| A nationwide movement has funnelled taxpayer money to private institutions, eroding the separation between church and state.  Illustration by Ben Wiseman Beginning in the mid-nineteen-nineties, Ohio began offering vouchers to Cleveland students as an alternative to struggling public schools. In this week’s issue, Alec MacGillis explores how what began as a civil-rights cause has, in the last few decades, ballooned into a huge and expensive program—which, along with similar initiatives in other states, is “threatening to become a nationwide money grab.” MacGillis reveals that, in Ohio, “the benefits extend to more than a hundred and fifty thousand students across the state, costing taxpayers nearly a billion dollars, the vast majority of which goes to the Catholic and evangelical institutions that dominate the private-school landscape there.” In startling new reporting, MacGillis uncovers private correspondence shared among conservative voucher advocates, which reveals a coördinated strategy to extend programs intended for the needy to “far richer families,” with aims that go well beyond education. As one activist puts it, about the movement’s ethos and wider goals, “Government does a lousy job of substituting for religion.” The New Yorker upholds the highest standards of reporting, research, and fact checking. Support our journalism by subscribing » | 
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