Speaking of public schools, these people make a good point

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Parental choice programs that use public funds will end with government crackdown on private schools, activist argues

Popular school choice policies making their way through state legislatures across the country will result in government control over private and Christian schools and even homeschooling, said the head of a nonprofit focused on giving parents more authority over their children's education.

"Putting government money in private and Christian schools will likely destroy them," Sheri Few, president and founder of United States Parents Involved in Education (USPIE), told Fox News. "We don't want to see private and Christian schools harmed, we don't want to see homeschool parents regulated, and that's exactly what's going to happen." 

… Any program that involves schools accepting public dollars puts them at risk of government control, Few warned. 

"We don't want private schools to accept money, no strings attached initially, get dependent on it and then the government starts throwing down these regulations in exchange for the funding," she told Fox News. "Then they're stuck having to make a choice of either closing their doors or compromising their values in order to continue to accept the federal and state funding."

She pointed to the Supreme Court's 1984 decision on Grove City v. Bell, ruling that higher education institutions that accepted any type of government funding, even in the form of public grants and loans, were required to follow federal and state regulations.

"The precedent’s already been set," Few said. "That's the way the government would influence private and Christian schools and ravage them in the same way that they have government schools."

Arizona expanded its ESA program in 2022, becoming one of nine states to pass universal school choice. But just over a year later, the state’s new governor, Katie Hobbs, said the program "lacks accountability and transparency." Earlier this month, the Democrat proposed a plan requiring private schools accepting ESA students to meet a slew of regulations to "increase student safety, promote financial accountability, and hold private schools receiving taxpayer dollars to similar standards as public schools."

Few said these are the consequences USPIE has been trying to warn conservatives about.  

"Now they have a Democrat governor and she's saying, ‘I'm going to regulate. I'm going all the way down to homeschools,’" Few said. "This is what we warned about, and now we're seeing it happen."

USPIE believes the safest way to ensure school choice without risking government overreach is through tax credits at the federal and state levels. Increasing federal child tax credits will leave parents with more money to spend on tuition at a school of their choice, Few said. Similarly, income tax states should also provide a credit for parents who want to educate their kids outside the public school system.  

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