Earlier this month I exposed the critical flaw in a recent Brookings Institution report that purported to show that Arizona families participating in the state’s K–12 education savings accounts (ESA) policy are disproportionately wealthy.

The Brookings researchers had failed to consider Arizona’s popular and longstanding tax-credit scholarship (TCS) policy, which works in tandem with Arizona’s ESA policy and disproportionately benefits low-income families. Considering the two policies together paints a very different picture of who benefits from education choice policies in Arizona.

The researchers, Jon Valant and Nicholas Zerbino, responded to my and several other critiques or contrary analyses, which they dismiss as “baseless, misleading, or just kind of odd.” Others can defend their own work, but their response to my critique is entirely unpersuasive. Once again, they fail to provide readers with key information they need to understand how Arizona’s ESA and TCS programs operate.

As I noted previously, low-income families can receive tax-credit scholarships that cover a greater amount of tuition than the typical ESA. Since the TCS and ESA programs work in tandem, and participation in one precludes participation in the other, it’s impossible to study their effects in isolation.

The Brookings researchers concede that the TCS programs exist alongside the ESA, and implicitly they concede that their omission would compromise their analysis if the TCS programs were substantial enough. But they argue that the TCS programs “are small relative to a large-and-growing universal ESA program” (emphasis in the original). They also observe that “most TCS dollars are going to recipients above 185% of the federal poverty level—the threshold for reduced-price lunch eligibility.” To illustrate this point, they provide this handy—but misleading—chart:

The Brookings researchers then conclude that my critique doesn’t “point to context that meaningfully changes the interpretation of our data.”

But their presentation of the data misleads readers in two ways. First, it inappropriately separates the TCS programs (which function as one program), and second, it does not distinguish spending on students with special needs (which is almost entirely in the ESA program). These misrepresentations make the TCS programs look smaller relative to the ESA than they really are for those whose children are not in need of special education.

Comparing Arizona’s education savings accounts and tax-credit scholarships

To demonstrate the relative sizes of the ESA and TCS programs, the Brookings researchers present data on their relative funding. At first glance, that is an odd choice, as the most relevant comparison would be ESA and TCS recipients. However, given that students may receive multiple scholarships, it’s not entirely clear how many scholarship recipients there are, so the programs’ relative funding might seem like a reasonable proxy.

However, it doesn’t make sense to break the scholarship programs into the separate categories Brookings employs. When a family applies for a scholarship from a scholarship organization in Arizona, they can receive funding from all four programs if they meet the eligibility criteria. Indeed, having spoken with dozens of Arizona scholarship families, I can attest that they often don’t even realize that there are technically four different programs. All they know is that the scholarship organizations ask them for certain information (e.g., household income, whether their child had previously attended a public school, and their foster care or disability status), and that, after verifying that information, they receive a scholarship. Rather than being represented by four separate bars in a chart, the TCS funds should be combined into a single, much higher bar to portray its magnitude accurately.

Moreover, the ESA funding data are heavily affected by spending on students with special needs, who account for 18% of ESA students and 41% of ESA funding. Whereas the median ESA student receives about $7,400 annually, students with special needs can receive considerably higher funding, depending on the funding weight accorded to their disability under Arizona law. According to the Arizona Department of Education’s quarter 2 ESA report for 2024, 6,261 ESA students with disabilities received more than $30,000 each. Given that they can receive so much more money from the ESA, nearly all the families of students with special needs use the ESA instead of the TCS.

Brookings failed to account for how families of students with special needs cluster in the ESA program, just as they had failed to account for how low-income families cluster in the TCS program.

If students with special needs are considered separately, and the three TCS policies that aren’t limited to students with special needs are combined, then the ESA program is spending about $434 million for students without disabilities, compared with $200 million of tax-credit scholarship funding, as shown in Figure 1. (Note that “Lexie’s Law for Disabled and Displaced Students” also serves foster students who do not have special needs, but I have separated the entire tax credit from the other three since it is impossible to tell how much money is going to students in each category, though it is likely that the vast majority goes to students without special needs.)

Figure 1

Sources: Arizona Department of Education and Arizona Department of Revenue’s School Tuition Organization Income Tax Credits 2023 annual report.

In other words, contrary to the Brookings researchers’ portrayal, the TCS program is not “small” relative to the ESA.

Tax-Credit Scholarships disproportionately benefit low- and middle-income families

The Brookings chart only distinguishes between TCS funding on students from families earning above and below 185% of the federal poverty level. About a third of Arizona families with school-aged children fall below that level. However, the Arizona Department of Revenue also reports how much funding goes to families earning between 185% and 342.25% of the federal poverty level, which is the eligibility threshold for Arizona’s corporate-funded TCS program. About a third of Arizona families fall in that category as well.

In other words, Brookings is comparing the bottom third of families against the top two. But what if we looked at the three categories separately? In that case, as shown in Figure 2, it becomes clear that low- and middle-income families disproportionately benefit from Arizona’s TCS program relative to higher-income families.

Figure 2

Sources: Arizona Department of Revenue’s School Tuition Organization Income Tax Credits 2023 annual report; U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (2022).

According to the U.S. Census, 32% of Arizona families with school-aged children earn less than 185% of the federal poverty level, and scholarship families in that income range receive 42% of TCS funding. Likewise, those earning between 185% and 342% of the federal poverty level represent 33% of Arizona families with school-aged children but 35% of TCS funding. Meanwhile, 35% of Arizona families earn more than 342% of the federal poverty level, but they receive only 23% of TCS funding.

Brookings characterizes this distribution by stating that “most TCS dollars are going to recipients above 185% of the federal poverty level.” One could also say that most TCS dollars are going to low- and middle-income families, and that low-income families disproportionately benefit the most. Readers can decide which statement more accurately captures the reality of who benefits from tax-credit scholarships in Arizona.

As I stated before, it’s impossible to assess whether Arizona’s education choice policies are “addressing inequities in school access,” as Brookings sought to do, without including Arizona’s popular and longstanding tax-credit scholarship policy in the analysis. Brookings has failed to present any compelling arguments or data to justify their omission.

Jason Bedrick is a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.

A recent report by the Brookings Institution claims that Arizona families participating in the state’s K–12 education savings accounts policy are disproportionately wealthy. However, the report suffers from a fatal flaw that renders their analysis meaningless.

In 2011, Arizona lawmakers enacted the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, which families can use to choose the learning environment that works best for their children. Families can use ESAs to pay for private school tuition, tutoring, textbooks, homeschool curricula, online courses, special-needs therapy, and more.

Initially limited only to students with special needs, state lawmakers expanded eligibility for the program several times over the last decade. In 2022, Governor Doug Ducey signed legislation opening the ESA program to every K–12 student in the state.

Since the Arizona Department of Education does not collect data regarding the income of families participating in the ESA program, the Brookings researchers attempt to use zip codes as a proxy for determining the socioeconomic status of ESA participants. The report uses the poverty rates, median household income, and educational attainment levels for the zip codes in which ESA participants reside to roughly approximate their socio-economic status.

Based on these assumptions, Brookings finds that ESA participants tend to reside in areas of Arizona that have lower levels of poverty and higher median incomes and levels of educational attainment. According to the report’s authors, “the takeaways from this analysis are clear”:

In Arizona, the state with the first and highest-profile “universal” ESA program, families in the wealthiest, most advantaged communities are obtaining ESA funds at the highest rates. Families in the poorest communities are the least likely to obtain ESA funds. Nothing in the analysis above even remotely suggests that this program is addressing inequities in school access by students’ socioeconomic status.

The phrase “in the analysis above” is doing a lot of work in that assertion. The fatal flaw in the Brookings analysis is what it excludes. Nowhere in the report do the authors mention that Arizona has another education choice policy—tax-credit scholarships—that predates and works in tandem with the ESAs. Nor do they mention that one component of the scholarship policy is means-tested, let alone that low- and middle-income families can receive more money with the scholarships than the ESAs.

