Democratic Gov. Jared Polis says he plans to opt Colorado into a new federal program that would send what many consider to be public funds to private schools to help students cover the cost of tuition and other expenses.
That’s despite Polis’ insistence that he does not support the idea of funding private schools with public subsidies — a concept known as a voucher program — and despite strong opposition from a group of education advocates and public school proponents.
In a letter sent to Polis on Wednesday by a group of organizations, most of them education based, critics of the federal program urged the governor to turn it down, pointing to voters’ history of rejecting three attempts to create voucher programs in Colorado.
“We can all agree that our public schools can and must do better in providing an excellent public education to all of our students, regardless of ZIP code, race, the language spoken at home, or way of learning,” the letter, organized by Great Education Colorado, states. “But publicly funded school vouchers are not the way to achieve this. We need to support our public schools and help them to grow stronger, not weaken them by shifting federal dollars to support families already opting to send their children to private or religious schools.”
The Trump-endorsed program, folded into congressional Republicans’ federal tax and spending measure signed into law in July and set to begin in January 2027, would also benefit public school students. The program would allow families to spend scholarship money on education-related expenses, such as fees, books, supplies, tutoring, technology, internet access, transportation, after-school programs, summer programs and targeted services for students with disabilities. Students enrolled in private schools, including those with a religious affiliation, could also apply scholarship dollars toward tuition, room and board costs and uniforms.
The basic premise of the program is this: Taxpayers can receive a federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for making a donation to what the Trump administration is calling scholarship granting organizations. Those organizations must use the money they collect to fund scholarships for students at both public and private schools. Students across income brackets will qualify for scholarships, topping out at those whose families’ income is under 300% of the area median income. That means that in Eagle County, for example, students in a family of four whose income is $399,600 would be eligible for a scholarship.
The aid is available to any kid, but rules for how the money will be handed out haven’t been devised and critics worry the program will set Colorado on the road to a voucher program.
In an interview with The Colorado Sun in November, Polis said it was a no-brainer for the state to take advantage of the federal tax credit scholarship program, describing it as “a real boom of investment in kids.”
“It supports donors to give more money to our schools,” he said. “I mean, I would be crazy not to.”
Polis, a lame-duck governor, said he did not support congressional Republicans’ federal tax and spending measure, calling it “a terrible bill.” But he added that he will ensure Colorado residents can tap into any tax credit available to them.
He said the federal tax credit scholarship program has nothing to do with voucher programs, and rejected the idea that the program would pump public funds into private schools. Instead, Polis equates taxpayer donations to scholarship granting organizations to charitable contributions that they can then claim on their taxes.
“This is just a more generous deduction for certain types of donations that you might make,” said Polis, who must notify the federal government about his decision for Colorado by next December.
He also worries that if Colorado takes a pass on the federal program, Colorado residents could make donations to scholarship granting organizations in other states. Saying “yes,” he said, will allow Colorado to keep dollars in the state to boost the education of its own students.
“Fundamentally, it’ll empower more parents to be able to afford that after-school program or the summer program that they want for their kid,” Polis said, noting that since Colorado residents largely oppose vouchers, they are more likely to donate funds to youth programs that enrich student learning.
Would the money used for scholarships be public dollars?
There are differing opinions on whether a tax credit program like the one designed by the federal government involves public dollars and whether it truly resembles a voucher program. Some see a stark difference between tax credit scholarship programs and voucher programs. While a tax credit-funded scholarship program would pull money out of the federal pot of tax revenue that is part of all federal funding for public education, a state voucher program would reroute per-pupil state funding from a school district to parents to spend however they see fit, including for private school tuition.
To stand up a voucher program in Colorado, lawmakers would either have to pass legislation or voters would have to approve a measure allowing state public funds to benefit kids attending private schools, explained Tony Lewis, executive director of the Donnell-Kay Foundation, a nonprofit Denver foundation that funds initiatives to improve education and support kids and families with early childhood education, affordable housing and access to food. Neither prospect is likely in Colorado, Lewis said, calling a federal tax credit scholarship program and a state voucher program “two radically different things.”
“I don’t see a federal tax credit leading to a statewide voucher program that would utilize state dollars to fund it,” said Lewis, who wants to see Colorado participate in the federal program. “I just don’t think that’s a viable path.”
Others, including Kevin Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center and a professor in the University of Colorado School of Education, argue that when tax credits are offered for donations, it involves public money.
