Vouchers and ESAs don’t just defund schools. They fragment communities.
Little-recognized community impact of privatization bears heavy consequences
ZAKAREYA HAMED
After a long, late-night debate on February 7, 2017, the United States Senate confirmed a new figure to lead the Department of Education under newly elected President Donald Trump: Betsy DeVos.
Before entering office, DeVos was a wealthy political donor and proponent of privatization with no experience in public education or education management. For two decades, DeVos and her husband have advocated for vouchers—private school tuition subsidies distributed to families by the government—since her previously failed campaign for their adoption in Michigan. From the moment she stepped into the shoes of the Secretary of Education, she took her privatization advocacy to the next level.
Shortly after being sworn in, DeVos proposed substantial funding changes supporting private school vouchers, including a notable proposal to allocate 50 billion dollars over ten years for voucher programs through tax credit scholarships called “Education Freedom Scholarships.” She then backed the Trump administration's budget proposal that aimed to cut $8.5 billion from public education spending in 2020. Devos’ actions sparked a nationwide uproar as many Americans became disgruntled with her backing of vouchers over mainstream public education funding.
Even after DeVos left office, vouchers have been at the front and center of political education debates. Multiple states subsequently opted to introduce and expand their own state-specific voucher programs. Public education advocates have raised several issues with the voucher model, from its racist origins to avoid desegregation to its consequent defunding of public schools. However, there is an overlooked, deeper consequence of vouchers: they undermine the community ties fostered by the American public school system.
Both vouchers and ESAs—Education Saving Accounts, a variation of the voucher model—drain essential funding from school divisions and destroy the community framework required for a successful public education system. Public schools have long been considered the heart of a community. Since Horace Mann laid the foundation for American public education in the late nineteenth century, community schools have been the bedrock of social cohesion. Public community schools define neighborhoods and, in their proper function, bridge gaps between students from different backgrounds.
Public schools bring together diverse groups of students and families, teaching children to get along with peers of different backgrounds and to appreciate their roles in larger society. That essential function is lost when vouchers incentivize families to opt out of public schools for private ones. Private schools, particularly those with selective admissions, tend to be less diverse, reducing students' exposure to different perspectives and diminishing their understanding of and commitment to broader societal responsibilities.
Voucher-induced community fracturing hits neighborhoods in multiple ways. Students with less involved parents are not able to access and take advantage of the vouchers, only widening the gap between those who remain in public schools versus those who use vouchers to enroll in private schools. In an even more prevalent scenario, involved but economically disadvantaged parents are not able to take up these opportunities for their children, as vouchers rarely cover full tuition.
As a result, when vouchers and ESAs drain money from public schools, they contribute to a more segregated and polarized society. This, in turn, raises social tensions and frays the communal fabric when shared experiences through public schools are lost. This phenomenon is evident in metropolitan areas like New York City, where the expansion of charter schools and voucher programs has led to greater educational and residential segregation, as per the Civil Rights Project at UCLA.
A successful community is predicated on a shared investment in one's community school. According to Pew Research Center, 83% of American students attend community public schools, benefitting from the positive communal experiences they offer. But as increasingly large segments of society don’t enroll in the public system in many voucher-dominated areas, the shared investment in public schools as a local community institution eventually grows thin. Fewer will fight for public school funding, volunteer in school activities, or participate in school governance. This erosion of community support eventually produces a downward spiral in which public schools, deprived of funds and the energizing influence of community involvement, cannot sustain their educational mission.
Vouchers and ESAs have deep-reaching negative impacts on community cohesion. The resources poured into vouchers and ESAs should be invested in innovation and funding for community public schools. Strengthening public schools means binding the fabric of communities, fostering deeper civic participation, and ensuring that all children—irrespective of their background—find themselves in a quality school surrounded by a caring environment. By investing into public schools, we’re investing in an engaged, communal future for America.
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