Vouchers take scarce funding from students in public schools and give those resources to unaccountable private schools. The Legislative Research Council estimated that a voucher program would cost taxpayers over $45 million. Often veiled as “parent choices”, vouchers programs allow private schools to use taxpayer dollars to pick and choose which students they want to educate.
No matter how you look at it, vouchers undermine strong public education and student opportunity. They take scarce funding from public schools—which serve 94 percent of students of South Dakota’s students—and give it to private schools—institutions that are not accountable to taxpayers.
This means public school students have less access to the supports students deserve. Voucher programs will severely limit public schools’ ability to offer programs such as art and music or provide up-to-date technology and textbooks. Vouchers will especially hurt our more rural schools where private schools don’t even exist.
Moreover, there is ZERO statistical significance that voucher programs improve overall student success, and some programs have even shown to have a NEGATIVE effect for students receiving a voucher.
Furthermore, vouchers have been shown to not support students with disabilities, they fail to protect the human and civil rights of students, and they exacerbate segregation.
