On February 6th, I presented an abridged version of this testimony to the Nebraska Unicameral Revenue Committee during the public hearing on bill LB509, brought by Tony Sorrentino. Sorrentino represents District 39, Elkhorn and West Omaha, which was previously represented by Lou Ann Linehan, who has ties to national school privatization organizations and funders. LB509 Adopt the Opportunity Scholarships Act would create a refundable dollar-for-dollar tax credit for donations to organizations that grant scholarships for students to attend private schools. Although the bill does not use the word voucher, such tax credit programs have been understood as creating a similar school choice scheme to voucher programs that support private schooling. These ‘neo-vouchers’ sidestep states’ Constitutional bans on providing public money to religious organizations by creating an intermediary organization that collects the donations, the amount of which is then deducted from, or refunded to, the individual’s income taxes. The courts have stated that these tax credits are not public monies, but the realistic outcome of income tax credits is reduced tax revenue to the state. According to the Nebraska Examiner, it is nearly a word-for-word revival of Senator Linehan’s LB753, brought in 2023.
A majority of voters in 45 of Nebraska’s 49 legislative districts and in 82 of 93 counties voted to repeal last year’s voucher bill, LB1402. This included a majority of voters in Senator Sorrentino’s district, along with majorities in the districts represented by members of the Revenue Committee in districts 44, 42, and 38, where over 59% of voters expressed their belief that LB1402 should be repealed.
LB 1402 was passed to override the previous bill, LB753. Enough signatures had been gathered to place that bill on the ballot, where it surely would have been rejected by a similar majority.
This bill, LB 509 once again seeks to subvert the will of voters. Given the weight of evidence from Indiana and other states that statewide voucher bills have shown negative impacts on student outcomes, I have to ask myself why the commitment to doing a thing that a majority of Nebraskans don’t want and decades of experience shows will not meet the stated goals.
I am not alone in questioning the motivations of bills like this that support private and charter schools while reducing the available funding for public schools. By examining the history of the United States and the current political landscape, it becomes clear that the project is not to ensure every student has the best education for them. It becomes clear that this is a playbook designed to diminish, if not destroy, public education and in turn the representative democratic form of government established in our constitution. Successive generations have sought, and in some cases fought, to expand Constitutional rights to all citizens.
When asked about the form of government created at the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin famously said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams all viewed the provision and expansion of public education, paid for by citizens, as the cornerstone of a permanent union. Others have since argued that public education is a cornerstone of a more perfect union, expanding as the vote expanded to all citizens.
Like voting rights, public education has recently been under greater, more organized attack. These projects seem intrinsically linked, reverse the expansion of voting rights and reverse public education that supports the development of engaged citizens. Both can be interpreted as a backlash to the advancement of civil rights in the 1960s following Brown vs. Board of Education and the Voting Rights Act, both of which sought to create a more perfect union in which more members of society could participate in democracy, and which would begin to right the wrongs in our country’s founding.
Public education is not perfect. I know firsthand. I was a public-school teacher and I have taught school improvement for 8 of the last 9 years. Many things that are not perfect have come down from misguided policies. In the name of accountability, policies at the federal and state level have narrowed the scope of public education and made it less flexible to meet the needs of all kids. Meanwhile, funding cuts have asked public schools to do more with less, from larger classes to the ever-increasing bar of state assessments.
While these policies have squeezed public schools, policymakers now want to create a shadow system of charter schools and private schools, in this case, funded by tax credits for the wealthy, that are not subjected to these narrowing accountability policies. Neither are they subjected to the public oversight that these policies are meant to provide. While some argue that private schools must be accredited under Rule 10 as public schools are, the language is “In Nebraska, a nonpublic school must be (a) accredited; (b) approved; or (c) receive an exemption from the Commissioner of Education from the requirements for the operation of approved private schools” and accreditation is listed as an option. Further, private schools in Nebraska do not have to make public their student assessment scores or ratings as public schools do through the NEP website.
Twenty-five years ago, scholar Richard Elmore wrote that school choice would do to public education what privatization had done to healthcare, concentrating the most challenging cases, the least desirable patients or students, in organizations that have been hollowed out by funding cuts. These students will lose opportunities to learn as cuts make it harder to staff schools with trained teachers who provide meaningful, differentiated learning. While students in private schools have no public oversight of what they are learning, or if they are learning at all. All to the tune of voucher budgets that are expected to balloon to a billion dollars in Tennessee and Iowa, paid for by taxpayers. As these costs increase, funding for public schools has decreased.
