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The most radical proposal for change in New Jersey’s governor’s race is getting almost no attention. It’s not the focus of ads, it didn’t come up in the debates, and neither candidate is hammering at it during campaign stops.
But Republican Jack Ciattarelli’s plans to bring Florida’s school voucher program to New Jersey would flip the table on education. The vouchers, funded by the state, would give $8,000 annually, per student to any family that sends its child to private schools of any type.
A billionaire from Short Hills would be eligible. So would a single mother from Camden. One family of six kids could get $48,000 a year. The students could attend Catholic Schools, Jewish schools, or Muslim schools. And if the school is teaching that evolution is a myth, the state would fund that family’s choice and by extension, support that private school.
“School choice means school choice for everyone,” said Ciattarelli spokesman, Chris Russell. “Money follows the student.”
Ciattarelli’s plan
For Ciattarelli, and for the program’s supporters in Florida, a voucher program is liberation. It would free children trapped in failing public schools, voucher advocates say, many of them unable to afford private school, and give them hope.
The more than 200,000 students who already attend private schools in New Jersey would get the money, but so would anyone who wants to make the switch, or teach their kids at home. Ciattarelli won’t say how much that might cost, or where the money will come from, but the number could be at least $1.6 billion, based on the number of students already in private school and an $8,000 voucher.
That idea — that everyone should be eligible — has its supporters. While many voucher programs across the country limit eligibility to poor families in failing districts, supporters of Ciattarelli’s plan say including everyone will broaden the political support, giving the program permanence, like Social Security.
“If you care about that kid in Asbury Park and want to make sure that they always have the opportunity to have access to a program like this, then you want to make sure somebody in Ventnor has a chance to be in it too,” says Derrell Bradford, who heads the educational reform group 50Can, which supports charter schools and school vouchers.
Vouchers don’t exist in New Jersey now. We have charter schools, which are run by private organizations, with public money. But charters don’t charge tuition, and students take no test to gain admission. Charters can’t be religious, and virtually all are non-profit. And they have to meet the state’s academic standards, and measure progress with state tests.
That approach has blossomed in cities like Newark, where charters educate more than one-third of the students and report test scores that outpace district schools, on average, even among the poor. Mikie Sherrill, Ciattarelli’s Democratic opponent in this race, says she supports successful charters with strong oversight but draws the line on vouchers.
Ciattarelli’s voucher plan takes the idea of parental choice to a new level. And Democrats warn that it would be an expensive boondoggle, one that risks diverting funds from public schools already threatened by federal cuts, while enriching the rich, and forcing taxpayers to finance substandard schools.
Democratic opposition
“This would just destroy the public school system,” according to Sen. Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth) who chairs the education committee and is the chair of Sherrill’s gubernatorial campaign. “The no income cap aspect, the no accreditation is wild, the homeschooling piece – well, it’s all wild. And I think that this is probably the most extreme education proposal that we’ve seen anywhere in the country.”
For home-schoolers, Ciattarelli’s plan is heaven-sent. They would not only get the $8,000 per kid, but would be free of government interference and could teach what they want.
Andrew Schlafly of Far Hills, son of the late conservative activist Phillis Schlafly, is ready to open his doors and start homeschooling again based on his own curriculum resource, “Conservapedia,” which teaches that dinosaurs and humans roamed the earth together. He doesn’t have to worry about regulators. Under Ciattarelli’s program, the state money would go to anybody. It’s the parent’s choice, even if the school promotes what most experts consider pseudoscience.
The cost of Ciattarelli’s plan could be enormous. In Florida, the program costs nearly $4 billion a year.
And while Ciattarelli hasn’t said how he’d fund the program, a separate funding formula he has proposed would lead to deep cuts in state aid to poor districts, from Camden to Asbury Park to Newark.
Given that the next governor will have to wrestle with a stubborn deficit in the state budget, and that Ciattarelli is promising deep tax cuts, it’s hard to see how he might manage it. And he’s not saying.