That’s right: low-income families can receive tax-credit scholarships that cover a greater amount of tuition than the typical ESA, which is worth about $7,400 annually for a student without special needs.

Arizona families are eligible for the means-tested scholarships if their household income is no greater than 342.25% of the federal poverty line, or $102,675 for a family of four in 2023–24. That’s below the household income of the median school teacher married to the median firefighter in Arizona.

About two-thirds of Arizona families are eligible, yet school tuition organizations (STOs) tend to prioritize awards based on need. Last year, 44 Arizona STOs issued nearly 30,000 scholarships under the means-tested program. By comparison, about 71,500 students received ESAs this year.

The Brookings researchers express curiosity about why low-income families are less likely than higher-income families to use the ESA program, and offer several theories as to why that might be:

What is less clear—and worthy of further study—is why these patterns exist. There are many reasons why families in lower-SES areas might not participate in this program. Some families might be interested in obtaining ESA funding but are unaware of the program (information barriers) or unable to get to/from their preferred schools (transportation barriers). Some families may confront financial barriers, since the tuition at many private schools exceeds the value of the scholarship, leaving ESA-recipient families to cover the difference. Some families might just not be interested. They may feel better served by, or more welcome in, their neighborhood public schools.

Never do the researchers consider the role that the tax-credit scholarship policy plays. Yet, given that an Arizona student cannot simultaneously participate in both education choice programs, it should not be particularly surprising that low-income families who want to enroll their child in a private school would choose the tax-credit scholarships rather than the ESA.

The Brookings researchers might object that they are only evaluating Arizona’s ESA program, not Arizona’s education choice policies generally. But since the two programs work in tandem, and participation in one precludes participation in the other, it’s impossible to study their effects in isolation.

Imagine a study in which people were offered either $500 cash or a smartphone ranging in value from $350 to $750 depending on one’s income, with lower-income individuals being offered higher-value phones. If the researchers reported that “higher-income individuals are more likely to accept $500 cash when offered than lower-income individuals” without mentioning the offer of the smartphone, the statement might be technically correct, but the missing context would render the statement so highly misleading as to constitute academic fraud. No one would accept a claim by the researchers that they were only interested in evaluating the effects of an offer of $500 cash, as the mutually exclusive offer of the smartphone fundamentally alters the offeree’s behavior.

Brookings was probably not intending to deceive, but at the very least, their failure to mention the existence of the tax-credit scholarship policy is sloppy. Either way, it’s impossible to assess whether Arizona’s education choice policies are “addressing inequities in school access,” as Brookings sought to do, without including Arizona’s popular and longstanding tax-credit scholarship policy in the analysis.

Jason Bedrick is a Research Fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy.

The New York Times article quotes Scott Winship of the American Enterprise Institute, who participated in an Education Next forum, “Should Congress Make the Expanded Child Tax Credit Permanent?” in the Fall 2021 issue.

The Times article says, “While supporters hoped the credit would boost educational or enrichment spending, a study that posed the question directly found it had not.” It is indeed accurate that there were hopes the credit would boost educational or enrichment spending; Frederick Hess, in “How a Turbocharged Child Tax Credit Could Electrify School Choice,” (Fall 2021) suggested that states could offer to match the money if it were spent on education.

The New York City-based study linked to by the Times article notwithstanding, the newspaper does interview one mother who withdrew her 12-year-old daughter from a cheerleading class “in part because of the cost” when the tax credit expired. And a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis of Census Bureau data found 40 percent of low-income families were using the child tax credit money for education costs covering books and supplies, tuition, after-school programs, and transportation for school, as Education Next reported in November 2021.

The online headline the Times put on its article—“The Expanded Child Tax Credit Is Gone. The Battle Over It Remains”—is surely accurate.

—Education Next

With RealClear Opinion research finding that 82% of Republican voters now favor school choice policies such as vouchers, education savings accounts, and tax-credit scholarships, school choice legislation in Republican-dominated state legislatures seems like it should have an easy path to the governor’s desk. But this wasn’t the case in 2022 , when red states such as Georgia, Iowa, and Utah failed to usher school choice bills across the finish line.

In Oklahoma, where House Republicans outnumbered Democrats 82-19 during the 2022 session, Republican House Speaker Charles McCall refused to give a hearing to a school choice bill backed by both the state’s governor and Senate leader. According to McCall: “I’m a rural Oklahoman. We see things through the lens of our individual districts.”

While rural Republican opposition to school choice is long-simmering, it’s more apparent now that funding families instead of systems is enshrined in the GOP’s platform and quickly becoming a litmus-test issue for right-leaning voters. Rural Republican policymakers are the main reason Texas, a reliably red state, is in the minority of states that don’t have private-school choice programs on the books despite years of legislative efforts to change that.

Although this rural voting bloc has proved to be a roadblock for school choice advocates, creative approaches to K-12 funding might be able to win them over. Offering rural school districts a financial cushion for any students they lose to a school choice program could be the way to finally get rural legislators on board–and it would be far cheaper than strategies used in Arizona and Florida that involved massive statewide public school funding boosts to make school choice expansion politically viable.

The Role of Rural Superintendents in School Choice Battles

Why are Republican legislators so willing to buck their party and side with teachers’ unions when it comes to school choice? In The Progressive magazine earlier this year, public school advocate Jessica Levin claimed, “Republicans representing rural areas know vouchers won’t benefit their constituents because of the lack of private schools in these areas and because public schools often are important for jobs and community-building.”

But research by the Brookings Institution casts doubt on the first part of Levin’s explanation, finding nearly 7-in-10 rural families have access to one or more private schools within 10 miles of their home. It seems more likely that rural Republicans’ opposition comes down to how the expansion of alternative education options could affect public school jobs and the broader community.

Back in 2005, the Texas Tribune editorial staff explained the important role that superintendents play as employers: “In many parts of rural Texas, where schools and prisons are the only economic engines, the school superintendent is one of the most powerful people in the county.” This is the reality in many parts of the U.S.

Rural superintendents reasonably don’t want to deal with the fallout of shrinking budgets that can come if there is an exodus of public school students to private options. Such a prospect is especially challenging given the school districts’ diseconomies of scale. Losing funds could lead to layoffs and potential negative effects on local culture. While these concerns are valid, they shouldn’t outweigh the benefits of giving families agency over their K-12 education, including positive effects on parent satisfaction, participant test scores, and long-term outcomes.

Nevertheless, some lawmakers are reluctant to go against their influential superintendents on the issue of choice. In 2006, Clint Bolick—then president of the Alliance for School Choice and now a justice on the Arizona State Supreme Court— remarked that “rural superintendents have been the bane of our existence.”

School choice advocates have recently started to push back against some lawmakers’ loyalty to their superintendents. In Iowa, Kentucky, and Texas, Republican officeholders backed by teachers’ unions lost their primary elections this year over their opposition to school choice.

This approach may help choice programs advance in these states, but advocates should also consider other strategies for expanding educational opportunities for students if efforts at the ballot box don’t prevail.

The Way Forward

In 2022, Arizona passed the most expansive school choice program in the country. The bill’s sponsor, House Majority Leader Benjamin Toma, credited the win to $1 billion in new funding for public education, writing “We were able to make that investment knowing it was buying radical reform.”

Arizona certainly isn’t alone in appropriating more money for public schools, with many states—including Georgia, Iowa, and Utah—using large budget surpluses to boost K-12 funding for the 2022-23 school year. However, Arizona was alone in using new dollars to secure a historic school choice victory that fundamentally changes public education in the state. But there might be a cheaper pathway to neutralizing rural Republican opposition to school choice: Holding rural school districts harmless.

Admittedly, hold harmless policies are frequently criticized by advocates of fair school funding—including these authors—and with good reason. Hold harmless policies fund schools based on outdated enrollment counts or revenue levels. These policies divert funding away from schools attracting new students and create unfair funding patterns if left in place for years.

