Nebraskans want and support strong public schools
In Nebraska, we have a constitutional obligation to provide education for our children in the common (public) schools. It is an obligation we take very seriously.
And in that obligation, we recognize that we need to provide a variety of learning environments for our students and that parents should have a say in determining that environment. That is why, for more than 30 years, Nebraska's option enrollment program has enabled tens of thousands of students to choose the public school that best fits their needs, even if that school is not the one right down the street.
In fact, in my home community of Omaha, in Millard, roughly one in four students choose to attend a public school that is not their neighborhood school.
Proponents of measures that would divert public resources to private schools often claim that public school advocates do not believe in choice. Nothing could be further from the truth. We believe that if a school is funded through public dollars, it should be publicly accountable and should follow the most important belief we hold: that we have the privilege of educating all students who come through our doors.
During the debate on the first version of the 'Opportunity Scholarships' voucher bill, an amendment was proposed to ensure that was the case. The amendment simply required that any private school receiving a publicly funded scholarship would be prohibited from discriminating against students based on elements like race, religion, sexual orientation or disability.
Supporters of the voucher bill rejected that amendment.
We strongly believe that education policies should meet the needs of all students. Voucher supporters do not agree. Across the river, in Iowa, we are watching in real time as that state's school voucher program becomes a massive subsidy for the wealthy.
Only 12% of the applicants to Iowa's program had previously attended a public school. The average income of a family applying for a voucher to move from a public school to a private school in Iowa is more than $128,000. Perhaps most concerning is the fact that since Iowa passed its voucher program, private school tuition has increased by 25%.
Nebraska needs to heed the warnings from other states. The research has been comprehensive and clear: Large-scale voucher programs do not improve academic outcomes. In fact, in a comprehensive report that was done by Indiana University, after reviewing more than a dozen studies, the report concluded that, 'As programs grew in size, the results turned negative, often to a remarkably large degree virtually unrivaled in education research.'
These programs not only fail to improve academic outcomes, they also drain a disproportionate number of resources away from our public schools. The Nebraska Legislative Fiscal Office noted that the voucher programs proposed would not reduce public school expenses.
In fact, depending on who takes these vouchers, the proposed programs could result in a loss of millions of dollars of state aid to public schools. Sadly, that isn't a hypothetical. In Arizona, its voucher program has ballooned to nearly $1 billion in its cost to taxpayers — while the Isaac Public School District does not even have enough money to pay its staff.
Importantly, the people of Nebraska saw the failings in these other states and reinforced their commitment to a school system that welcomes all students, regardless of their background. In November, hundreds of thousands of Nebraskans voted to support their public schools and to reject vouchers for the fourth time in our state's history.
The result was consistent across the state, with a majority in 82 of Nebraska's 93 counties voting to repeal the voucher bill. Our lawmakers in the Legislature should respect the will of the people and acknowledge that Nebraskans do not support using public funds to pay for private schools.
While the evidence may be clear that a voucher program will not improve the educational outcomes in Nebraska, that does not mean we are content with the current state of education. We believe we need to and can improve on how we serve our students in our public schools.
Yet research, as well as our fundamental belief in public education, leads us to know that voucher schemes are not the solution. We have proposed several measures in this Legislative session that would help address our state's ongoing teacher retention challenges.
We are also supporting measures like Sen. Margo Juarez's Legislative Bill 161, which would increase funding for public preschool. States that have demonstrated the greatest progress in improving math and reading outcomes for students are those that have committed to expanding preschool access.
We want every child in our state to have the best possible learning environment. The evidence is clear that vouchers are not the answer. The answer is strengthening our Nebraska public schools.
Tim Royers, a public school educator and Nebraska's 2016 Teacher of the Year, is president of the Nebraska State Education Association. He taught in the Millard Public Schools.
