Asa Hutchinson put more than $37 million into zeroing out the CES waiver waitlist in 2021. Four years into Sanders' term it is back above 2,400 people. A Little Rock lawmaker puts the cost of clearing it at $35 to $50 million; her voucher program costs more than $367 million this year.
Texas ranks 40th of 50 on the measures we track, with the second-worst food insecurity and second-worst women's health scores in the country. Greg Abbott signed the abortion ban and the school voucher law, never expanded Medicaid, and now runs on affordability after property tax levies rose to $89.4 billion and home insurance premiums rose 79%. Here is the record, and what each of the seventeen Republicans running for reelection has been busy with.
Abbott's new affordability plan promises to cut property taxes in half by zeroing out school taxes on homesteads. He has been governor since 2015, and statewide property tax levies have risen from $51.2 billion to $89.4 billion on his watch. Nearly 4 in 10 homesteads already owe no school tax, and Texas's 4.1 million renters get nothing.
The House returned from recess and spent its week on socialism resolutions, mining permits, whales, the Supreme Court, and a bill punishing colleges for boycotting Israel. Nobody voted on the premiums that just went up 58%. Here is every Republican with a report card who voted yes.
Schools that feed every student for free qualify for funding tied to rates of SNAP participation. More than 5.6 million people have lost SNAP in a year — faster than the CBO predicted — and Florida's largest school district has already dropped universal free meals at all but 121 of its schools.
Three years into the LEARNS Act, Arkansas has never permanently barred a single school from its voucher program — not even the one where a 13-year-old was beaten. A former state senator lays out what the money buys, and what it doesn't.
Arkansas invented a new kind of school called a microschool, sent it voucher money, and decided it isn't a private school and doesn't get routine visits. There are 142 of them now. One collapsed three weeks before classes started.
Ramaswamy is running for Ohio governor on taking the state's school-choice programs "to the next level." His official biography credits a teacher at his "Greater Cincinnati public school" and reduces St. Xavier — the private Jesuit school he attended grades nine through twelve — to "his Cincinnati high school."
More than 100 TRIO programs serving nearly 45,000 low-income, first-generation students were terminated. In California, 13 schools lost $6 million and 7,000 students lost services. The administration now proposes eliminating all $1.2 billion of TRIO.