It is disingenuous to say that the goal is not to dismantle public schools. There is currently a bill in the Indiana State House that would close a public school district if more than half of students choose a charter or private school. So much for parents’ choice if that choice is public school. The goal of that bill, and others being considered, is clearly to dismantle public education, particularly in Indianapolis Public Schools. According to the most recent Census Bureau estimates, Indianapolis as a city is 53.6% White, 28.1% Black, 4.1% Asian, 12.3% Hispanic. Indianapolis Public Schools, however is a majority minority district.
In my Workforce, Economic, and Community Development course every fall, graduate students read research that demonstrates that education is a bulwark against authoritarianism around the globe. I cannot help but conclude that authoritarianism, or at a minimum, some form of minority rule is the goal, at the expense of everyday taxpayers. If we are to keep our republic, we need to support the founders’ vision of public education, for all children, funded by the people, for the benefit of the people.
Postscript: As I was having a much-needed drink with my husband after the hearing, a friend of his sat down and, hearing what we were talking about, asked us if we knew about the Bantu Education Act of 1953. We did not. He shared how this act led to diminished educational opportunities for Black South Africans, with the explicit goal to only provide the basic education needed to create a poorly educated, easy to oppress Black workforce. We all agreed this history in South Africa was important for everyone to know and that it speaks to the long history of racism and the denial of education as a form of racial oppression not just in the United States, but globally.
Additional school choice bills brought in the 2025 Nebraska Legislative Session
- LB 131 (State Sen. Tony Sorrentino of Omaha) — Allow NEST 529 plans under the College Savings Plan Program to be spent on any K-12 education costs. Referred to Revenue, no hearing date set as of 2/7/2025
- LB 427 (State Sen. Bob Andersen of Omaha) — Require the state treasurer to create separate educational savings accounts for any K-12 education expenses. Referred to Education, no hearing date set as of 2/7/2025
- LB 481 (State Sen. Beau Ballard of Lincoln) — Adopt the Foster Care Child Scholarships Act, to give foster care youths HOPE Scholarships to attend private schools. Referred to Health and Human Services Committee, Notice of hearing for February 12, 2025.
- LB 509 (Sorrentino) — Adopt the Opportunity Scholarships Act, a 2023 law that provides dollar-for-dollar income tax credits for donations to scholarship-granting organizations. Referred to Revenue, Hearing Feb 6th, 2025. Referred to Education, no hearing date set as of 2/7/2025
- LB 557 (State Sen. Christy Armendariz of Omaha) — Change provisions related to option enrollment for a student who applies to a different public school district than their own and allow a family whose application is rejected, for any reason, to get $2,500 from the state for “the educational support of the student.” Referred to Education, no hearing date set as of 2/7/2025
- LB 624 (State Sen. Rob Dover of Norfolk) — Appropriate $10 million annually to the State Treasurer’s Office to distribute education scholarships or vouchers for students to attend private K-12 schools. Referred to Appropriations Committee, Notice of hearing for February 24, 2025
- LB 633 (State Sen. Ben Hansen of Blair) — Require the State Board of Education to provide families whose applications for “option enrollment” to a different public school district are rejected to set up tuition accounts for private K-12 schools. The accounts would include the state funding amount earmarked for each student. Referred to Education, no hearing date set as of 2/7/2025
You can use the Nebraska Legislative Bill Tracker to see when bills have been added to the calendar.
Additional Resources Related to this Blog
Berkshire, J. & Schneider, J. (2024). The Education Wars: A citizen’s guide and defense manual. The New Press.
Berliner, D. (2011) Rational responses to high stakes testing: the case of curriculum narrowing and the harm that follows, Cambridge Journal of Education, 41:3, 287-302, DOI: 10.1080/0305764X.2011.607151.
Black, D. W. (2020). Schoolhouse burning: Public education and the assault on American democracy. PublicAffairs.
Schneider, J., & Berkshire, J. (2020). A wolf at the schoolhouse door: The dismantling of public education and the future of school. The New Press.
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