However, the political realities of K-12 education finance make it so that even a school choice bulwark like Arizona must put a billion dollars on the table to entice enough Republican legislators to support school choice expansion. Holding rural school districts harmless is a far less expensive option and it could be entirely offset by the fiscal savings that a universal school choice program accrues.

A Test Case: Oklahoma

As a test case, consider the failure of Oklahoma policymakers in the 2022 legislative session to pass S.B. 1647, which would have created an education savings account program. The bill failed in the state senate with a vote of 22 to 24. Remarkably, 18 of the 24 “nay” votes were Republicans. As expected, these 18 Republicans represented the jurisdictions containing about three-quarters of the state’s small, rural districts. For the sake of simplicity, we are assuming small districts of fewer than 750 students can be counted as rural districts.

How much would it have cost Oklahoma’s choice-supporting policymakers to offer financial assurances to the rural districts largely represented by these 18 “nay” Republicans?

Consider a scenario where all Oklahoma school districts with fewer than 750 students would be held harmless for any students they lose to an education savings account program. Such a remedy would extend beyond the state’s existing one-year declining enrollment hold harmless policy. Excluding charter schools, this would include about 70 percent of the state’s school districts. Next, assume that each of these districts loses 5 percent of their students to the ESA program. Based on state school finance data from the 2020-2021 school year, we estimate it would cost the state roughly $30 million each year to continue funding these small districts as if they hadn’t lost any students.

For context, the Oklahoma legislature appropriated $3.164 billion for K-12 education in FY 2022—a $171.7 million increase from the previous year. It’s also worth emphasizing that the Sooner State, like many other states, already has special funding allotments for small and isolated school districts, so targeting additional dollars to rural districts is nothing new.

To be sure, there are multiple ways to construct a policy that would assuage rural districts’ fears of losing money to school choice programs. It would also be wise for legislators to cap any program like this to prevent small districts from relying too heavily on hold harmless funding. But even with a generous cap, holding rural districts harmless for any enrollment losses to school choice programs appears relatively cheap and could be an effective way to get rural Republicans on board with school choice. It’s also a policy that could pay for itself given the fact that school choice programs can provide savings for state education budgets.

After years of resistance from rural Republicans, school choice advocates are rightfully frustrated. Recent efforts at the ballot box seem encouraging for choice supporters, but this coalition should consider an approach to policy making that recognizes the concerns of rural superintendents while securing universal school choice for families. This path could provide much-needed changes to K-12 education and save taxpayers money in the long run.

Aaron Smith is the director of education policy at Reason Foundation. Christian Barnard is a senior policy analyst at Reason Foundation.

Georgetown University’s FutureEd project was right to declare that “few people have played a larger role in efforts to raise standards in the nation’s schools” than the coauthors of its latest paper, Unfinished Agenda: The Future of Standards-Based School Reform.

Michael Cohen and Laura Slover, both now associated with CenterPoint Education Solutions (which Slover heads), do indeed have impressive track records in this realm, including Mike’s long-time leadership of Achieve and Laura’s leadership in developing and launching the PARCC assessments. I’ve known them forever, like them a lot, and greatly respect what they’ve done and are doing.

I also respect their new paper, even as I find myself doubting the feasibility of its proposals.

The paper is squarely in the tradition of “systemic reform,” an honorable, perceptive, and ambitious approach that says, in essence, that making any major gains in America’s K–12 results requires a holistic understanding of how the system works and a strategy for overhauling its many key elements in synchronous fashion. Prominently identified with Marshall (Mike) Smith and Jennifer O’Day, this understanding of education reform has been present in the field for more than three decades. The ERIC system summarizes it as “a design for a systemic state structure that supports school-site improvement efforts and is based on clear, challenging standards for student learning. Policy components would be tied to these standards and reinforce one another in providing instructional guidance to schools and teachers.”

Those “policy components” are legion, ranging from “a coherent [statewide] system of instructional guidance” to major changes in the structures and governance of schooling. Included, of course, are academic standards and assessments, but also aligned teacher preparation, professional development, a perhaps-surprising injection of school-level autonomy—and considerable financial investment. With everything synchronized, of course.

That’s a very heavy lift, which is why no state, to my knowledge, has given it a full test. Some have moved a fair distance toward it—Massachusetts, Louisiana, Tennessee—but it’s not just hard to do. It’s next to impossible to sustain. The main obstacles, sadly, are obvious and familiar: the difficulty of reaching a durable consensus over what, exactly, the state’s schools are supposed to teach and its children to achieve; a vast, lumbering, loosely-coupled K–12 enterprise that is loath to change, beyond perhaps doing more of what it’s always done; adult interests that are vested in the status quo; widespread complacency regarding that status quo; and election-year changes (and leadership turnover) that make it daunting to stay on course, notably when that course is disruptive, disputed, and politically vulnerable.

Cohen and Slover know all that, of course, and have scars to prove it. They acknowledge widespread exhaustion with and pushback against even the simpler forms of standards-based reform, while recognizing that “it has increased the rigor of state standards and improved the quality of state tests overall.” They also acknowledge the complicated role played by the Common Core, which has served both to raise standards in many places and to stiffen resistance in some. And they’re honest about the generally disappointing results of all this effort: “Millions of students—particularly Black and Latino children and those from low-income families—continue to be taught to low expectations. And that lack of rigor remains a major barrier to economic mobility and social justice.”

Darn right it does.

But they’re not giving up. Far from it. Their new paper restates the centrality of standards in the reform of American education in the name of both excellence and equity. It restates the “systemic reform” thesis that a standards-driven system needs its many moving parts to mesh. But it then focuses laser-like on what Cohen and Slover see as the part of that system that has been widely neglected but that, they say, may be the most necessary: “the instructional core,” particularly an “adequate supply of standards-aligned curricula” and the “related professional learning” that would equip teachers to deliver such curricula effectively.

Why neglect something so vital? The authors astutely explain that “Most state officials were loath to influence districts’ curriculum decisions—sometimes because the politics were deadly in light of the nation’s long history of local control of education, oftentimes because they lacked the capacity to do so. Publishers, meanwhile, were quick to assure districts that their materials were aligned to standards, despite evidence to the contrary.”

Darn right.

But what to do? Cohen and Slover seek a rededication to standards-based reform centered on an aggressive statewide approach to the “instructional core.” They see this as having four vital components:

• High-quality, standards-aligned curriculum.
• Professional learning connected to the curriculum.
• Curriculum-aligned assessment.
• Accountability focused on instructional coherence.

Sounds right, no? Yet the very first step of their action plan for states is “a fundamental shift in state accountability systems,” beginning with states adopting “policies requiring every district to demonstrate that its curriculum, instructional materials, professional learning, and local assessments are aligned with each other and with state standards.”

And on they go, citing Louisiana since 2013 as one place that’s put a number of these elements into operation (more with incentives than coercion); noting a multi-state effort by the Council of Chief State School Officers to “encourage” districts to adopt and deploy such aligned curricula and professional development; and mentioning several organizations (including CenterPoint) that are “helping.”

They seek far more of all of that, and in many more places.

But obstacles loom, perhaps insurmountable. Truly doing what Cohen and Slover recommend amounts to a statewide curriculum or its virtual equivalent, as well as ensuring that many other currently-local instructional decisions conform to state norms if not actually replaced by state decisions and actions.

Their plan also entails a subtle but important shift from school accountability centered on student achievement and gap closing to something more like schools’ successful fealty to an instructional strategy. Of course the authors want and expect that stronger achievement will follow—that’s ultimately their point—but it’s no small thing to change the focus from results to the machinery intended to produce them.

