusetts’ education reform community has never recovered. That loss, by the way, is a big part of why these same folks are now embracing private school vouchers, a cause even more deeply unpopular than charter school expansion. Ten years later, they’re back, armed with another pig and plenty of lipstick.