What is happening?

The Trump administration is advancing an anti-equity agenda that will make people in the U.S. sicker and less economically secure. In his first 100 days, Trump rescinded dozens of Biden-era executive orders designed to advance racial equity and directed federal agencies to end all diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility offices and programs. His “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy” EO takes direct aim at the pursuit of racial equity as a policy goal by attacking Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin (and religion and sex as well in the case of title VII) in programs that receive federal funding and employment, respectively.

Trump’s order for government agencies to remove all content and materials related to equity from government websites—leading to the disappearance of words like “diversity,” “historically,” and “female” from government documents—clearly shows that his administration does not value the perspectives, lived experiences, and struggles of those who are not white, male, heterosexual, and cisgender. Trump’s anti-equity actions will stunt efforts to understand, measure, document, and address health and economic disparities. For all the attempts made by the Biden administration to treat equity as a federal policy goal, Trump’s objective is to reverse that progress.

Why is this happening?

This newly created barrier to assessing and addressing disparities is not accidental; it serves a concrete purpose. By obscuring racial and other types of disparities and making them harder to address, this administration seeks to keep the benefits of production for its favored groups (i.e., employers, the wealthy, men, white people, cisgender people, and citizens), and to push the harmful parts of production onto vulnerable groups (workers, the poor, women, Black people, transgender people, and immigrants).

Trump and his allies’ motivation to remove protections for vulnerable populations in ways that benefit employers is no secret. The “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy” EO describes “disparate-impact liability”—i.e., the consideration of the impact of ostensibly neutral actions by employers and of policy on outcomes across groups—as having “hindered businesses from making hiring and other employment decisions based on merit and skill, their needs, or the needs of their customers because of the specter that such a process might lead to disparate outcomes, and thus disparate-impact lawsuits.” Trump is explicitly removing ways employers (and his administration) can be held legally and materially accountable for their harm to vulnerable groups. This helps employers avoid costly lawsuits, while workers and communities who lack the means to resist are exposed to discrimination and bias without recourse.

To be very clear: These anti-equity actions are one of the administration’s vanguard efforts toward advancing authoritarian governance that is rooted in white male supremacy. In restricting our ability to measure disparities where they emerge, removing government responsibility for addressing economic or social inequities, and further removing means of holding the government or employers accountable for the harm done to vulnerable populations, Trump has set the stage for a new regime of oppression which will make us all more vulnerable to the next public health crisis.

Why does this matter for public health?

The Trump administration’s anti-equity agenda poses long-term and widespread threats to the nation’s health. Among these is the loss of capacity to research, report on, and prevent the disproportionate burden of sickness, injury, and premature death borne by racial and ethnic minorities. This loss of capacity is already in motion with Trump’s gutting of public health institutions, particularly in divisions focusing on health equity, and also extends to nonprofits and academic institutions who rely on federal funding to carry out their advocacy and research.

Public health equity demands that we allocate resources toward addressing structural barriers in ways that improve health for the disadvantaged. By abandoning equity as a policy goal, the Trump administration shirks this responsibility, choosing instead to leave communities under-resourced and structural barriers intact, and impeding progress on improving health for vulnerable communities.

Leaving health disparities and the structural barriers that maintain them unaddressed is dangerous for the entire population, however, not just the most vulnerable. The COVID-19 pandemic gave the nation a stark lesson in social epidemiology: An infectious disease may hurt vulnerable groups more severely for a time, but the pain will eventually spill over to privileged groups as well. The entire economy suffers when essential workers—often people from disadvantaged and vulnerable communities—are debilitated by disease. Moreover, we share public spaces. Epidemics and pandemics do not stay localized to minorities, immigrants, or the poor; it is in the interest of the entire country to take health crises seriously, and that requires taking health equity seriously.

Why does this matter for racial health disparities?

To close racial health disparities through policy, we need to be able to study them and understand how they emerge. The Biden-era government agency Equity Action Plans sought to measure disparities across groups, account for the ways government policy has underserved and harmed people of color and other vulnerable populations, and investigate how each agency could break down structural barriers to thriving and fully participating in American life. On his first day in office, Trump directed all government agencies to terminate all equity action plans, along with any grants, programs, initiatives, or contracts related to equity. If we can’t say the word “equity” or ensure government agencies are operating equitably and funding is taken away from those who measure disparities, we will be unable to address health inequities.

