A SIGNATURE COMPONENT of the Trump administration’s agenda to dismantle public education is a federal school voucher program that would take effect in 2027. This scheme, from The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, threatens to gravely undermine public education across the United States and puts the Commonwealth’s standing in public education at risk.

Vouchers are a product of the anti-integration movement in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, when Southern states began offering “scholarship grants” to white families sending their children to segregated private schools. No matter what you call them, the result is the same—expanded opportunity gaps and increased racial and economic inequity.

The most recent iteration of this plan provides individuals who donate to scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs) a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, up to $1,700. SGOs distribute the money as vouchers to students to pay for school tuition and fees. By comparison, even taxpayers in the highest income bracket can only claim 35 cents per dollar donated to every other charitable cause, including food banks, disaster relief, and more. No other donation is eligible for a 100 percent tax credit. Governors, including Gov. Healey, have until the end of the year to decide whether their state will opt in.

In their recent op-ed, Democrats for Education Reform CEO Jorge Elorza and Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Timothy Murray borrow messaging to make it appear as if their privatization efforts are new and innovative.

In fact, this is just a new way to achieve the same ends as direct private school vouchers.

As the highly-respected Brookings Institutution explains, “tax-credit scholarship programs, like ESA [education savings account] programs, are variants of school voucher plans that were designed to skirt the legal and political obstacles facing vouchers.”

Some basic facts are in order.

Vouchers won’t make Massachusetts schools better

Studies have shown that school voucher programs have a detrimental impact on student outcomes. Decades of commitment and collaboration between government, labor, and the business community to create best-in-the-nation schools would be lost.

Voucher programs have minimal or no curricular or testing requirements. They have no academic standards or teacher certification mandates to ensure students are receiving a quality education. Massachusetts could not impose any requirements for teaching children with special needs. Public money would flow to private schools with zero accountability.

Educators across the state can agree with Elorza and Murray on one thing: there is still a lot to do to close gaps exacerbated by the pandemic. They’re wrong, however, to misleadingly paint a rosy picture of how Gov. Healey can set her own rules around the program to ensure it actually supports students in need, instead of just the wealthy. They completely ignore the fact that Massachusetts would be prohibited under federal law from creating any guardrails or accountability measures for how this money is spent.

There is no such thing as “free money”

Every dollar that’s funneled to a federal voucher program is subtracted from existing federal funding. History shows that most voucher money pays tuition for children already attending private school. That means less funding for the schools that serve all students.

Our Gateway Cities, vocational schools, and educational collaboratives are already disproportionately impacted by reckless cuts to federal funding and widespread elimination of critical safeguards that protect our most vulnerable students. Vouchers would only exacerbate these inequities.

There’s no spending cap on the voucher program, but it’s estimated to cost upwards of $51 billion annually—more than what was spent on Title I and IDEA special education grants combined last year.

This is not free money we are leaving on the table. Elorza and Murray say that opting out does not prevent this program from moving forward nationwide. While that may be true, each time a state opts in, more federal dollars are drained from other programs. SGOs currently operate in voucher states with very little oversight or accountability, which has led to significant waste and fraud.

This funding can’t be used for all after-school programs

Local proponents continue to falsely claim that this program will provide direct help to families, allowing them to cover costs for after-school programming at local centers of their choosing. It won’t. Federal regulations are very clear. This money can only go to places that already provide elementary or secondary education.

This is not designed to help poor districts

The program is designed to help the wealthiest families the most. Struggling regions of the state will not see a financial windfall, and it is disingenuous to suggest that students most in need would benefit. Unlike federal childcare assistance eligibility requirements, which are only available to those making 85 percent or less than the state median income, families earning up to 300 percent of their county’s median income are eligible for these vouchers.

Siphoning off funding from our neediest students in order to cover vouchers to private and religious schools that do not have to serve all students goes against the very objectives of our nation’s democracy and is the antithesis of the values we purport to uphold here in the Commonwealth.

We joined 32 other educator unions representing millions of public employees from across the country to urge governors to opt-out of this dangerous voucher program.

“Voucher schemes undermine the very foundation of public education by diverting public resources away from neighborhood schools and into private institutions that are not subject to the same standards of accountability, transparency, civil rights protections or democratic oversight,” our letter to the governors reads.

Elorza and Murray mischaracterize opposition as an issue of partisanship—that Democrats are letting their opinion of the president prevent them from agreeing to opt in. This isn’t political and that argument ignores the fact that many rural Republicans are staunchly opposed to these programs because of the devastating impact they have on rural communities. It’s about doing everything we can to ensure all students have access to the quality public education they’re afforded under the Massachusetts Constitution.

Public education is an essential tenet of our democracy.

Gov. Healey has an opportunity to lead by joining three other governors who have opted out – Gov. Tina Kotek in Oregon, Gov. Tim Walz in Minnesota, and Gov. Tony Evers in Wisconsin – and taking a stand for all students, while the federal government works to publicly subsidize private schools.

As the birthplace of public education, it is incumbent upon Massachusetts to hold the line by protecting public schools and the students they serve from a further dismantling of a revolutionary public good.

Jessica Tang is president of the American Federation of Teachers – Massachusetts.