On a bright Election Day for Republicans, one of their signature education policies — private school choice — was poised to be rejected by voters in three states: Colorado, Nebraska and Kentucky.
In Kentucky, nearly two-thirds of voters defeated a proposal to allow state tax dollars to fund private and charter schools.
In Nebraska, 57 percent of voters approved a ballot initiative that repealed a small program intended to give low-income families tax dollars to pay for private-school tuition.
In Colorado, votes are still being counted. But it looks likely that voters have narrowly rejected a broadly worded ballot measure that would have established a “right to school choice,” including in private schools and home-school settings.
The results slow a private-school choice movement that had greatly accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.
About 1 million American children use some form of a private school voucher, a number that has more than doubled since 2019. The issue is one that Republicans hoped would be popular with parents across lines of race and class this year — especially those who were dissatisfied with how public schools served their children during the pandemic.
But private-school choice policies can lead to reduced funding for public schools, and the benefits sometimes go to families who would be able to manage the tuition without government help. Historically, rural Republicans have been skeptical of vouchers, since there are few private school options in sparsely populated regions.
Kentucky, Nebraska and Colorado all contain big rural swaths.
Michael McShane, director of national research at EdChoice, a group that supports vouchers, said he did not see the results in the three states as a major setback. He pointed to big electoral victories for Republican school-choice supporters in Texas — a much larger state that may establish a universal voucher program in the coming months.
“The path forward is the slow and steady one through the legislatures,” Dr. McShane said.
Teachers’ unions and their allies organized against vouchers, while business groups and some right-leaning education philanthropists supported them.
The unions logged some additional wins across the country.
In Florida, a ballot measure to add partisan labels to school board races for the first time in more than two decades failed. The effort to add them was backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis and approved by the state’s Republican Legislature. But opponents argued that it would only worsen polarization and discord in local education.
And in Massachusetts, high school students will no longer be required to pass standardized tests to receive a diploma, beginning with the 2025 graduating class.
The Massachusetts governor, Maura Healey, a Democrat, and the state’s business sector opposed the effort, calling the exam requirement a crucial part of the rigorous standards that makes the state’s public school system one of the nation’s best.
But about 59 percent of voters ultimately approved a proposal to end the mandate, siding with the state’s teachers’ union, which cast the exam as an unnecessary roadblock for disadvantaged students like teenagers with disabilities.
In a written statement, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union, said the ballot initiative results showed that even as voters chose a Republican president, they remained broadly aligned with many Democratic values.
“While voters want public schools strengthened, they did not want their public schools defunded,” she said. “Democrats must fight for the means and agency to help working people get ahead, with public education and unions at the center of that vision.”
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