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Indianapolis Star
25-07-2025
- Indianapolis Star
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AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
23-07-2025
Beyond Harvard, conservative efforts to reshape higher education are gaining steam
Ken Beckley never went to Harvard, but he has been wearing a crimson Harvard cap in a show of solidarity. As he sees it, the Trump administration's attacks on the school echo a case of government overreach at his own alma mater, Indiana University. Beckley, a former head of the school's alumni association, rallied fellow graduates this spring in an unsuccessful effort to stop Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, from removing three alumni-elected members from Indiana University's Board of Trustees and handpicking their replacements. No government effort to influence a university — private or public — has gotten more attention than the clash at Harvard, where the Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars in federal funding as it seeks a series of policy changes. But far beyond the Ivy League, Republican officials are targeting public universities in several states with efforts seeking similar ends. 'What's happened nationally is now affecting Indiana,' said Beckley, who bought Harvard caps in bulk and passes them out to friends. Officials in conservative states took aim at higher education before President Donald Trump began his second term, driven in part by the belief that colleges are out of touch — too liberal and loading up students with too much debt. The first efforts focused on critical race theory, an academic framework centered on the idea that racism is embedded in the nation's institutions, and then on diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Since Trump took office, officials in states including Indiana, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Iowa and Idaho increasingly have focused on university governance — rules for who picks university presidents and boards and how much control they exert over curriculums and faculty tenure. As at Harvard, which Trump has decried as overly influenced by liberal thinking, those state officials have sought to reduce the power of faculty members and students. 'They've realized that they can take a bit of a step further, that they can advance their policy priorities through those levers they have through the state university system,' said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow who studies higher education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. In Indiana, Braun said he picked new trustees who will guide the school 'back in the right direction.' They include an anti-abortion attorney and a former ESPN host who was disciplined because she criticized the company's policy requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Braun's administration has ramped up scrutiny of hiring practices at colleges statewide. Indiana's attorney general, Todd Rokita, has sent letters to the University of Notre Dame, Butler University and DePauw University questioning the legality of their DEI programs. Butler, a private, liberal arts school in Indianapolis, was founded by an abolitionist in the decade leading up to the Civil War and admitted women and students of color from the start. 'I hope that Butler will uphold the standards they were founded on,' said Edyn Curry, president of Butler's Black Student Union. In Florida, the state university system board in June rejected longtime academic Santa Ono for the presidency at the University of Florida, despite a unanimous vote of approval by the school's own Board of Trustees. The unprecedented reversal followed criticism from conservatives about Ono's past support for DEI programs. That followed the conservative makeover of New College of Florida, a small liberal arts school once known as the state's most progressive. After Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed a group of conservatives to its governing board, many faculty left, including Amy Reid, who now manages a team focused on higher education at the free-expression group PEN America. 'When our students started organizing at New College, one of their slogans was 'Your Campus is Next,'' said Reid, who saw the gender studies program she directed defunded and then cut. 'So no, we're not surprised when you see other states redefining what can be in a general education class, because we've seen it happen already.' The changes at several public universities are proceeding without battles of the kind seen at Harvard. In a standoff seen widely as a test of private universities' independence, Harvard has filed lawsuits against the administration's moves to cut its federal funding and block its ability to host international students. In Iowa, new DEI restrictions are taking effect in July for community colleges. And the board that governs the state's three public universities is weighing doing something similar to Idaho, where a new law imposes restrictions on requiring students to take DEI-related courses to meet graduation requirements. Historically, the Iowa board has been focused on big-picture issues like setting tuition rates and approving degree programs. Now, there's a perceived sense that faculty should not be solely responsible for academic matters and that the trustees should play a more active role, said Joseph Yockey, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law and the former president of Iowa's faculty senate. 'What we started to see more recently is trustees losing confidence,' Yockey said. A new law in Ohio bans DEI programs at public colleges and universities and also strips faculty of certain collective bargaining rights and tenure protections. There are few guardrails limiting how far oversight boards can change public institutions, said Isabel McMullen, a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin who researches higher education. 'For a board that really does want to wreak havoc on an institution and overthrow a bunch of different programs, I think if a board is interested in doing that, I don't really see what's stopping them aside from students and faculty really organizing against it,' McMullen said. The initiatives on state and federal levels have led to widespread concerns about an erosion of college's independence from politics, said Isaac Kamola, director of the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom at the American Association of University Professors. 'They have to not only face an attack from the state legislature, but also from the federal government as well,' said Kamola, who is also a professor of political science at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a pair of bills in June that impose new limits on student protests and give gubernatorial-appointed boards that oversee the state's universities new powers to control the curriculum and eliminate degree programs. Cameron Samuels, executive director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas, an advocacy group, said politicians in the state are taking control of universities to dictate what is acceptable. 'When someone controls the dissemination of ideas, that is a really dangerous sign for the future of democracy,' Samuels said. The 21-year-old who is transgender and nonbinary went to college in Massachusetts and got into Harvard for graduate school, but as the Trump administration began targeting the institution, he instead chose to return to his home state and attend the University of Texas in Austin. 'I at least knew what to expect,' he said.
