Urgent: Act Right Now to Stop Federal Vouchers!
oday at 2:30 pm ET, members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee began discussing a budget reconciliation bill that includes a federal voucher program. If it passes, the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) will divert much-needed public funds from our nation’s public schools that educate the vast majority of young people.
The act would provide a dollar-for-dollar tax credit to individuals who give money to voucher-granting organizations.
This federal voucher would siphon up to $20 billion from public funds to individual families to homeschool their children or send them to private schools, even in states where voters have previously rejected voucher schemes.
All vouchers hurt public schools and the diverse children in them.
Now is the Time to Act!
Here’s what you can do right now…
Learn
See our infographic on the below: 5 Reasons Private School Vouchers Would Hurt Students.
Learn more about ECCA from the National Coalition for Public Education (statement, overview and talking points) and the Alliance to Reclaim our Schools.
See this letter from the Advancement Project and coalition partners to understand the particular impact a federal voucher would have on public schools, students of color, and working-class and middle-class families.
See the report Shelter Skelter: How the Educational Choice for Children Act Would Use Tax Avoidance to Fuel School Privatization from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy and the summary of this report.
Contact Members of Congress Now
It is critical to contact the members who represent you and members of the House Ways and Means committee and tell them to oppose the inclusion of a voucher in the reconciliation bill now.
You can email the members of Congress who represent you here.
You can email all the Ways and Means Committee members here.

For more information about IDRA’s work, please contact Morgan Craven, J.D., IDRA’s National Director of Policy, Advocacy, and Community Engagement at morgan.craven@idra.org.