“It’s important to step back from the terminology is this public money or even is this a voucher and identify it for what it is,” Welner told The Sun. “It’s a government program that sets up a mechanism to provide a public subsidy for private school tuition.”
Welner and other critics of the federal tax credit scholarship program point to the program as another step in President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans’ push to expand the country’s private school sector and dismantle its public education system. States are having to weigh whether to join the new federal program at the same time the U.S. Department of Education continues to shrink and delegate its departments and responsibilities to other federal agencies.
“Let’s not fool ourselves about the voucher or voucher-like element in this policy,” Welner said.
Deep divides over how much the program would help or hurt
Colorado and other states are still waiting to fully understand the specific rules of the federal tax credit scholarship program, with major questions over how much leeway they’ll be given to tailor the program in ways that best meet the needs of their students. The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service will propose program regulations in the coming months and are currently soliciting feedback during a public comment period.
Some education advocates say Polis should pause on a decision until after the final regulations come down from the federal government. Others believe it would be better for the governor to simply say “no” now.
“It may be tempting to hold out for the possibility that the regulations (not yet promulgated) for implementing this federal school choice program will allow states to designate public schools or public school supporting entities as recipients of the scholarship granting organizations,” the letter sent to Polis on Wednesday said. “Yet a hard look at the structure of the law, and the direction of Treasury rule-making, suggests that the regulations will not give states flexibility in implementing the program but will instead do everything possible to push states into a rigid, federally controlled program that in the long run will undermine public schools and the quality of our entire education structure.”
Lisa Weil, executive director of Great Education Colorado, the leading organization behind the letter, told The Sun that the decision on whether to join the federal program is “a distraction from what really matters” — fully funding public schools, making sure that funding is dispersed equitably and ensuring teachers earn a living wage.
Weil, who referred to the program as a “voucher scheme,” and the other 15 organizations that signed onto the letter also have concerns over the potential for poor academic outcomes among scholarship recipients using the funds to enroll in private schools.
Research on vouchers demonstrates “a relatively modest harm emerging around reading scores and a devastating harm emerging around math scores,” according to Welner, who spelled out academic struggles within some voucher programs in other states in an October policy memo.
Welner noted that Louisiana’s private school voucher program produced serious drops in math scores — a 0.4 standard deviation drop — and students in voucher programs in Indiana and Ohio also suffered math declines.
“The academic harms attributable to these voucher programs are on par with COVID-19 and Hurricane Katrina,” Welner wrote in the memo.
The outcomes of most other voucher programs aren’t readily available to the public, Welner said. More than 50 voucher programs have sprung up across the country and very few require students to take standardized tests nor do those voucher programs display test results for the public and researchers to assess.
Opponents of the federal tax credit scholarship program equally worry about the prospect of private schools discriminating against kids with disabilities and students who are part of the LGBTQ+ community.
Once public dollars make their way to private schools, Welner said, “we are dealing with publicly funded discrimination because those private schools, particularly the religious private schools, are not subject to the same antidiscrimination laws.”
The chance to connect low-income public school students with academic resources and opportunities their families otherwise couldn’t afford far outweighs any concern Nicholas Hernandez has about the potential of a voucher program should Colorado enter into the federal program.
“I think it’s wild that some people think we shouldn’t opt into it when this is potentially billions of dollars of new money to be focused on supporting kids and their education in Colorado,” Hernandez, executive director of Transform Education Now, told The Sun. “We’re doing ourselves a disservice if we don’t take new money on the table, especially at a time we desperately need it.”
Hernandez envisions kids finally being able to pursue music lessons or join a sports team through scholarship dollars. Others might choose to round out their education with tutoring — a resource low-income students are often deprived of since their families typically don’t have the means.
“We could really be putting dollars into the hands of particularly low-income families, and I think that’s something we morally should do,” Hernandez said. “These dollars in one form or another are going to go to kids. Whether they go to Colorado kids or kids elsewhere is completely up to the governor and completely up to us. We owe it to our children to make sure that these dollars stay in Colorado and get put to the best use for our kids.”
Colorado State Board of Education member Kathy Gebhardt isn’t convinced the federal program would support all Colorado students to the same degree. Gebhardt said she worries the program could worsen school funding inequities in Colorado, with kids in wealthier parts of the state having more access to funding from scholarship granting organizations than their peers in poorer communities.
“I think when things appear to be too good to be true, they are, and I think we need to proceed with a lot of caution when we see programs that come in that are clearly not intended for all students to improve all outcomes,” she said. “And so we need to keep our eye on, how do we improve the system for all kids?”