School choice, an issue that has divided parents for years, is on the ballot in three states this November: Colorado, Kentucky and Nebraska. Choice programs allow states to spend public funds for private or alternative schools.
The ballot items in Colorado and Kentucky propose adding language supporting school choice to their states’ constitutions but neither lays out specifics for a statewide program.
If the Colorado and Kentucky measures pass, the states would join at least 29 states and the District of Columbia which already have some form of school choice language on the books, according to an Education Week analysis.
The Nebraska measure aims to repeal a $10 million school voucher program its state legislature passed this year, putting that decision in the hands of voters.
School choice experts told USA TODAY that these measures align with debates playing out across the country.
“What we’ve seen in the few last years is that private school choice programs are expanding rapidly, among almost exclusively red states,” said Deven Carlson, a professor and associate director of education at the University of Oklahoma’s Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis.
But these measures indicate “some sort of pushback,” Carlson said, especially with Colorado, a blue state, seeking to add school choice to its constitution.
Because of the vague language in the Colorado and Kentucky measures, it’s unclear how any school choice programs these states may pass would play out and which families would be served, said Liz Cohen, a policy director at the independent think tank at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy.
That will vary based on how much money the states spend on school choice programs, she said.
What is the debate over school choice?
The presence of school choice programs in the U.S. dates to at least 1869 in Vermont. The modern school choice movement was powered by parents upset about school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some parents removed their kids from neighborhood public schools and moved them to other types of schools, including private schools, home schools and charter schools. Many parents have kept their children in those alternative schools.
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Since the pandemic, several states have passed school choice laws that allow parents to use public funding to pay for alternative schools through vouchers or educational scholarships, according to a national tracker from EdChoice, a nonprofit organization that advocates for school choice.
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Opponents of these measures argue that school vouchers, education saving accounts and other school choice options hurt public schools, which they say need all the funding they can get.
Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.