Yes, I favor instructional coherence. Yes, I understand that many schools and districts cannot produce satisfactory results by just whipping the troops to try harder. Yes, I’d like to see states doing far more to help. I might be talked into the Cohen-Slover approach if I thought it was feasible and if I had confidence that state-level decision makers would make sound decisions in all those realms, implement them thoroughly, and stick with them. But I approach despair when I watch the fast-changing cast of characters at the helm of state education agencies, the timid, rigid, and bureaucratic behaviors of those agencies, the difficulty they have in attracting and paying for the requisite talent, and their vulnerability to interest-driven political interventions and course changes. I worry, too, that a fully coordinated instructional system at the state level will leave even fewer options for dissenting parents and educators to escape from what they view as curricular indoctrination, whether from left or right.

We’ve seen some states struggle toward coherence, but how many of them last long enough to make a material difference? John White is no longer in charge in Louisiana, Carey Wright just retired from Mississippi, Dave Driscoll is years away from the Massachusetts job. Penny Schwinn inherited a promising start in Tennessee and—well, so far so good. But in how many states would even the suggestion of such centralization of K–12 control not trigger protest and pushback? And in how many states might such centralization amid culture wars lead to bad choices in the curricular sphere?

Great big top-down systemic education reforms surely glitter, and on more than one occasion I’ve been seduced. That might happen again. It’s easy to be smitten by Mike and Laura’s vision, which glitters brightly. In the end, however, I’ve almost always ended up favoring workarounds and end-runs, ways (such as charters) of letting schools escape from the grip of state (and local) rigidities, and ways (such as vouchers and education savings accounts) of letting parents escape from the monopoly.

In a private note, one of the authors insists to me that “The agenda here is necessary, complex, and doable, with sustained leadership and effort.” I’d like to think so, and would applaud signs of the requisite “sustained leadership and effort.” But three decades after the debut of “systemic” reform, and after three (and more) decades of results that are too flat, too low, and too disparate, I’ve grown harder to seduce. And more determined than ever to factor painful reality into our reform strategies. Which, sadly, means (to me) acknowledging that what glitters sometimes turns out to be fool’s gold.

Chester E. Finn, Jr., is a Distinguished Senior Fellow and President Emeritus at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. He is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.

This post originally appeared on the Fordham Institute’s Flypaper blog.

Critics of education choice claim that introducing and expanding choice programs will lead to a massive exodus of students that will dismantle public-school systems by “defunding” them. For instance, one critic claims that vouchers “could dramatically destabilize public-school systems and communities.” Legislators in states such as Indiana, Ohio, and West Virginia claimed that school-choice bills introduced in their states would destroy public schools.

Such overwrought claims are hard to square with our work and many other analyses of education-choice programs, including a recent study that showed students participating in choice programs, including programs that have been around for multiple decades, represent just 2 percent of all publicly funded students in the states that operate these programs.

As part of the publication The ABCs of School Choice, we report participation rates, or “take-up rates,” by program for each school year.

This is how we calculate that figure:

Trends matter too, though. Existing research doesn’t tell us about how programs might evolve or the extent to which participation increases or decreases over time. The rate in the third year that a program operates is probably going to be different than the rate in the same program’s twenty-third year. Take-up rates over time is what we are interested in understanding.

We decided to look at programs that were introduced in 2010 or later and that were in operation for at least 5 years. Our sample includes 27 private-education-choice programs in 19 states. These programs consist of four education savings accounts programs, 13 voucher programs, and 10 tax-credit scholarship programs. Thirteen of these programs exclusively serve students with special needs. All programs in the sample are statewide except one: Wisconsin’s Racine Parental Choice, which is open to students who reside in the Racine Unified School District.

Our estimates reflect eligibility requirements in place for each program during a given year. We generate these estimates at both the program and state levels. One challenge with generating state-level estimates is that, in states with multiple programs, eligibility may overlap, which could lead to double-counting. We therefore avoid double-counting by subtracting out regions of overlap. There are also some program-specific pathways that we do not account for given data limitations, such as students from military families. Additionally, for states with special-needs programs that have income limits, we assume that the household income distribution for special-needs students is the same as the income distribution for all households with children at the state level.

Even Over the Long Term, Take-Up Rates Remain Low

We found that, even after a decade of a program’s existence, take-up rates remained low (see Table 1). An exception was Wisconsin’s Racine Parental Choice Program, which has the highest take-up rate in the sample for each year in operation: 2.95 percent in the program’s first year and 37.15 percent in the program’s tenth year. Although the Racine program may seem like a total outlier, this program is actually distinct from the others included in this analysis. It operates within a large urban school district, whereas the other programs operate on a statewide basis. Racine may also have a high take-up rate because Wisconsin has had the presence of a choice program since 1990 with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Thus, it’s likely that many families in Racine were already aware of the Racine program when it started, due to previous familiarity with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

Among statewide choice programs, the Maryland BOOST program experienced the highest take-up in its first year, with 1.25 percent of eligible students in Maryland participating in the program. Among programs in their tenth year, the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program had the highest take-up rate, 6.95 percent. In the initial year, all but two programs had take-up rates well below 1 percent. By the fifth year, take-up rates for 21 of the 27 programs were below 2 percent and remained below that level through their ninth year. It appears that the exodus of students from states’ public school systems did not materialize.

Even After 10 Years, Programs with High Take-Up Rates Are Exceptions (Table 1)

For most programs, take-up rates remain below 2 percent for the better part of a decade.
Scroll left-to-right for full results

 

*Starting January 1, 2015 the Alabama Department of Revenue changed its reporting requirements from a calendar year basis to a fiscal year basis. Thus, year 3 data in the analysis for Alabama’s program is based on six months. Data for subsequent years are based on fiscal years ending June 30.

Note: A program’s first year in operation is the first year that we observe students participating in the program. We also examine take-up rates by program type (ESA, voucher, and tax-credit scholarship programs), programs that exclusively serve special-needs populations, and programs that serve non-special-needs populations. The sample includes all programs that launched in 2010 or later and have been in operation for at least five years through 2021.

 

As seven states in the analysis have more than one program, we also estimated overall take-up rates for each state (see Table 2). These, too, remained low.

On a State-by-State Basis, Take-Up Rates Are Low (Table 2)

For all but one state, the take-up rate in a program’s initial year of operation was below 1 percent.

 

*Starting January 1, 2015 the Alabama Department of Revenue changed its reporting requirements from a calendar year basis to a fiscal year basis. Thus, year 3 data in the analysis for Alabama’s program is based on six months. Data for subsequent years are based on fiscal years ending June 30.

Note: After Year 5, the sample was reduced from prior years. For example, of programs that started in 2010 or later, Wisconsin had three programs that were operating during their fifth year. In year 6, there were two programs operating. In year 9, there was one program operating.

 

For all but one state, take-up rates for programs in their initial year in operation, including those in states with multiple programs, were below 1 percent, with the average being 0.30 percent. Maryland had the highest take-up rate at 1.25 percent, followed by Indiana at 0.85 percent. Because Maryland is a relatively small state, it may have been easier to disseminate information about the program to eligible families compared to other states.

Some programs are more popular than others, however (see Table 3). The overall take-up rate for all programs in the initial year was 0.26 percent. By the third year, the overall rate reached 1 percent, and by the fifth year, the overall take-up rate increased to just 1.74 percent.  Take-up rates for ESA programs are slightly higher than rates for voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs over all years of operation.

Education Savings Accounts Are Somewhat More Popular Than Other Programs (Table 3)

But after five years, the average take-up rate for all programs is less than 2 percent.

Note: The sample includes four education savings account programs, 13 voucher programs, and 10 tax-credit scholarship programs.

 

Tax-credit scholarship programs tend to have lower take-up rates, likely due to funding caps that are more prevalent with these kinds of programs. By the fifth year in operation, take-up rates for education savings account and voucher programs were just over 2 percent, while take up for tax-credit scholarship programs was 1.32 percent.

Take-up rates for non-special-needs programs are higher across the board compared to programs that exclusively serve students with special needs (see Tables 4 and 5). Participation in both types of programs is comparably low in their initial year (0.2 to 0.3 percent). By their fifth year, the overall take-up rate was 1.94 percent for non-special-needs programs, and 1.3 percent for special-needs programs.

