Has Reynolds’ voucher program made private tuition affordable?

At the recent Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds lauded the success of Iowa’s Education Savings Account program. For the 2024-25 school year, the second year of the program, she announced 35,417 applications have been received and over 30,000 have been approved so far. When she signed the bill, Reynolds promised the program would ensure Iowa parents have the choice to send their children to private schools, regardless of their income level.

Let’s take a look at the program’s performance. In 2023-24, ESAs were available to families with children not currently attending private school or families with children already attending private school whose income was at or below 300% of the federal poverty level ($90,000 for a family of four). Out of 29,000 applications, 18,893 were approved and 16,757 private school vouchers were used, at a cost of $128 million to Iowa taxpayers.

According January 2024 data from the Iowa Department of Education, just 2,135 of those vouchers, or 12.7%, were used by students who attended a public school the previous year. The program is primarily benefiting families already sending their children to private schools.

For this next school year, the number of approved applications has increased by at least 58%. Eligibility has been expanded to include families with income at or below 400% of the FPL, which may explain the jump.

In the first year of the program, ESAs were valued at $7,635, the state’s per-pupil funding allotment to public schools. That amount has increased to $7,826 for the 2024-25 school year, reflecting the 2.5% budget increase allocated to public schools by legislators. A study published by two Princeton University researchers in April 2024 provides evidence that in response to the voucher program private schools in Iowa have increased kindergarten tuition by 21% to 25% and tuition for other grades by 10% to 16%. The increase in private school tuition is outpacing the value of the voucher.

Perhaps these private school tuition increases were long overdue, yet the timing is troubling. Families previously unable to afford private school tuition may still be left out, even with the help of a voucher. Iowa Senate President Amy Sinclair said, “I think those tuition increases would have occurred regardless of an education savings account scholarship when you have, over the course of the last three years, cumulative inflation of about 20 percent.” If Sinclair knew the cost of education was rising at that rate, why did she and her fellow Republican legislators choose to increase public education funding by a mere 2.5, 3.0, and 2.5% over the past three years?

As public schools were facing that 20% inflation rate, as well as the challenge of supporting students recovering from the COVID pandemic, our state lawmakers were choosing to squeeze public schools dry. This coming year, as much as $235 million taxpayer dollars will be diverted from our public schools to private schools, while making only the smallest dent in private school accessibility.

As a taxpayer, a product of twelve years of private school education, and a former public high school teacher, I firmly believe the ESA program represents a failure to meet the needs of Iowa’s 480,000 public K-12 students.

David Duer is a retired public educator.