Losing our ability to assess racial disparities and pursue racial equity limits our ability to hold corporations accountable for the harm they inflict on people of color. The use of menthol cigarettes is growing among Black and Hispanic adults due to aggressive, targeted advertising by tobacco companies toward those communities. We know this because of government programs like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s investigation of health disparities related to commercial tobacco and advancing health equity and academic efforts like Standford’s Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising collection. Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and menthol in cigarettes are associated with greater nicotine addiction and dependence. Understanding how corporations are responsible for rising menthol cigarette use in Black and Hispanic communities despite smoking rates generally falling nationwide is essential to combatting racial health disparities. When the Trump administration eliminates offices, positions, and grant mechanisms related to equity from the Department of Health and Human Services, it becomes more difficult to identify the root causes of racial health disparities and develop policy that will close gaps.

What will it mean economically for workers and their families?

Racial and ethnic health inequity is a drain on the nation’s economic well-being—and the steep cost of that inequity to the U.S. economy shows just how much Trump is sacrificing by shirking the responsibility to address disparities. A landmark study by the Tulane University Institute for Innovation and Health Equity (commissioned by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, whose director has now been placed on administrative leave by the Trump administration) estimated the total cost of lost labor market productivity, excess medical care due to excess morbidity, and premature death due to health inequities, by racial and ethnic group and for the nation as a whole. They estimated that in 2018, the economic burden of falling short of health equity was $421.1 billion for racial and ethnic minorities, two-thirds of which was due to premature death and most of which were attributable to losses faced by the Black population. The total cost to the nation of not achieving health equity goals was estimated to be $1.03 trillion. Stepping away from equity is not just a moral failing by the Trump administration, it is an economic policy failure.

The costs and racial and ethnic health inequities to the US economy are substantial and more than justify the societal investment in developing policies and programs to eliminate health inequities and larger data sets for smaller racial and ethnic subpopulations. Even a modest reduction in health inequalities can save the nation billions of dollars in medical spending and lost labor market productivity annually.
—Institute for Innovation and Health Equity, Tulane University 

Economic and social inequity is costly for workers, their families, and the economy. The Trump administration is shortsightedly sacrificing the potential for new engines of economic growth by neglecting disparities across groups and preventing efforts to pursue equity.

What should we do about it?

As the Trump administration continues to wage war on equity at the federal level, it becomes increasingly important to call out the racism, sexism, and xenophobia at the root of his actions, and to make full-throated commitments to the pursuit of equity through policy where possible. That means shoring up economic and health equity programs at the state and local levels, as well as continuing to resist the dismantling of our federal institutions through office closings and staff reductions.

Unions are an effective means of instituting equity in pay and working conditions where government standards may be lacking. Supporting organized labor is therefore important for maintaining both economic and health equity. But beyond their impact on workplaces, unions also increase political participation. The sooner we can empower workers and their families to use their voices to hold corporations and our government accountable, the sooner we can renew our commitments to pursuing equity through policy and the sooner we can secure ourselves against future economic and public health crises.

During the first 100 days of his administration, President Trump has consistently put the interests of billionaires and corporations over working people. This is most evident by the Trump administration already halting or dismissing nearly 90 investigations against lawbreaking corporations, according to a recent report by Public Citizen. One of the biggest beneficiaries of this is tech billionaire Elon Musk.

Before Inauguration Day, federal agencies had at least 32 open investigations into Musk’s companies. Since then, Trump has appointed Musk as a special government employee to lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is slashing government programs and jobs and targeting many agencies that are investigating his companies. His actions in this role have led to the end of many, if not all, of these investigations. The end of these investigations will not only boost Musk’s bottom line, but they will also make U.S. workers less safe. The following are examples of how Musk has benefited from the Trump administration halting investigations into Tesla, Neuralink, and SpaceX.

The Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) began auditing Tesla in 2024 to ensure adherence to equal employment laws for federal contractors. Tesla has been widely cited as creating a hostile work environment, with rampant racial bias and instances of sexual harassment. The OFCCP can levy fines of millions of dollars if they find wrongdoing and even ban contractors from bidding on future projects—an important enforcement mechanism because federal taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be going to companies that break the law and exploit workers. However, Trump signed an executive order effectively eliminating the OFCCP during his first week in office, effectively halting their investigation into Tesla and ensuring that U.S. workers will be subject to unlawful treatment.

