Corey DeAngelis is a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a senior fellow at Americans for Fair Treatment.
Randi Weingarten and Becky Pringle, presidents of the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, respectively, sent a letter last month to Democratic governors urging them not to opt into President Donald Trump’s new federal tax credit boosting school choice.
Weingarten and Pringle’s message was unequivocal: Keep the money inside the traditional public school system and shut down a path that would let families direct their resources elsewhere.
At the same time, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) is leading an effort to repeal that program. But over half of the lawmakers backing Kelly’s bill, the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act, had the privilege of opting out of public schools: They either attended private school growing up or sent their children to private schools.
That includes at least 19 out of the 34 total sponsors and co-sponsors of the bill. The figure reveals a pattern of lawmakers who benefited from educational options they now want to keep out of reach for many families across the country.
The bill targets the school choice provisions tucked into last year’s reconciliation package. Those provisions created a program that lets individuals receive a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit of up to $1,700 for donations to scholarship-granting nonprofits. Those donations would support school choice scholarships, such as for private or religious school tuition, or for public school expenses, such as tutoring or classroom supplies. Any taxpayer can donate, but only students living in states that have opted in will be eligible for scholarships.
Kelly and his allies framed their repeal effort as a defense of public education. Yet the personal records of many backers suggest their confidence in public schooling is not so strong.
Kelly sent his daughter to a private school. The senator’s own background includes public schooling, but the choice he made for his child stands in contrast to the opposition he now leads to making similar options available for more families.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York) graduated from the private Emma Willard School and sent both of her sons to a private school in Washington.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) sent one of her two children to private schools — and then said she did not in 2019 at an event during her presidential campaign. A Black mother from Memphis told Warren she wanted the same kind of choice Warren had exercised for her own child. “I read that your children went to private school,” the mother said in an exchange captured on video. Warren responded, “No, my children went to public school.”
I first spotted the inconsistency in an Education Week report that confirmed that Warren attended public schools in Oklahoma but left the question about her children’s schooling unanswered. That omission stood out, because most candidates shared their family’s education choices. Warren’s silence on her family’s decisions and the later video exposed the gap between her public rhetoric and private actions.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), another supporter of Kelly’s bill, attended St. Albans School, an elite private prep school in Washington. But Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D), whom Bennet ran unsuccessfully to succeed, has already opted the state into the new federal school choice program and said that he would be “crazy not to” participate.
Colorado is one of 31 states that have opted in or signaled they intend to participate in the nationwide tax credit.
Some are taking advantage of the federal bill’s provision that allows for increasing spending on public schools. In Vermont, for instance, Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed legislation that aims to steer the taxpayer scholarship contributions toward public school expenses.
Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vermont) is on Kelly’s co-sponsor list. Welch graduated from Cathedral High School, now known as Pope Francis Preparatory School, a private Catholic institution in Massachusetts. He was privately educated, yet he opposes efforts to make such options more accessible to less advantaged families.
The Treasury Department said that state lawmakers cannot restrict scholarships to apply only to public schools. The program was designed to offer modest scholarships to students in all education sectors, not simply to create another public school subsidy. Attempts to rewrite the rules after the fact undermine the legislation’s purpose.
The pattern is consistent. Lawmakers who benefited from private schooling or chose it for their children now work to keep these doors closed for other families. Their hypocrisy reflects a broader disconnect between the policies these senators promote and the decisions they make when their own families are involved. All families deserve the same opportunities that many of these lawmakers took for granted.
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