Girls work with a robotic kit in an after-school robotics club. (Getty image)
So what if it’s a GOP reconciliation bill? Blue states should grab federal funding for scholarships for tutoring and after-school programs.
Just because a good idea came from the other political tribe doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.
For example: The 2001 No Child Left Behind law did states a huge favor by providing the resources to build massive information systems that school districts just couldn’t afford. The data helped educators pinpoint successes, failures and inequalities. Sadly, the bill demanded that schools meet statistically impossible benchmarks or face specific harsh consequences for the failure to do so.
In that same bill, though, were mandates and money for “Reading First,” designed to clear away debunked Whole Language and Balanced Literacy to make way for science-of-reading techniques. Sadly, educators rejected Reading First, mostly because it was associated with Republicans. If only the education industry embraced retooling reading instruction 25 years ago, America’s dismal reading proficiency would be in a far better place, especially among urban kids.
Let’s not make a similar mistake again.
Buried inside the deeply troublesome federal law called the “Big Beautiful Bill Act” is an opportunity called the Educational Choice for Children Act. Its virtues are hard to see because it’s wrapped in language offering students vouchers to private school. For Rhode Island’s powerful anti-school-choice advocates, that’s a hard “no.” Families who vote with their feet reduce the districts’ market share of students’ per pupil expenditure and the number of unionized jobs.
But private-school vouchers are not mandated. Not even expansions of choice are mandated.
In fact, the Republican budget reconciliation package specifies that the money can pay for certain big-ticket items. Like tutoring, technology, after-school programs, transportation, dual enrollment in higher education and services for students with disabilities, among others.
That’s a lot. Researchers studying the effects of the federal pandemic money found that tutoring is hands-down the best technique for improving academic outcomes, especially among struggling performers.
Similarly, Rhode Island can’t begin to meet the demand for after-school programs. Parents and kids would be ever so grateful for more. Dual enrollment? Supports to special needs kids? What’s not to like?
Rejecting the money throws the baby out with the voucher bathwater, just as we did with Reading First.
We badly need to start putting kids’ needs first, before protecting adults.
Here’s how the law works: States must agree to participate, or not. Already three states have said yes (Nebraska, Tennessee and North Carolina) and three no (Wisconsin, Oregon and New Mexico), splitting along predictable partisan lines.
Participating states offer local nonprofits the opportunity to become “Scholarship-Granting Organizations.” Think: organizations like Family Services, Children’s Friend or Progresso Latino. They would start accepting donations in 2026 for services to be delivered in 2027.
Individual taxpayers can donate up to $1,700 per year, and take a 100% federal tax write-off, which is an unprecedented, dollar-for-dollar tax break. The donation cap came down from $5,000 and earlier, $10,000. Corporations cannot donate at all. The money flows through nonprofits directly to students or programs like tutoring, with any necessary collaboration, but not interference of the government nor its school systems.
Governors must decide to join or not. Governors seem always to be in campaign mode and often make decisions contrary to the public good to get themselves elected. Will Gov. Dan McKee sign on and be clear how the money would help student-oriented programs thrive? Or will he turn down the opportunity to demonstrate partisan solidarity with those who dislike school choice?
Unless you have money to leave the public system, charters are the only form of choice in Rhode Island. But there are way too few of them. Even before the pandemic, families nationally and locally were leaving district schools for community-created personalized learning environments like learning pods, micro-schools, home-schooling. The Act would like to accelerate those choices but again, we don’t have to.
Internationally more than 80% of the worlds’ school systems have funding mechanisms that blur any division between public and private. Those countries just want the kids to be well educated. Our leaders need to get real about demonstrating the same objective.
Actually, I’m no fan of private school vouchers because public tax money becomes invisible inside private compounds free of public accountability.
So the challenge is to look past the voucher/choice noise and sign up for the free money that will help the ocean of students who need tutoring, after-school engagement, special needs help and so on.
Right now, this opportunity is up to the governor. Let’s not keep making the same tribal prejudice mistakes. Clearly, we’d have to keep our eye on this program so we get genuinely good public services.
But for once, state leaders, focus on the public good. Take the money and run.
First published: RI Current News, December 4, 2025
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