In 2022, the inspector general at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) launched an investigation into Neuralink, a Musk-owned company developing brain-computer interfaces. But one of Trump’s first executive actions included illegally firing inspectors general from 17 federal agencies, including at the USDA. Though the content of the investigation was unclear, it was most likely due to the botched experiments that led to the deaths of multiple mammals, including monkeys. Numerous employees have complained that Musk has pressured the company into moving too quickly, not only leading to the unnecessary deaths but also compromising the research.

One of the first agencies the Trump administration attempted to dismantle is the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). While at first it was unclear why Musk and DOGE had their sights set on eliminating an agency focused on foreign aid, recent reports have shed light on Musk’s connection with USAID. In May 2024, the USAID inspector general announced it was investigating USAID’s relationship with Starlink (a subsidiary of SpaceX), which it had paid to provide internet services to Ukraine civilians. While the details of the investigation are not public, there is evidence Russia had access to Starlink, which was not supposed to be possible. However, the investigation will likely be dropped as the Trump administration moves forward with shutting down USAID.

Just before Trump took office, the Department of Transportation (DOT) announced it was investigating Tesla over its self-driving technology. Tesla has the largest number of crashes per driver of any car on the road—making it one of the least safe cars in America. Musk has frequently said that Tesla’s software and AI technology is its most valuable part, and a government investigation demonstrating that the software was not as good as advertised could have had far-reaching consequences for the company and for Musk’s wealth. Now, instead of being investigated, Trump is loosening rules on self-driving cars, benefiting Tesla and putting other U.S. drivers and pedestrians at risk.

These are just a few of the many examples of how the Trump administration has sided with billionaires at the expense of working people. Musk stands to gain significantly from Trump shutting down investigations into his various businesses, and it seems very clear new investigations will not be opened into Musk’s activities. This means that if workers in his factories are discriminated against, if his rockets continue to pollute the environment, or if he continues to violate election law, he will not face any consequences. Further, as head of DOGE, Musk has unfettered access to Americans’ sensitive and personal data, potentially giving him an advantage to future federal government contracts. While Musk’s days as a special government employee are numbered, it’s clear that U.S. workers, the environment, and the rule of law have all suffered to line the pockets of the richest man in modern history.

Key findings:

• Young workers—those 16–24 years old—have experienced historically strong real wage growth (9.1%) since February 2020, exceeding the wage growth for workers ages 25 and older (5.4%).
• Wages for young workers have also grown faster than the prices of rent and college tuition since February 2020.
• A smaller share of young adults is unemployed, underemployed, or “idled”—neither employed nor enrolled in further education—than their averages over the prior three decades.
• However, recent Trump administration policy actions could be devastating for young adults trying to get a foothold in the labor market as they enter the workforce following graduation.

Young workers have experienced a strong labor market coming out of the pandemic recession, with better job opportunities and faster wage growth than they experienced in much of the prior four decades. However, the Trump administration’s recent attacks on the federal workforce, higher education, and registered apprenticeships—as well as imposing extreme tariffs—threaten to reverse these gains. In this first post in a series on young adults, we examine their labor market prospects as they graduate from high school and college this spring and discuss how policy changes might impact their prospects.1

Young adults have experienced historically fast wage growth in this business cycle

Figure A shows that real (inflation-adjusted) wage growth has been strong for workers of all ages in the pandemic recovery, but young workers have experienced faster wage growth (9.1%) than workers ages 25 and older (5.4%). Compared with the previous four business cycles, real wage growth in this recovery has been extraordinarily fast for young workers. It was not only significantly above zero for the first time in the early stages of a recovery, but also 14.4 percentage points faster than the recovery following the Great Recession of 2008.

Though the difference is not as stark, it is worth noting that workers ages 25 and older have also experienced faster wage growth this business cycle than in prior business cycles. This is no accident—all age groups have seen strong wage growth during the pandemic recovery because of intentional policy decisions.

After the huge job losses in March and April 2020 (specifically in industries most likely to employ young workers), policymakers passed large fiscal recovery packages that spurred rapid rehiring efforts, which gave workers leverage to secure higher wages and better working conditions. Further, pandemic relief efforts like expanded unemployment insurance coverage and economic impact payments gave these workers the economic security to be more selective than normal when job hunting.

Figure A Wages for young workers have grown faster than rent and college tuition

We also compare nominal wage growth with the growth in prices of goods and services that stress the budgets of young adults. In addition to exceeding overall inflation, nominal wage growth for young workers (40.3%) has significantly outpaced growth in the cost of rent (27.4%) and college tuition (8.6%) since February 2020 (Figure B).

