Is This the Last Normal Year for American Public Schools?

As kids across the country head into summer break, there's a sobering question worth asking: Are we watching the final year of public education as we've known it?

Tucked inside Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" is a new school funding mechanism that takes effect in January 2027—right in the middle of the next school year. Education historians and policy analysts are sounding the alarm, and for good reason: We've tried something like this before, and it didn't go well.

How the New Program Works

The new system is being called a national voucher program, though it functions more like a private school subsidy. Taxpayers, whether or not they have school-age children, can redirect up to $1,700 of what they would owe in federal taxes to "Scholarship Granting Organizations" (SGOs). Those organizations then distribute the funds to families to cover tuition or other educational expenses at private schools. Families earning up to 300% of their area's median income are eligible, which in some high-cost cities means households making over $300,000 a year could qualify.

Participation is opt-in for states, and so far 29 states have signed on, with others still working through the political calculus.

The Budget Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

Here's where things get troubling for public schools. When a student leaves for a private school, they take their per-pupil state funding with them. But the costs left behind don't shrink proportionally. Teacher salaries, building maintenance, heating bills, and bus routes remain largely fixed whether a school has 500 students or 300. The result is a potential funding cliff—revenues drop sharply while expenses hold steady, at least in the short term. If enough families take the subsidy and leave, districts could spiral into a budget crunch that drives even more families away, compounding the problem.

Who Actually Benefits?

Not everyone loses. Large, established private schools with existing fundraising infrastructure stand to receive a significant cash infusion. And because there's no cap on how much tuition an SGO can subsidize, wealthy private schools could theoretically pocket very high tuition payments funded by the program. Affluent families who were already planning to pay for private school may end up getting a significant discount courtesy of federal taxpayers.

Rural districts, even in deeply red states, will likely be the hardest hit. Conservative legislators in states like Texas have pushed back hard against voucher-style programs precisely because they understand how damaging they can be to underfunded rural public schools.

We've Been Here Before

Here's the historical twist: This isn't a new experiment. For the first half-century of American education, states routinely divided their education budgets between public and private institutions, and the results were consistently poor.

New York City did exactly this until 1825, parceling out small allotments to dozens of private and religious schools while leaving public schools chronically underfunded. The consequence: thousands of the city's children received no schooling at all. In 1826, city leaders made the decision to consolidate all education funding into the public school system. By eliminating the redundant costs of maintaining parallel systems, they were able to educate far more children.

In the 1840s, Massachusetts education reformer Horace Mann made a similar case statewide, collecting data showing that divided school budgets produced only six months of schooling per year. By consolidating funding into public schools, he managed to extend the school year, raise teacher pay, improve facilities, and provide free textbooks.

The data from that era is stark. In states that kept splitting their budgets between private and public schools, adult illiteracy rates were dramatically higher. By 1840, roughly 1% of white adult men in Massachusetts were illiterate, compared to 19% in Georgia and 27% in North Carolina—both states that continued subsidizing private academies.

What Comes Next

There are still enormous unknowns: which remaining states will opt in, what rules they'll impose on SGOs, how many taxpayers will actually participate, and whether the program will outlast the current administration.

What isn't unknown is the general pattern. Splitting public education dollars between competing school systems has consistently produced worse outcomes for more students—especially those in rural and lower-income communities. The 19th century figured this out the hard way.

We don't have that excuse this time.

Based on reporting and analysis by Adam Laats, originally published in Slate.