Gopal, the Senate Democrat, says the plan is motivated by cynical politics, not educational vision. Vouchers would be enormously popular in communities that send their children to private religious schools, like Lakewood’s heavily Orthodox Jewish community.
“He’s clearly doing this to attract the Lakewood voting population, is my belief,” Gopal said. “There is a more effective way to do this where you don’t hurt the public schools at the same time,” he added, of creating more school choice opportunities for low income families.
Assemblyman Alexander Schnall, a Democrat from Lakewood, agrees that families of the 60,000 Orthodox students who attend Lakewood’s private schools would embrace this. He supports the concept of vouchers, he says, but also wants to make sure we don’t “destroy public schools.”
“In Florida, some school districts lost a lot of money,” he said. “So why go after one thing and say, that’s the thing, I’m copying you? Let’s look at the multitude of states and get the best options.”
This would be the first time that taxpayer dollars directly funded education at religious schools in New Jersey, Schnall acknowledged, and he’s ok with that. “The money follows the child, so there’s no issue of separation of church and state.”
Others, like the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, aren’t so sure. “Those are scarce and treasured resources that should not be depleted, especially not for unconstitutional schemes,” said its executive director, Amol Sinha.
Impact on students
How would all this affect student achievement? That’s tough to predict, given that the studies produce differing results, and that the many voucher programs across the country differ in key respects. Florida’s is the broadest version in place, with wider availability and fewer rules than most. Ciattarelli says that’s his model.
Patrick Graff of the American Federation for Children, which supports vouchers, was a third-grade Catholic school teacher in Florida during the two decades when its voucher program was restricted to low and middle-income families, before it went universal in 2023. While the parish where he worked had a large Hispanic population, prior to the voucher program, a lot of those kids were unable to afford the Catholic school, he said. Thanks to the voucher money, together with financial aid, “our school was able to reflect the diversity of our Catholic community there for the first time.”
But while his organization is “very supportive” of Florida’s model, Graff notes that other states have built their programs differently. “Our main priority – and this perhaps distinguishes us from some other school choice advocacy groups – is that low-income families should always be put first, regardless of the kind of program that you’re building,” he said.
Critics of Florida’s program complain of a lack of transparency: A parent attracted by a glossy ad has no way of evaluating what a school’s academic outcomes are unless it voluntarily publishes them. Unlike public schools, private, religious or home schools aren’t required to publicly report how well their students do on standardized tests.
Families may also enroll without understanding that these schools aren’t required to provide special ed services or align with state standards. “The qualities of the schools are wildly different,” says Norin Dollard of the Florida Policy Institute, which opposes vouchers. “Small private schools are proliferating. The Orlando Sentinel did a whole in-depth piece looking at schools in strip malls.”
Florida families have been allowed to use voucher money for things like paddle boards, televisions, and tickets to Disney World or Legoland. And after its voucher program went universal, Dollard found that based on its own data, 70% of the families using vouchers had already had kids enrolled in private school, where they were now getting a discount. You’d be crazy not to, she said: “Your accountant would tell you to do it.”
Adding to the mix is a new federal voucher program just created by President Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” While the law doesn’t specify exactly how much the federal vouchers will be, it also allows wealthy families to use them.
In theory, a rich kid could take an $8,000 voucher paid with state tax dollars, stack it against an $6,000 voucher funded by federal money, and walk away with $14,000 annually to use on tuition at an elite school like Pingry, says Sasha Pudelski of the School Superintendents Association.
But Democrats plan opposition. As long as Gopal is Senate education chair, he’s vowed to fight this.
“I’m never going to post it,” Gopal said of a bill to create Ciattarelli’s voucher program, which he believes would bankrupt New Jersey’s budget. “This is insane.”
Julie O’Connor has written about politics, legal issues and education in New Jersey for more than 15 years. She was a member of the Star-Ledger editorial board and previously reported on criminal trials in Superior Court in Elizabeth. Now she covers urban education, particularly in Newark, Trenton, Paterson, Camden, Plainfield and Jersey City. Email her at OConnorJ@njspotlightnews.org.