Programs for Students with Special Needs Have Slightly Lower Take-Up Rates
(Tables 4 and 5)

All take-up rates are still lower than 3 percent.

Table 4: Non-special needs programs

Table 5: Special needs programs

Note: All ESA programs in the sample are open to special-needs students only.

 

Among special-needs programs, tax-credit scholarship programs have a lower take-up rate than voucher and education savings account programs. ESAs have higher take-up rates over each year in operation than other program types. By the fifth year, ESA programs have take-up rates that are more than double those for voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs.

Why Are Take-Up Rates So Low?

Although this descriptive analysis does not tell us why we observe low take-up rates for most programs, there are a few plausible explanations.

1. A large portion of families are unaware of school choice programs. Survey work indicates that, when parents were asked why their children did not participate in their state’s education choice programs, 36 to 53 percent of parents with children in public schools in Arizona, Indiana, North Carolina, and Ohio indicated that they were unaware of them. In Indiana, program awareness was lowest among parents with children in district schools and significantly lower among rural district parents than urban district parents.

 

2. Program design includes low funding levels and limits placed on participation. On average, choice programs receive just one third of the funding that private-school systems receive. Thus, eligible families who desire other options may not be able to access alternative settings at current choice-program funding levels. Moreover, some programs limit participation by capping program enrollment, and most tax-credit scholarship programs cap tax-credit disbursements, which can limit program participation.

 

3. Families are satisfied with existing options and do not desire change. Public opinion polling indicates that about half of parents would prefer options outside the public-school system if financial costs or transportation were not factors in their decisions. A large disconnect remains between what families want for their children’s education and what they actually receive. We doubt, however, that this fully explains the low take-up rates we observe.

Contrary to dire predictions and claims from opponents about choice causing an exodus from public-school systems, take-up in private-education choice programs overall does not have a negative effect on public-school systems or their funding. In fact, research suggests that greater take-up in choice programs leads to better student outcomes for the vast majority of students choosing to remain in public schools. Looking at these facts, it seems clear that the claims of exodus and harm caused by choice programs are greatly exaggerated.

Marty Lueken is director of the Fiscal Research and Education Center at EdChoice. Michael Castro is a research assistant at EdChoice.

A bill to create a school-voucher program in Oklahoma failed earlier this year to win passage in the state legislature. Oklahoma is a state where 68 percent of those surveyed favor school choice, and yet this small school-choice bill, which was sponsored by the state senate’s president pro tempore and supported by the governor, was defeated.

In 2020, I was the executive director of an Oklahoma charter school authorized by the local public-school district. The district retained 5 percent of our public funding each year as its authorizing fee. When the state passed a law capping charter authorizing fees at 3 percent of public funding, the authorizer raised our rent in an amount equal to the fee reduction.

Both events highlight the critical flaw in the current K–12 education-reform movement: it underestimates the system’s hostility to innovation. Even in a school-choice-friendly state like Oklahoma, even the narrowest of reforms only occasionally survive the challenge mounted by the traditional system. When they do survive, the system easily counteracts them. Our public-education system is a bureaucratic monopoly controlled by special-interest groups and, for all intents and purposes, immune to change.

The U.S. compulsory-education system works for no one. It is expensive, achievement lags internationally, teachers are leaving the profession, and parents feel powerless. Despite 60 years of increasing costs and disappointing results, almost nothing has been done to fix the system. Adults argue and point fingers while kids and society pay the price for inaction. Progress in education has stagnated.

Meanwhile, we have made progress in virtually every other human endeavor. We are living longer and living better. We are more prosperous thanks to innovation—borne of entrepreneurs taking risks and bringing new and better ideas to market.

The enemies of innovation, however, are the drivers of our public-education system: government bureaucracy, monopoly, and special interests. Government bureaucracies do not fear failure; they crave resources and therefore serve even higher levels of the bureaucracy to obtain them. Monopolies do not fear competition; they fear failure and so avoid taking the risks necessary for change. Special interests fear competition and crave influence; they subvert market incentives by amassing disproportionate power.

In the field of education reform, those supporting the traditional system call for more resources, while reformers advocate for various forms of choice. The reformers, however, rarely describe the prerequisite political changes that need to be made to make sustainable reform possible. The solution to the ills of our education system may in fact involve more resources eventually and certainly includes greater choice, but it must be preceded by political reforms that make the system amenable to sustainable innovation.

The political processes that control the education system exist outside the established norms of our electoral system. School-board elections are commonly held at times other than when general elections are held. For example, my home state elects school-board members in February. These off-cycle elections have low voter turnout and therefore give disproportionate influence to special interests, more specifically the teachers unions. These off-cycle elections frequently produce school boards with views on education that are different from those of the community the board represents.

School-board elections also commonly omit partisan labels from the ballot. The average voter doesn’t have time to research the positions of individual school-board candidates and so, even in on-cycle elections, will leave that choice blank. Again, this gives more influence to special interests. Partisan labels inform voters about likely candidate positions.

Finally, about 25 percent of states select the top educational executive in elections independent of the governor. Running for office forces candidates to curry special-interest favor. Being elected also makes the state head of instruction a natural competitor for the governor and therefore prone to unproductive conflict.

Until these political processes are changed, we cannot expect the education system to change, either.       Even minor reforms will either not survive the legislative process or be easily counteracted once implemented. Real progress can only happen after we break the hold innovation’s enemies have on the education system.

Don Parker was a charter-school board member for 15 years, served two terms as the board chair, and two years as the district’s executive director. He also served three consecutive Oklahoma department of education administrations in a variety of advisory roles.

With 18 states enacting seven new educational choice programs and expanding 21 existing ones, 2021 has rightly been declared a “breakthrough year” for school choice. In the wake of all this progress, the one question we at EdChoice are most frequently asked is: how many students are newly eligible to receive a voucher, tax-credit scholarship, or K–12 education savings account?

Estimating Student Eligibility in Educational Choice Programs

Estimating the number and percentage of students eligible for a given educational choice program may seem straightforward, but it’s not so simple. For example, when a state makes multiple categories of students eligible (e.g., low-income, foster care, or special needs), even if it were easy to calculate the number of students in each category, it’s impossible to precisely determine the number of students who are in multiple categories. Without accounting for the overlap, adding up the number of students eligible for each category would produce an overcount.

Moreover, just because a child is eligible for a scholarship does not mean she is guaranteed access to a scholarship. That’s why it’s important to look at the maximum participation, or the number of scholarships that are actually funded. For example, the state of East Freedonia might have a universal school voucher program for which every one of its 2 million K–12 students is eligible, but if the program is capped at 50,000 vouchers, then its level of maximum participation is only 2.5 percent.

Another complicating factor is that that the limitations on participation are not always set in terms of number of scholarships. This is particularly the case with tax-credit scholarship programs, which often have a total credit cap (which may or may not be reached) and give scholarship-granting organizations discretion in terms of scholarship size. Under a given total credit cap, a larger average scholarship size will translate into fewer scholarships granted overall.

Given all of the above complications, we must make reasonable assumptions to produce realistic estimates. When calculating income eligibility, we will assume that the distribution of students is even across the distribution of families. (In reality, lower-income families are more likely to have more children than higher-income families, so this assumption will produce a conservative estimate.) For new tax-credit scholarship programs, we will assume that the total credit cap is reached and that the average scholarship size is equal to the maximum amount allowed. For new programs, we will also assume that scholarship-granting organizations will use the maximum allowed administrative expenses, but we will not factor this in for expanded programs. Finally, we will assume that the most recent quantity of scholarships actually issued was the previous maximum level of participation in order to calculate the new level of maximum participation.

Estimating Eligibility Expanded in 2021

The estimates below are just that: estimates. The most recently available data is often a year or more behind and shifts in household income, scholarship values, donations to scholarship organizations, and numerous other factors make precision unattainable. Nevertheless, we believe these are realistic estimates based on reasonable assumptions and the most recent data available. All estimates in the tables below are rounded to the nearest hundred (for eligibility) or ten (for maximum participation).

