School's Out!
But no recess for Iowa's school vouchers
When it comes to sorting through our junk mail, I’ve seen it all:
✔ Vinyl Siding
✔ Replacement Windows
✔ Hearing exams
✔ Extended vehicle warranties
✔ AAA Life Insurance
✔ Cremation
Check! Check! Check! Oh, wait a minute. The last one is new. . .
? Private school recruitment
I’m looking at a two-sided, 6.5” x 9” four-color mailer featuring a photo of four children. It’s professionally done, including a QR Code. It’s addressed to Local Postal Customer.
I didn’t toss it along with the other junk mail. I saved it for a couple of weeks and took it to a public legislative forum in Boone.
I held up the mailer, sent by a religious school in Boone, explaining that my husband and I haven’t had any K-12 students at home for 15 years. Furthermore, we live 18 miles from Boone, so the school isn’t exactly in our neighborhood. Public transportation isn’t an option in rural Iowa.
I said, “From 1990 until 2001, when our children were in school here in Boone County, we never once received a marketing mailer from any public school. We never received a recruitment flyer from either one of the two private religious schools in Boone. Why now?”
The answer, of course, was summed up on the back side of the mailer, where it stated: “Thanks to Iowa’s Education Savings Account, every family can attend with very little out-of-pocket cost. Apply by June 30 for the 2026-2027 school year.”
Telling tales out of school
Both of our legislators, Jesse Green and Chad Behn consistently vote for private school/ESA vouchers. I’d prefer them to give vouchers a failing grade. I served on the school board at a public school for several years, and happen to believe public schools are the foundation of our country.
I also believe in the separation of church and state, a core belief deeply rooted in the First Amendment by Founding Father James Madison. It’s never been the role of government-funded education to school private students in their religion.
My legislators admitted they had received “some pushback” from other constituents regarding this same mailer. But they tried to pass it off to me as a smart marketing strategy. It’s just a spirited “competition” between public and private schools, you know! (But it’s not an equal playing field!)
I asked them if sending a random recruitment mailer like this one to empty nesters 18 miles from the school in Boone was a good use of my property taxes? I pointed out that public schools don’t seem to have this type of marketing budget.
One of them corrected me, saying that private schools aren’t funded by property taxes. He explained there are three streams of revenue for public schools: Federal, state and property taxes. But Iowa’s ESAs aren’t funded by property taxes.
OK, I stand corrected, I said. But ESAs receive public funds, right? Where do these funds come from? The public, right? To me, it’s a difference without a distinction.
Another constituent at the forum pointed out that private schools don’t have to accept special education students. When the legislators disputed it, she said that she personally knew of a student who wasn’t accepted by one of the Boone private schools.
I added that I didn’t appreciate a recent political ad for governor by Zach Lahn stating that Iowa teachers are pushing a Marxist agenda. The ad asserted that students are being taught to hate our country. I would call this an active campaign to undermine Iowa’s public schools and teachers. And all the while, as various and sundry bright, shiny school choices are being promoted, trust in Iowa’s public schools is eroding.
One of the legislators changed the subject, saying that charters may be a bigger source of concern than private schools. He stated he expected to see an “explosion” of 30 new charter schools next year.
That wouldn’t be surprising since the Iowa legislature voted this year to send an additional $1.3 million to charters. Charters are public schools, but operate independently and have a maximum enrollment cap. They have accountability standards, but are exempt from certain regulations and rules.
In 2021 Iowa had two charter schools. Last year, there were 10, with eight authorized to open. The Legislature voted this year to allow charter students to participate in extracurricular and driver’s education at public schools, paying the same activity rate as public school students. IPERS also now will cover charter school employees.
Many of the charter schools are operated by out-of-state companies. What’s behind this huge influx in Iowa? Just follow the money. It seems an obvious strategy to allow private business access to a new public revenue stream. They charge the schools a management fee, tapping into public taxpayer dollars, and operate as a quasi-for-profit. They’re here to siphon public money from public institutions and divert it to the pockets of interest groups, all under the guise of “parental choice”.