While rent and college tuition are unaffordable for many young adults and their families, the rate of growth since 2020 suggests they have not become any more unaffordable over this period. This is a crucially under-recognized achievement: strong labor markets directly made both college attendance and the cost of rent more affordable for young workers in recent years.

Figure B Young adults are less likely to experience unemployment and underemployment now than in the past

Labor market outcomes for young workers have also been more promising recently than on average over the prior three decades. Figure C below shows the unemployment rate, underemployment rate, and “idling” rate in March 2025 and the average in the July 1990 to March 2024 period.2

The unemployment rate for young workers now is 9.2% compared with 12.1% on average between 1990 and 2024. The underemployment rate is also lower today compared with the prior three decades. The underemployment rate is the share of the labor force that either 1) is unemployed, 2) is working part time but wants and is available to work full time (an “involuntary” part timer), or 3) wants and is available to work and has looked for work in the last year but has given up actively seeking work in the last four weeks (“marginally attached” worker).

Another important measure of opportunities for young adults is what we call the idled rate—the share of young adults who are neither employed nor enrolled in school. This idled rate is useful because it is often hard to judge whether higher employment of young people is unambiguously good. For example, in some states that have weakened child labor laws, 16- and 17-year-olds are now at higher risk of facing exploitative conditions like subminimum wages, safety hazards, or long hours that interfere with high school completion. But it is almost always unambiguously bad when young people lack opportunities to either work or be enrolled in school—and this is what the idled rate measures. The share idled in 2025 is lower than on average between 1990 and 2024.

Figure C Recent Trump policy decisions could harm the economic futures of young adults

These promising outcomes for young workers are a tremendous policy achievement. The decision to use large fiscal relief and recovery packages to heal the labor market as quickly as possible after the pandemic recession has paid off enormously for the nation’s young workers. However, recent actions by the Trump administration threaten to reverse these gains.

Specifically, attacks on higher education in the form of cuts to university funding and uncertainty around student loans will make college less attainable for all, but in particular for young women and Black and Hispanic people. This will only further exacerbate significant gaps in education, wages, and lifetime earnings across race/ethnicity and gender.

The administration has also attacked federal initiatives to expand access to registered apprenticeships, another accredited system through which young workers advance their careers and reach higher earnings. Data show that union registered apprenticeships are increasingly important pathways to living-wage skilled trades careers for young and low-income people, women, and Black and Hispanic workers, illustrating the disproportionate harm that these attacks will have.

Additionally, the current administration has launched large-scale attacks on the federal workforce, supported drastic cuts to Medicaid, pursued mass deportations, and imposed extreme tariffs.

Cuts to the federal workforce mean that young people interested in public service careers will have fewer opportunities. Further, major staffing cuts to the Department of Labor and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health will weaken the enforcement of laws that keep workers safe and investigate wage violations (which disproportionately harm young workers, women, people of color, and immigrants). Meanwhile, Medicaid cuts would directly harm young people who are lower income and rely on Medicaid to meet their health care needs, including the high share of women who depend on Medicaid for their pregnancy.

Those cuts—combined with current immigration and tariffs policies—could lead to an economic recession. Young workers are often hurt more in a recession due to the “last hired, first fired” phenomenon and their lack of a significant foothold in the labor market. Graduating into a recession can set them back for years to come, depending on the depth and duration of the recession. To prevent a recession and remove the threat of undoing gains made over the pandemic recovery, these policy actions must be halted immediately.

In the next blog post in this series, we will delve deeper into the wages of high school and college graduates, respectively, and discuss gaps that exist across race and ethnicity and gender.

1. We define young workers as 16–24 years old. For all of our data in this post we use 12-month moving averages. For example, March 2025 data represent the average of April 2024 to March 2025. Smoothing over 12 months allows for sufficient sample sizes for analysis and to account for seasonal fluctuations throughout the year. Data for young workers, in particular, may vary by season given changes in their schedule between the academic year and the summer.

2. The idling data are available starting in 1984, but we use July 1990 as the start date to capture only full business cycles.

Acknowledgments: This blog post would not have been possible without the intellectual contribution and data analysis conducted by Joanna LeFebvre and Katja Krieger.

All children deserve to attend welcoming and well-funded schools where they can learn and grow, regardless of race, disability, or income. But funding for public schools, where nearly 90% of all U.S. students learn, is at a near crisis point. The Trump administration’s goals, which are taken right out of Project 2025, seem to be to defund public education to the point that it doesn’t work, then offer private school vouchers as a solution to a manufactured problem. In this post, we highlight five ways public education is on fire in the United States and the damage this will do to students’ abilities to learn and thrive. Instead of cutting funds, lawmakers should invest in public schools, one of the best tools we still have to build a prosperous, equitable country.