During the 2020–21 school year, as reported in EdChoice’s 2021 ABCs of School Choice, approximately 608,000 students used a voucher, tax-credit scholarship, or education savings account to access the K–12 learning environment of their family’s choice. As a result of the legislation enacted so far in 2021, at least 3.6 million additional students are eligible to participate in the new educational choice programs in seven states and about 878,300 additional students are eligible to participate in the expanded choice programs in 14 states. The maximum participation of the new and expanded programs grew by a combined 1.6 million. In other words, if there is a full take up of the expanded maximum participation, the number of students participating in a private K–12 educational choice program could nearly quadruple. Nevertheless, even after such an expansion, the total would equal less than four percent of America’s nearly 60 million K–12 students, indicating just how much more work is left to do.

 

New Educational Choice Programs in 2021 (7 States, 7 Programs)

Sources: Total K–12 enrollment combined the most recent public school and private school enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics and homeschool enrollment data from A2Z Homeschooling. Educational choice program participation figures were from EdChoice’s ABC’s of School Choice: 2021 Edition.

Arkansas (SB 680)

Students are eligible for Arkansas’s new tax-credit scholarship if they are from families with a household income up to 200 percent of the federal poverty line and are switching out of public school or entering kindergarten or first grade. About 38 percent of families statewide are income eligible.

If donors’ contributions reach the $2 million cap and scholarship-granting organizations use the maximum 10 percent administrative allowance, then $1.8 million will be available in scholarship funding. By law, the average scholarship amounts per scholarship-granting organizations cannot exceed 80 percent of Arkansas’s foundation funding amount (about $5,614 in 2020–21) for students in grades K–8, and 90 percent of this amount (about $6,316 in 2020–21) for high school students. Assuming maximum scholarship sizes and equal distribution across grades, the average scholarship size would be $5,830, so there would be sufficient funding for about 310 scholarships, or less than 0.1 percent of Arkansas’s 546,000 K–12 students.

Indiana (HEA 1001)

Students are eligible for Indiana’s new education savings account if they have an Individualized Education Plan for special needs and are from a family with a household income up to 300 percent of the eligibility level for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program, or 555 percent of the federal poverty line. About 13 percent of students statewide are eligible. The legislature appropriated $10 million for the 2022–23 academic year, of which up to 3 percent may be spent by the treasurer’s office on administrative costs.

The education savings accounts are worth 90 percent of what the state would have spent on a particular child at a public school, including additional funding for special needs status. It is not yet clear what the average education savings account size will be, so it is difficult to determine the maximum level of participation. If the average scholarship size is about $7,500, then about 1,300 students will be able to receive education savings accounts, which is about 0.1 percent of the state’s 1.2 million K–12 students.

Kentucky (HB 563)

Students are eligible for Kentucky’s new tax-credit education savings account if they are from families living in the state’s eight largest counties with a household income up to 175 percent of the eligibility level for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program, or 323.75 percent of the federal poverty line. About 49 percent of families in applicable counties statewide are income eligible.

Donors to account-granting organizations in Kentucky receive 95 percent tax credits for single-year contributions and 97 percent credits for multi-year contributions. If donors’ contributions reach the $25 million cap, all contributions are multi-year, and scholarship-granting organizations use the maximum 10 percent administrative allowance, then about $23.2 million will be available in education opportunity account funding. The law’s requirements for funding the education opportunity accounts are complicated, reducing funding as family income grows, but if we assume that all students take the maximum education opportunity account amount of about $4,700, then there would be sufficient funding for about 4,940 education opportunity accounts, or about 0.6 percent of Kentucky’s 781,000 K–12 student population.

Missouri (HB 349)

Students are eligible for Missouri’s new tax-credit education savings account if they are from families with a household income up to 370 percent of the federal poverty line and are switching out of public school or entering kindergarten or first grade. About 51 percent of families statewide are income eligible.

Donors receive dollar-for-dollar tax credits for contributions to educational assistance organizations up to 50 percent of their total tax liability. If donors’ contributions reach the $25 million cap in the first year and educational assistance organizations use the maximum 10 percent administrative allowance, then about $23.2 million will be available in education savings account funding. If we assume that all students take the maximum education savings account amount of about $6,375, then there would be sufficient funding for about 3,640 education savings accounts, or less than 0.4 percent of Missouri’s 1.1 million K–12 students.

New Hampshire (HB 2)

Students are eligible for New Hampshire’s new education savings account if they are from families with a household income up to 300 percent of the federal poverty line ($79,500 for a family of four in 2020–21). About 31 percent of families statewide are income eligible. New Hampshire’s education savings account is formula funded, meaning that funding is allocated for each eligible student who applies, so the maximum participation will be about 65,000 students.

Ohio (HB 110)

All K–12 students in the state are eligible for Ohio’s new tax-credit scholarship, with priority given to children from low-income families. However, the maximum participation is limited by the availability of scholarship funds. Taxpayers can receive up to $750 in dollar-for-dollar tax credits in return for contributions to scholarship-granting organizations. However, it is impossible at this time to determine how much money will be raised, what the average scholarship size will be, or how many students will be able to receive scholarships.

As a point of comparison, Arizona’s original individual-donor tax-credit scholarship is probably the most similar program to Ohio’s new scholarship program. Originally, the program allowed individual taxpayers to receive tax credits up to $500 in return for contributions to scholarship-granting organizations. By the second year of the program, more than 3,200 students were participating. Even adjusting for inflation, Ohio’s program allows for a somewhat higher maximum tax credit than Arizona’s program originally did, and the population of Ohio is about twice what Arizona’s was in 1999, so it is reasonable to estimate that about 5,000 to 7,500 Ohio students will receive scholarships next year, or about 0.3 percent to 0.4 percent of Ohio’s 1.9 million K–12 students.

West Virginia (HB 2013)

All K–12 students in the state are eligible for West Virginia’s new education savings account if they are switching out of public school or entering kindergarten. About 93 percent of West Virginia’s 295,000 K–12 students would be eligible. Moreover, the education savings account is formula funded, meaning that funding is allocated for each eligible student who applies.

 

Expanded Educational Choice Programs in 2021 (14 States, 21 Programs)

Sources: Total K–12 enrollment combined the most recent public school and private school enrollment data from the National Center for Education Statistics and homeschool enrollment data from A2Z Homeschooling. Cleveland’s enrollment figures came from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, the Ohio Department of Education, Public School Review, and Private School Review. Educational choice program participation figures were from EdChoice’s ABC’s of School Choice: 2021 Edition.

Arizona (SB 1828)

Arizona lawmakers expanded the tax credits available via Lexie’s Law for Disabled and Displaced Students by $1 million. The average scholarship is worth $5,304, so about 190 additional students could receive scholarships for a total of about 1,130 scholarship students. That’s the equivalent of about 0.1 percent of the 1.2 million K–12 students statewide.

Arkansas (HB 1446)

Arkansas lawmakers expanded the Succeed Scholarship Program to include the children of active-duty or reserve members of the U.S. military. It is unknown how many new students will qualify for the scholarship program at this time. This year, state officials appropriated $4.5 million, up $1.2 million over last year, so the maximum participation is about 710 students, or 0.1 percent of Arkansas’s 548,000 K–12 students.

Florida (HB 7045)

Florida lawmakers expanded the state’s voucher, tax-credit scholarship, and education savings account policies, and merges several scholarship programs into one, the Family Empowerment Scholarship. The bill raised the income thresholds on the state’s school voucher for low- and middle-income students to 375 percent of the federal poverty line, with priority given to lower-income families. The voucher option is now called the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options.