Using crib sheets
Not long after the forum, I read an interesting report in IowaStartingLine by Ty Rushing. His article pointed out that although the Iowa Legislature’s stated purpose in passing ESAs was to help make a private school education more affordable to Iowa families, the amount of tuition at Iowa’s private schools has been far exceeding the rate of inflation since the 2023-4 school year when vouchers were launched.
IowaStartingLine found that tuition at Iowa’s five largest private schools has grown as much as 50%, outpacing the national average. The cost of education nationally has increased about 1.6% each month since June 2023.
The five largest private religious schools with rapidly increasing tuition, beginning in 2022-2023, are:
· Bishop Heelan High School in Sioux City;17.5% increase
· Des Moines Christian in Urbandale; 31% increase
· Dowling Catholic High School in Des Moines; 27% increase
· Regina Catholic in Iowa City; 50% increase
Ditching school
I didn’t raise the issue of homeschooling to my legislators. Although these students don’t receive ESAs, it’s a troubling trend. This year Iowa legislators voted to allow home school families to charge tuition and fees for their services to nonfamily members. They also removed the cap in current law preventing homeschool providers from teaching more than four unrelated children.
This legislation had failed to advance on its own. So our legislators added it as an amendment to the charter school and education funding bill in the dead of the night. Gov. Reynolds signed it.
It’s alarming because allowing homeschooling parents to charge tuition and teach an unlimited number of unrelated children opens the door for home-schoolers to qualify for private school vouchers.
I can’t understand why Iowa government leaders no longer feel it’s a priority to employ credentialed educators to teach our kids. I understand there are circumstances when home-schooling is appropriate, and I’m glad families have access to it. But Iowa doesn’t mandate a specific curriculum for homeschooling. What are they studying? Do we know?
Home-schooled kids also frequently participate in extracurricular activities at public schools. They’re not required to be vaccinated, putting kids and teachers at risk.
Making the grade
Don’t you worry where we’re headed with education in Iowa? Statewide, accredited private schools grew more than 6% in the 2025-26 school year. Statewide public school enrollment dropped 1.53% last year.
To understand the underlying impetus for “school choice,” we need to refer to Project 2025, written by the Heritage Foundation. Then we need to ask why are we allowing wealthy, powerful, ultra-right white nationalists to undermine the foundations of our country’s public school tradition?
For instance, Iowa gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn is a co-founder of a private school in Wichita, Kansas, called Wonder. It’s a nontraditional, unaccredited K-12 experiment financed by the Koch family. Is this the future we want for our Iowa kids?
This year, for the first time, Iowa fell into the bottom half of U.S. states, ranking #27 according to the Kids COUNT Data Book. Although Iowa ranks well in overall child well-being, health, economic well-being, and family and community, it slips below in education, revealing:
· 71% of 4th graders weren’t proficient in reading in 2024, a drop of 6 points from 2019
· 73% of 8th graders’ math levels were not proficient, rising from 67% in 2019
· 57% of 3 and 4-year-olds were not enrolled in preschool from 2020-24, up from 53% in 2019
The Iowa legislature has been underfunding public schools by 2% per year for the past 15 years. Are we seeing the impact of shortchanging public school students and teachers? As test scores dip, will we hear the argument, “Well, public schools are failing, so we might as well just privatize education”?
A total of 41 Iowa counties have no private schools. In addition to Iowa’s 328 local public schools, there’s a head-spinning number of K-12 options today with one thing in common: they’re all funded by taxpayers. What will be the repercussions on Iowa children from the splintering of K-12 education?
Furthermore, how will Iowa evaluate this taxpayer-funded experiment called parental choice? Governor Reynolds’s mantra is “we have to fund students, not systems.” However, unless parents are provided the transparency and accountability to evaluate their choices, it’s meaningless.
Onr defining purpose of public education is promoting equality and opportunity for all. It’s why we fund public schools with our tax dollars. Public schools are the brick and mortar binding our communities together and bridging our divides. And the today’s students are our kids. All of them.
Cheryl Tevis writes as a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Learn more about the group and consider becoming subscribers — for free or for modest fees, your choice — by using the link below here. Your support keeps us writing for you!
Our Republican legislators want to kill off public schools. Period. Thanks for this, Cheryl.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Eloquent and frightening.