"In fact, the provision represents something not directly asked of voters: the federal government's deliberate shift away from strengthening public education and toward normalizing school privatization."

"That shift comes as the Trump administration continues efforts to dismantle the Department of Education. While current appropriations law has kept much of the agency and its funding formally intact, staffing cuts and administrative rollbacks have already weakened oversight and disrupted services that support low-income students, children with disabilities, and vulnerable families."

"This is not a program meant to enrich donors. There is no financial upside commensurate with the rhetoric surrounding it.

Instead, the real value lies elsewhere " in reshaping federal education policy, embedding private-school subsidies into the tax code, and slowly redefining the federal government's relationship to public education."

"Critics argue that such thresholds undermine claims that the program is narrowly targeted to families with limited means, especially in a state still struggling to fully fund its public schools.

"School voucher programs drain dollars from public schools in ways that are indiscriminate and difficult to predict," Pennsylvania school board member Ariel Zych said during a January 28th virtual press conference, "making it harder to build responsible budgets and retain teachers."

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"By embedding school choice in federal tax policy, conservatives and voucher advocates are seeking to normalize private alternatives as a permanent part of the education ecosystem, even in states where voters and lawmakers have repeatedly rejected voucher expansion.

Last year, more than 150 public education organizations, standing in opposition to voucher expansion, wrote a joint letter to governors saying that their coalition is "not rejecting funding; it is rejecting the dismantling of public schools."

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""This federal tax credit proposal would divert public resources to private K-12 campuses with little accountability, while increasing racial isolation and inequality," said Jones, senior director of public policy and advocacy at the Southern Education Foundation.

"Our public education system should be strengthened " not hollowed out by policies that put profit and privilege ahead of students' civil rights in the name of so-called 'choice.'"

"The federal voucher tax credit may not change anyone's tax bill much, but it signals a clear shift in priorities.

Instead of fully funding public schools, the federal government is experimenting with privatization " even as classrooms remain under-resourced and students' needs go unmet.".

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