Previously, about 46 percent of the state’s K–12 students had been eligible for a tax-credit scholarship and 52 percent had been eligible for a voucher. Now 62 percent of Florida’s students are eligible for a tax-credit scholarship or voucher, or about 2.2 million out of 3.5 million K–12 students statewide. Although the amount of tax credits available was unchanged by the bill, but that program automatically increases the total amount of tax credits by 25 percent whenever credits claimed reach 90 percent of the cap. Last year, roughly 104,000 students participated and, if all the tax credits are claimed, about 130,000 students could receive tax-credit scholarships in the coming year, which is about 4 percent of the state’s total K–12 enrollment. (In the table above, only the students newly eligible for the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options vouchers are counted toward the nationwide total of newly eligible students to avoid double counting.)

The Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options voucher program had been capped at 46,889 students for the 2020–21 school year. It is allowed to grow by 1 percent of the state’s total public school enrollment each year, which is currently 28,674 students per year, so the maximum number of vouchers will be 75,573 students in 2021-22. The cap excludes students whose prior school year was in a public school and are below the 185 percent of the federal poverty line, students in foster care or out-of-home care, or were adopted, and up to 15,000 students transferred from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship due to lack of funds. The new law change also eliminates the prior-year public school requirement for students on the Family Empowerment Scholarship. Additionally, students who are in foster care or out-of-home care, are dependents of active-duty members of the U.S. Armed Forces, or are siblings of students receiving a Family Empowerment Scholarship are not required to meet the income eligibility requirements.

Florida lawmakers also provided for the eventual merger of the state’s two educational choice policies for students with special needs—the McKay voucher and the Gardiner Education Savings Account—into a new education savings account program under the state’s Family Empowerment Scholarship, to be called the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities. It is expected that the two programs will serve about 49,000 students in 2021-22.

In total, more than 250,000 students, or about 6 percent of Florida’s K–12 students, will be able to receive either a voucher, education savings account or tax-credit scholarship next year.

Georgia (SB 47)

Georgia lawmakers expanded eligibility for the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program to include students with several conditions not previously covered, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, cerebral palsy, and cancer. Previously, about 10.5 percent of students were eligible for the scholarships. It is not yet clear how many additional students will be eligible under the new eligibility guidelines. The program provides funding for every eligible student who applies for a scholarship, so the maximum participation is at least 200,000 students, or 10 percent of Georgia’s two million K–12 students.

Indiana (HEA 1001)

Indiana lawmakers expanded the state’s voucher and tax-credit scholarship policies by raising the maximum household income to 300 percent of the eligibility level for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program, or 555 percent of the federal poverty line. Previously, about 42 percent of the state’s K–12 students had been eligible for a voucher and 60 percent had been eligible for a tax-credit scholarship. Now 79 percent of Indiana students are eligible for a voucher or tax-credit scholarship, or about 966,000 out of 1.2 million K–12 students statewide. (In the table above, only the students newly eligible for Choice Scholarship vouchers are counted toward the nationwide total of newly eligible students to avoid double counting.)

Indiana lawmakers also increased the maximum participation of both programs. The tax-credit scholarship program’s total tax credit cap was increased by $1 million to $17.5 million. The credits are worth 50 percent of the donors’ contributions, and the average scholarship size is $2,279, so about 875 additional students will be able to receive a scholarship. That brings the total number of available scholarships to about 10,990, which is about 0.9 percent of all K–12 students statewide. However, the voucher program provides funding for every eligible student who applies, so the maximum participation is 966,000 K–12 students. Nevertheless, actual voucher enrollment is likely to be far less than that.

Iowa (HF 847)

Iowa lawmakers increased the tax credits available via the state’s tax-credit scholarship policy to $20 million from $15 million and raised the credit value to 75 percent from 65 percent. That mean that at maximum fundraising capacity, the total amount of tax-creditable contributions increased from $23.1 million to $26.7 million. The average scholarship value is about $1,400, so the scholarship organizations could provide an additional 2,560 scholarships, assuming they raise the additional $5 million and hold the average scholarship value constant. Students are eligible if they are from families earning up to 400 percent of federal poverty guidelines. About 61 percent of Iowa families are eligible, or about 353,000 out of 579,000 K–12 students statewide. There is funding available for about 19,000 scholarships, or about 3.3 percent of the total K–12 students statewide.

Kansas (HB 2134)

Kansas lawmakers expanded eligibility for the state’s tax-credit scholarship policy to include students in grades K–8 from families earning up to the eligibility level for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program, or 185 percent of the federal poverty line ($49,025 for a family of four in 2020–21). Previously, students had to be assigned to one of the 100 lowest-performing schools in the state. Now, about 23 percent of Kansas families are income eligible for the scholarships. There was no change to the $10 million cap on the total number of tax credits therefore there is no change in the program’s maximum level of participation. The scholarship organizations did not raise enough funds to hit the tax credit cap, but if they were to do so next year, after factoring in administrative expenses, there would be $12.86 million in scholarship funds. If the average scholarship size remained constant at $3,157, then there could be about 4,070 scholarship students, or 0.7 percent of the 575,000 K–12 students statewide.

Maryland (HB 588)

This year, Maryland lawmakers fully funded the state’s Broadening Options and Opportunities for Students Today (BOOST) vouchers at $10 million for the first time in the program’s history. During the 2020–21 academic year, the amount budgeted for the vouchers was only $7.37 million and there were 3,071 participating students. Since the average voucher size is $2,008, the additional $2.63 million in funding could provide vouchers for about 1,310 additional students for a total of 4,381 voucher students. That’s the equivalent of 0.4 percent of the 1.1 million K–12 students statewide.

Montana (HB 279)

Although Montana lawmakers did not modify the eligibility for the state’s tax-credit scholarship, nor raise the total tax credits available, they did make it significantly easier for scholarship organizations to raise money by increasing the per-donor tax credit cap to $200,000 from $150. Under the previous regulations, 15 students were receiving scholarships. In 2022, there will be $1 million in tax credits available, which will increase to $2 million the following year and then increase by 20 percent each year after that. Although the average scholarship was $500, it is expected that scholarship sizes will increase as scholarship organizations are able to raise more money. The maximum scholarship value is about $5,500, so after accounting for administrative costs, there could be funding for about 150 additional students in 2021–22 for a total of 165 scholarship students, or 0.1 percent of Montana’s 169,000 K–12 students.

Nevada (AB 495)

Nevada lawmakers expanded the state’s Educational Choice Scholarship program by increasing the amount of tax credits available by nearly $5 million. The bill also made important technical fixes that will allow scholarship-granting organizations to serve new children. The additional funds could provide scholarships for about 750 additional students for about 1,800 in total, which is roughly 0.3 percent of the 552,000 K–12 students statewide.

Ohio (HB 110)

Ohio lawmakers expanded eligibility for the statewide Educational Choice Scholarship program to include students in foster care and kinship care as well as the siblings of students who had received a scholarship in the previous academic year. The bill also phases out the “prior year public” requirement starting with students in grades K–2. It is not clear how many new students will be eligible as a result of these changes.

Previously, the total number of scholarships available via the Educational Choice Scholarship and the Income-Based Scholarship programs were capped at 60,000. (The table above evenly divides the cap between the two programs, but in reality, it was possible for more than 30,000 students to enroll in one or the other so long as the combination did not exceed 60,000.) The recent legislation removed that cap, so the maximum capacity for each program is the total number of eligible students. However, although it is possible to estimate the eligibility level for each of Ohio’s five voucher programs individually, it is not possible to determine how many students are eligible for multiple vouchers (hence students eligible for the EdChoice Scholarships are excluded from the nationwide total eligibility and maximum participation figures reported above). All of the 80,760 K–12 students in Cleveland are eligible to receive a voucher. Additionally, about 40 percent of the state’s 1.9 million K–12 students living outside of Cleveland are from families that are income eligible for a scholarship, which is about 750,000 K–12 students.

