This is a private school voucher bill. If passed, it would send public funds to private schools, including religious ones.
If passed, this would be the third time the state has tried siphoning off public funds to private schools. Gov. Henry McMaster previously attempted to divert federal COVID-19 relief funds to private schools in 2020 but was blocked by the State Supreme Court (in Adams v. McMaster) because the state constitution forbids spending public funds on private schools. The legislature passed a voucher pilot program in 2023, but the State Supreme Court blocked that program for the same reason (Eidson v. South Carolina Department of Education).
This time, lawmakers acting on behalf of the school privatization lobby have proposed a bill that would divert revenue from the S.C. Education Lottery, which currently funds college scholarships for in-state students. Among other changes from the 2023 voucher law, this new version deletes a provision that voucher-recipient schools may not discriminate “on the basis of race, color, or national origin.”
We oppose this bill because: School vouchers are an idea that has been tested in other states and proved disastrous over and over again.
Vouchers provide state funding to schools that discriminate against children and families with disabilities, LGBTQ people, pregnant students, and members of religious minorities — particularly in areas where the only private schools are sectarian Christian schools.
Vouchers cause learning loss for students who transfer from public to private schools. In fact, in some cases researchers have found the learning loss attributable to vouchers is worse than the learning loss from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Vouchers are also a disaster waiting to happen for the state budget. Particularly as lawmakers plan to expand toward a universal voucher program that would subsidize the tuition of wealthy families already enrolled in private schools, they should heed the warning of states like Arizona, where a universal voucher program contributed heavily to a $1.4 billion annual budget shortfall.
For more information, including links to relevant studies and news reports, see our January 2025 blog post “The ugly truth about school vouchers.”