Alarm level 1: COVID-19 relief funding for public schools is winding down. In some cases, the administration is ending it prematurely

This academic year (2024–2025) marks the end of the financial support schools were receiving to address the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, the Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief III funds (ESSER III). The COVID-19 pandemic, and the changing learning environments that ensued, meant that schools needed funds to address the significant academic, social, emotional, physical, and mental health needs of their students. This funding was distributed in recent years with the last distribution, ESSER III, worth a total of $122 billion allocated to districts around the country. Many students, especially those living in poverty, have not recovered from pandemic-related learning loss. The end of this funding means that districts will now have fewer resources to help students get back on track. Rigorous research has demonstrated that this federal aid to public schools was highly successful, with measurable improvements to student outcomes in states and districts where more aid was spent. Taking the educational challenges imposed by the pandemic seriously would mean recognizing the high value this aid has provided.

However, in late March, the Trump administration canceled extensions that had been granted to states to spend remaining ESSER funds. Effectively, districts are losing out on the funding allocated to them in the form of COVID-19 relief funds. Canceled extensions represent almost $3 billion in lost funding that had already been committed to tutoring services, reading interventions, building improvements, and more. Clawing back these funds jeopardizes improved academic outcomes for many students and their ability to learn in healthy and safe environments. The administration’s refusal to reimburse school districts for funding that has already been spent could force them to cut teaching and other staff positions to make up the cost, ultimately harming students.

Alarm level 2: The administration is lawlessly dismantling the Department of Education and attacking inclusive schools

The winding down and clawing back of ESSER funding are simultaneously occurring at a time when President Trump signed executive orders to (1) dismantle the Department of Education and “return the funding to the states” and (2) regulate curriculum taught in the more than 13,000 public schools in the country.

One order directed Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to shut down several functions of the Department of Education (ED) and send them back to the states. Prior to this order, the White House had directed the ED to lay off 1,300 employees, a directive that is currently in litigation. The other order resulted in a “Dear Colleague letter” from Secretary McMahon demanding that states certify that they will not engage in “illegal DEI practices” as a condition of receiving the federal funds (This order is also currently in litigation.). As it stands, much of the Department of Education funding goes directly to state and local school systems. The ED provides targeted funding to public schools for special education through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and supports high-poverty districts through Title I grants. These grants make up for shortfalls in funding that high-poverty districts experience when they get funding from local sources.

To be clear, closing the Department of Education, and reappropriating major funding programs requires an act of Congress, and it is local school districts who have control over what is taught in schools—not federal regulators. Thus, while these executive orders have the potential to inflict a lot of damage, it’s unclear whether these orders can proceed without running afoul of federal laws. If these orders result in delays in funding distributions or outright cuts, students could experience declines in academic achievement, exacerbating existing racial and income disparities and limiting students’ long-term opportunities. If President Trump acts outside of his authority to slash the agencies’ work, the guardrails will essentially be pulled off this funding, which is extremely effective at redistributing funds based on district need. President Trump says he’ll return money to states for them to distribute it, potentially creating a situation where states have to compete for funds. This would create a patchwork in public funding for public schools, one in which some districts risk falling even further behind.

Alarm level 3: Lawmakers are pushing a mounting wave of voucher programs, an increasingly large cost to state-funded education

While many school districts struggle to maintain basic education funding, school privatization efforts are continuing throughout the country, and states like Arizona, Florida, and Ohio are notorious for the budget-breaking cost of universal voucher programs.

Figure A shows the current cost of voucher programs as a share of K–12 education funding in states where over 5% of the budget is currently going to school voucher programs. In the current school year (fiscal year 2025), voucher costs make up anywhere from 5% for states with early voucher programs to upwards of 25% of the entire public education budget for states with mature programs.

Figure A

Because statewide private school voucher programs are funded with state dollars, voucher spending is shown as a proportion of state education funding rather than state and local funding. On average, about 46% of funding for K–12 schools comes from state revenue sources. In states with voucher programs, private schools divert state dollars that could otherwise be available to public schools. For now, local funding for public schools is protected from diversion to voucher programs, although some states with voucher programs are also threatening this source of public school funding by cutting or eliminating property taxes.

