Former Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) launched a new national policy advocacy organization called Empowering America’s Parents. Its goal is to promote President Trump’s Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA), enacted in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
The ECCA gives taxpayers dollar-for-dollar tax credits in exchange for donating to approved scholarship-granting organizations, which then award scholarships to pay for private school tuition. It’s been adopted in over 30 states so far. In fact, before leaving office, Youngkin made Virginia the first state in the nation to opt into it.
Now, Youngkin’s group is spearheading an ad campaign in the remaining states to encourage them to opt into the ECCA before it begins in 2027.
However, members of Congress have already introduced a bill to repeal the ECCA.
Objections to ECCA highlight its flaws
Dogwood has previously reported how the ECCA harms Virginia’s most vulnerable students while disproportionately benefiting the wealthiest families. Among other things, it siphons tax revenue away from the state, leading to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Also, most students whose families take advantage of the program are already in private schools—few transition from public education to private.
In June, US Rep. Gwen Moore (WI-04) introduced the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act of 2026, which would repeal the ECCA.
“In states across the country, charter school programs often operate with little transparency, sap funding from public schools, and primarily benefit wealthy students,” Moore said in a press release on her website. “In Wisconsin, taxpayers are paying $700 million this year alone for vouchers, and nearly all this money is funneled into religious schools.”
In that same press release, US Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-VA), Ranking Member of the Committee on Education and Workforce, agreed.
“The federal government is responsible for ensuring equitable access to high-quality, well-funded public education,” Scott said. “Instead, in the ‘Big Ugly Bill,’ Congressional Republicans created a federal school voucher scheme that will funnel public dollars away from public schools to help subsidize private schools for wealthy families.
“That is why I am proud to support the Keep Public Funding in Public Schools Act of 2026 to undo the harm caused by Republicans’ ‘Big Ugly Bill’ and ensure that public dollars are spent on public education.”
Youngkin pushes forward with voucher agenda
Of the 20 holdout states targeted by Empowering America’s Parents, four had already specifically declined to participate in the ECCA before Youngkin’s group was founded: Hawaii, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Oregon.
Youngkin announced the group in June, fueling speculation that he may seek the Republican nomination for president in 2028—though he has made no such announcement. On August 13, Youngkin appeared on The Benny Show with host Benny Johnson to promote his agenda and offer his opinion on the states that haven’t yet adopted the ECCA..
“Of the 20 states that have not opted in, there’s one basic characteristic: They all have Democratic governors,” Youngkin said. “And these Democratic governors are being literally puppeted by the teachers’ unions, and they need to get over this.”
However, teachers’ unions are far from the only groups who have sounded the alarms on programs like the ECCA. In 2024, the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy published a report titled “The Impact of Diverting Public Money to Private School Vouchers in Kentucky.” Among the findings, the report said that if Kentucky adopted a program similar to the one Florida had at the time, it “would cost $1.19 billion annually from the Kentucky state budget,” which would equal the cost of employing nearly 10,000 Kentucky public school teachers and employees.
The same year, the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy published a report detailing the harm these programs would have on rural communities.
“The Center found that nearly half of all counties in Idaho (20) do not contain a single private school, and only 22% of Idaho’s 121 private schools are in rural towns,” the report said. “The majority of the state’s private schools are in Ada County, where Idaho’s most populous city of Boise is located.”
Their warnings went unheeded: both Kentucky and Idaho opted into the ECCA.
As Dogwood reported previously, Arizona launched the biggest private school voucher program to date in 2022. By 2024, it was responsible for $332 million of the state’s $650 million budget shortfall.
States who opt into the ECCA will have to renew their participation every year. Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) has not yet stated publicly that she will not renew Virginia’s participation in the program for 2028, but in April 2025 she said she would prefer to improve public schools, not defund them.
