WASHINGTON, Jan. 28 – Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), today released a new report finding that the Trump administration’s school privatization agenda threatens our nation’s public schools and harms working-class students, students with disabilities and students from diverse religious backgrounds.

President Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” created the nation’s first federal school voucher program at a cost of up to $51 billion a year — more than it currently spends on the Title I program serving low-income students and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) combined.

“President Trump and his billionaire campaign contributors have been working overtime to create a two-tier education system in America: private schools for the wealthy and well-connected and severely under-funded public schools for low-income and working-class students. That is unacceptable,” Sanders said. “This report makes clear that vouchers are being used to benefit private schools that reject students because they have a disability or because of their religion and benefit some of the wealthiest families in America. Trump’s voucher program will only make a bad situation even worse.”

To understand the potential impact of Trump’s voucher program on students across the country, the report analyzes private schools currently receiving vouchers through state-level voucher programs — a first-of-its-kind review across 11 states, 111 entities that administer school vouchers (known as “scholarship granting organizations” or SGOs) and over 1,600 affiliated private schools.

This report finds that school voucher programs:

• Subsidize private education for the rich. School vouchers, on average, cover just 39% of middle school private school tuition across the sampled states. Even with a private school voucher, tuition prices are often out of reach for working-class families, meaning that the vouchers function as a subsidy to the rich who can already afford to pay for private education.
• Allow private schools to systematically deny admission to students with disabilities, limit how many students with disabilities they serve, only serve children with certain types of disabilities or charge extra tuition. While public schools must provide all students with the same opportunities to learn and excel, 48% of private schools analyzed in this report choose not to provide all students with disabilities with the services, protections and rights provided to those students in public schools under the IDEA.
• Enable private schools to discriminate against students based on their religion. This report finds that despite the fundamental right of freedom of religion enshrined in our constitution, voucher programs benefit private schools that discriminate against students based on their religious beliefs. Specifically, 17% of private schools reviewed in this report charge different tuition rates based on the family’s religious beliefs.
• Benefit private schools that lack basic credentialing, accountability and transparency requirements. Fewer than half of states reviewed require private schools to be accredited, while even fewer require student learning assessments. Unacceptably, only two states require teacher credentials in private schools receiving vouchers.

The report comes ahead of a HELP Committee hearing where Arizona Education Association President Marisol Garcia will testify about the harms of private school vouchers in her state, which has the nation’s largest universal school voucher program and is a cautionary tale for the rest of the nation. The state is now spending nearly $1 billion annually on private school vouchers while public schools are being forced to shut down.

Read the report here.