Vouchers degrade the quality of education for students who use them

Time and time again research has shown that vouchers harm academic outcomes. Causal studies across three states and Washington, D.C., demonstrate negative effects on test scores for students who use a voucher to switch from public to private school. These test score declines can persist over two years or more and are comparable or worse than declines due to COVID-19 and Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, students who leave private schools and return to public schools have experienced increased academic achievement. While some may argue that test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress indicate that private school students fare better academically than their public school peers, this is more a reflection of the parents’ socioeconomic status and education level than the impact of private schooling on students. Research also suggests vouchers do not reliably improve high school graduation and college attendance rates. Because of these reasons, lawmakers looking to improve student outcomes should not pursue vouchers.

School vouchers have costs for students who remain in public school

In addition to the direct costs that the state incurs for school vouchers, school districts experience an additional cost when they lose students to private school: the cost of providing the same level of education for fewer students in public education. This cost is entirely borne by the students who remain in public education, even though they affirmatively did not make the choice to take up vouchers. When students leave public schools with a voucher, the school districts must still pay the same amount for costs that can’t immediately adjust to declines in enrollment, such as cooling/heating and utilities. These required payments for a district’s fixed costs mean that districts will have even less to spend on the costs that can adjust due to changes in enrollment. What this means is that public school students who remain in public school will have less funding allocated to them for adjustable costs like teaching, curriculum development, and pupil support services due to other students taking up voucher programs. (To calculate this cost for your district, see EPI’s fiscal externality calculator).

Alarm level 4: National voucher proposals threaten public schools throughout the country

Beyond state voucher programs, Congress is considering national voucher proposals. This would enlarge the scope of vouchers beyond Republican-controlled states. The Educational Choice for Children Act, or ECCA, (H.R. 817, S.292) is a proposal to create a national voucher program. The program would divert over $10 billion per year in tax dollars to private schools and families who homeschool. The bill would do this by establishing a new dollar-for-dollar tax credit for individuals and corporations that make charitable contributions to organizations that give scholarships— or vouchers—for students to attend private schools. Donors who give corporate stocks would receive more back in tax cuts than the after-tax value of the stocks if they had sold them. 

Beyond vouchers harming student educational outcomes, the program itself would be extremely expensive. The bill proposes that Congress allocate $10 billion in tax credits for the voucher programs. But that doesn’t even account for the cost of voucher programs to public schools. The sponsors of the bill estimate that ECCA would provide vouchers for 2 million students. Given that at least two-thirds of students who take up vouchers previously attended private school, we can estimate that 666,667 voucher recipients will come from public school, which is about 1.4% of total public school students. Using our fiscal externality calculator, we estimate that students who remain in public schools would lose an average of $151 per pupil, and public school systems would lose a total of $6.225 billion dollars due to a national voucher scheme.

Alarm level 5: Tax cuts reduce available revenue for public schools

Many states are following a recent trend of reducing revenue available for schools through sweeping tax cuts. Corporate and personal income tax revenue represents about half of state tax revenue, which, in turn, funds about half of K–12 education budgets. From 2021 through 2024, 28 states passed personal or corporate income tax cuts, which will result in hundreds of billions of dollars in lost revenue by 2028, and more states are considering or have passed income tax cuts in 2025. At the same time, some states are cutting and attempting to eliminate property taxes, which account for over a third of revenue for K–12 education on average. States that want to invest in opportunity and long-term economic prosperity and to help their students continue recovering from pandemic-related learning loss should reverse this harmful trend.

Conclusion: What would happen if we boosted public school funding instead?

Given the real and damaging threats to public school funding, we conclude by asking what students actually need to succeed. Growing evidence over the last decade shows that public schooling in the United States simply needs more resources to deliver even better student achievement—not some radical disruption in how it is delivered and by what institutions.

For example, research has shown that school finance reforms between 1972 and 2010 led to a 10% increase in school spending for 12 years, which increased high school graduation rates, wages and family incomes in adulthood for children from districts with the spending increase. Others have similarly found that a $1,000 increase in per-pupil spending for low-income districts would reduce the test score gap between low- and high-income school districts within a state by nearly 40% of the baseline gap.

Increasing funding, rather than withholding federal aid or using public dollars to pay for private schooling, is the path forward for public schools. Public schools have fallen short in many communities because of lawmakers’ choices to underfund them. But the only education system that can fulfill the promise of equal opportunity for all children, regardless of race, disability, or income, is a fully funded system of public schools. Lawmakers interested in building prosperous communities should invest in public schools rather than defunding and privatizing them.