Oklahoma (SB 1080)

Oklahoma lawmakers expanded the state’s tax-credit scholarship policy by raising the total amount of tax credits to $25 million from $3.5 million. The tax credit value is 50 percent of each contribution or 75 percent for multi-year pledges. If all contributions were multi-year, then the maximum tax-creditable contributions will be $33.3 million, up from $4.7 million. Assuming the same average scholarship size, the program could provide funding for about 14,200 additional students for a maximum participation of about 16,500 scholarship students. That’s the equivalent of 2.2 percent of the 750,000 K–12 students statewide.

Pennsylvania (SB 381)

Pennsylvania lawmakers expanded the tax credits available via the Educational Improvement Tax Credit to provide scholarships for students from low- and middle-income families by $40 million, to $175 million from $135 million. The tax credit value is 75 percent of each contribution or 90 percent for multi-year pledges. If all contributions were multi-year, as is typically the case, then the maximum tax-creditable contributions will be $194.4 million, up from $150 million. Assuming the same average scholarship size, the additional funds could provide scholarships for about 22,000 additional students for a maximum participation of about 96,400 scholarship students. That’s the equivalent of 4.7 percent of the two million K–12 students statewide. However, based on past modifications to the program, it is estimated that an additional 13,000 students will receive scholarships in addition to the 45,882 scholarships most recently awarded.

South Dakota (SB 175)

South Dakota lawmakers expanded the state’s tax-credit scholarship policy by removing the requirement that students first spend a year in a public school before being eligible for a scholarship. About 41 percent of families in the state are income-eligible to receive a scholarship, but it is not known how many current private school students are newly eligible. Currently, 863 students are receiving scholarships, which is about 0.5 percent of the state’s total 176,650 K–12 students. There was no funding increase in the program, so that number is not expected to change significantly.

Jason Bedrick is director of policy at EdChoice, where Ed Tarnowski is a state policy associate. Additional tables and descriptions of the state programs are available at EdChoice.org.

Betsy DeVos must be quietly enjoying her retirement from public office. After resigning in protest against presidential actions during the closing days of the Trump Administration, she is beginning to see the fruits of her steady advocacy of school choice throughout her term in office.  When she took office in 2017, public support for choice had been in the doldrums.Throughout the latter years of the Obama administration choice support drifted downward, as can be seen in the graph from EdChoice polling shown below. Indeed, support for the education savings account idea was dropping so rapidly in the survey, its designers altered the question in 2017 to make it more savings-account friendly, thereby giving it an artificial 19 percentage boost in its support level.

DeVos’s nomination as secretary of education hardly helped the choice cause. The battle in the Senate over her confirmation gave choice opponents an opportunity to mobilize public opinion against any policy that seemed to take money away from the public schools. Charter advocates began fighting among themselves, and the choice movement in general seemed in disarray at the very time it had access to the highest levels of the federal government. The capture of both the presidency and Congress by the Democratic party seemed to drive the final nail into the coffin. I discuss the state of the landscape in a report, “Toward Equitable School Choice,” issued as part of the Hoover Education Success Initiative.

But within three months of the new administration’s arrival in office, school choice has rebounded. As I write in an oped in The Wall Street Journal, teacher unions are on the defensive and state legislatures are enacting choice initiatives and expansions in Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, Montana, West Virginia, and elsewhere.

EdChoice, Excellence in Education, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the American Federation for Children (Betsy DeVos’s home organization), and other advocacy groups are right to claim success, but the driving force seems to be public dismay with the district school response to Covid-19. The same graph from EdChoice that showed support drifting downward during the latter part of the Obama administration documents a recent shift in the oppositie direction. Look closely at changes in the trend line between summer and fall of 2020 at the far right of the graph below. All lines show gains for choice in the public eye: For both vouchers and charters, the level of support jumped by 8 percentage points. Tax-credit scholarships climbed 5 percentage points. Education savings accounts rose 3 points above an already high level. Betsy DeVos must feel like Johnny Appleseed. When seeds are scattered, predators eat most of them and saplings take time to root, but some trees blossom and yield good fruit.

Paul E. Peterson is the Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government and Director of the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University, a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Senior Editor of Education Next.

This week the sporting world turns its attention to Indiana as it hosts the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, commonly called “March Madness.” Indiana is a fitting venue for the tournament, since it is known for its great basketball tradition and the classic basketball movie Hoosiers. Indiana also is known for giving parents choices regarding their children’s education, including private options. New research suggests that the Hoosier State has scored big-time with school choice.

A new study of the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program finds that it disproportionately serves disadvantaged students and serves them well. Co-authored by Megan J. Austin and Max Pardo, the report is titled, “Do College and Career Readiness and Early College Success in Indiana Vary Depending on Whether Students Attend Public, Charter, or Private Voucher High Schools?” You can blame the government for the inelegance of the title. The report was released on March 15 by the Midwest Regional Education Lab, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

Indiana’s decade-old private-school choice initiative is one of the most expansive of the 26 voucher and voucher-type programs across the country. Participating private schools enrolled 36,707 low- and middle-income choice students in 2019–20. Since nearly half of Indiana’s K–12 students meet the relatively generous income-eligibility standards for the program, we might expect that the initiative disproportionately would serve racial- and income-advantaged populations of students. We would be wrong.

The authors take the first four cohorts of 9th graders to enter the voucher program from 2010–11 to 2013–14 and track them, along with their peers in other types of Indiana schools, through high-school graduation and the possibility of college enrollment. They report that the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program disproportionately serves traditionally disadvantaged populations of students. Thirty percent of the voucher recipients are African American, compared to just 11 percent of the students in traditional public schools. The proportion of students of Hispanic ethnicity is twice as high in the choice program (16 percent) as in the traditional public schools (8 percent). A total of 53 percent of the students served by the voucher program are poor enough to qualify for the federal lunch program, compared to just 35 percent of the students in traditional public schools.

The authors calculate the likelihood of the voucher students, non-voucher students in voucher-participating private schools, public-charter-school students, and traditional public-school students reaching various benchmarks of college and career readiness, including actually enrolling in college. For all these calculations, they control for a rich set of key characteristics of students and their schools, including student income, race, gender, and 8th-grade test scores, as well as high-school size and location. They produce background-adjusted likelihoods of college and career readiness by type of high school and Choice Scholarship participation. Here I focus on the comparisons between the outcomes for the voucher students and the traditional public-school students.

Since the research is informed by a massive database of over 340,000 students, almost any difference between the voucher students and traditional public-school students is statistically significant. To better interpret their findings, the researchers set a standard of 5 percentage points as a “meaningful” difference in the background-adjusted likelihoods of the voucher and traditional public-school students.

The background-adjusted rates of college and career readiness for the voucher students are equal to or better than the background-adjusted rates for traditional public-school students regarding almost all output and outcome measures. First, let’s look at outputs. Participants in the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program demonstrate meaningfully higher rates of never failing a high-school course and never being suspended in high school. The voucher students have a meaningfully lower rate of taking at least one Advanced Placement examination, most likely because many private schools offer academically rigorous courses outside of the AP program.

Outcomes matter more than outputs, and on outcome measures, the voucher students shine brightly. Adjusted for their background, high-school students who participate in the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program enroll in college within a year of graduating from high school at a rate of 61 percent, 9 percentage points higher than the rate of 52 percent for similar students in traditional public schools. Of college enrollees, 78 percent of voucher students matriculate at a four-year college or university, a rate that is meaningfully higher than the 71 percent rate for college goers from traditional public schools.

This study relied on observational data for its analysis. Still, its findings regarding the generally positive effects of private-school choice on student-attainment outcomes are consistent with more rigorous evaluations of such programs in the District of Columbia, Florida, Milwaukee, and New York City. The focus on non-test-score measures of student outcomes dovetails with other efforts to broaden our definition of student success, such as Brian Gill’s work at Mathematica on the comparative “Promotion Power” of different high schools in Louisiana and research I have published with Corey DeAngelis on school choice and character outcomes. We expect schools to nurture the totality of each child—mind, body, and character—and thereby place them on a path to academic and career success. This latest U.S. Department of Education study indicates that school-choice Hoosiers are primed to win and advance.

Patrick Wolf is Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas.