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 movie Cabrini tells the inspiring tale of Mother Frances Cabrini’s heroic work to provide dignity to Italian immigrants in New York City in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Most Italian Americans lived in desperate poverty at that time and were confined to slums where disorder reigned supreme in the forms of malnutrition, child labor, prostitution, and disease. A constant theme in the movie is that Mother Cabrini and her Italian-American compatriots should “stay where they belong.” Where they don’t belong, the powerbrokers of New York declared, is in the nice parts of the city.

Spoiler Alert: Mother Cabrini succeeds against astronomical odds to establish a wonderful orphanage to provide love, care, education, and a future for the erstwhile street urchins of lower Manhattan. She also manages to launch a new, world-class hospital to serve the city’s elites as well as the poor Italians so frequently turned away from the city’s other hospitals because “they don’t belong there.” Mother Cabrini and her order of nuns succeed in replicating their amazing feats in other U.S. cities and in dozens of countries around the world. On July 7, 1946, Frances Cabrini was canonized by Pope Pius XII as the first American Catholic saint.

As I watched this moving cinematic masterpiece in the theater, I couldn’t help but see parallels between Mother Cabrini’s crusade to expand the scope of where poor Italian immigrants “belong” and the missional zeal of those who support parental school choice. The residential assignment of students to public schools determines the schools that certain children must and must not attend. Parents who try to enroll their child in a public school outside of their zoned area not only are told “You don’t belong here,” some are sent to prison merely for attempting to create a brighter future for their children. Mother Cabrini would sympathize with their plight. She also would offer advice to those who seek to expand school choice.

First, Mother Cabrini would entreat us to make private school choice universal. Her first idea was to build a small hospital in the Italian slum of Five Points to provide at least rudimentary, free health care to the poor. Mother Cabrini quickly realized that hospitals for the poor inevitably become poor hospitals. Her refined mission, ultimately realized, was to build and staff a new hospital in New York City of such high quality that rich people would seek its care even as it served poor people. Access to the new hospital would be universal, like the new wave of private school choice programs sweeping the country. That way, families from all strata of society would have a stake in maintaining the high quality of medical care being provided to the entire community.

Second, Mother Cabrini would warn us not to ignore the politics of school choice. In the movie, a malevolent mayor works in secret to thwart Mother Cabrini’s efforts to establish the new hospital. In the climax to the story, Mother Cabrini insists on seeing the mayor in private and confronts him about his misdeeds. This holy woman does not rely primarily on admonishment to persuade the mayor to repent and change his errant ways. She is too worldly wise to expect mere shaming to work on him. Instead, she threatens the mayor with bad press during his upcoming reelection campaign and reminds him that “The Italians are now Americans, able to vote.” Recognizing that his path to maintaining power now lies with supporting Mother Cabrini’s efforts, not undermining them, the mayor and Mother Cabrini toast their new unstoppable political union.

Recently, 11 anti-school-choice Republican legislators in Texas were turned out of office via pressured retirements or primary defeats. Those now former policymakers likely wish they had seen Cabrini before they voted against the universal Education Savings Account bill in Texas or, better yet, wish that they had possessed the wisdom and grace of Saint Frances Cabrini in the first place.

Patrick J. Wolf is a Distinguished Professor of Education Policy at the University of Arkansas.  

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

In November 2023 we, at Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance, released a new state-by-state ranking of the performance of charter school students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the Nation’s Report Card. The ranking is based on charter students’ scores on 24 NAEP tests of math and reading administered between 2009 and 2019. Ours is the first ranking of charter student performance on the same set of tests administered to samples of all students throughout the United States.

For the most part, the ranking has been well received. The head of the KIPP Foundation, the nation’s largest charter school network, says in one news report that the results “confirm our experience.” The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools comments that “the new data are ‘sobering in many respects,’ showing that charter schools in many places have ‘room to grow.’” And, of course, the ranking has been received enthusiastically by policymakers in states like Alaska, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma—all of which came in at the top end of the standings. Even middle- to bottom-ranking states have not chosen to criticize the ranking procedures—though one charter-school advocate who did not like the below-average placement of his home state, objected on the rather bizarre grounds that “[o]nly a randomly selected sample of … students take the NAEP test,” a denial of the reliability of an approach regularly employed by the U.S. Census Bureau.

But in a recent blog post, Matthew Ladner, executive editor of NextSteps, a publication of the school-choice advocacy group Step Up For Students, has expressed his own doubts about our findings. He says we failed to adjust for the share of charter students who are in special education programs or are English Language Learners, we relied on information that fluctuates from one test to the next, and that charter students should have been ranked on state proficiency tests instead of the NAEP.

These criticisms either are wrong, mislead, or fail to take into account what was said in the technical version of the paper published in the Journal of School Choice.

We take particular exception to the erroneous claims that we “were unable to control for the rates of special education and English Language Learner status” on the NAEP. Those charges, if true, would be serious. But as reported in the abridged version that appeared in Education Next, scores are adjusted “to take into account the age of the test-taker, parents’ education levels, gender, ethnicity, English proficiency, disability status, eligibility for free and reduced school lunch, student-reported access to books and computers at home, and location [emphasis added].” In the unabridged version, we inform readers that eligibility for special education and English Language Learner status is ascertained by NAEP from school administrative records.

Ladner misleads when he notes that math scores of Texas 8th grade charter students tested by NAEP fluctuated substantially between 2017 and 2019. Although that is certainly correct, it is the very reason we use information from multiple tests over an extended period. As we say in the technical paper, “By combining results from 24 tests over an 11-year period, the chances of obtaining reliable results are greatly enhanced.”

Ladner argues it would be preferable to use data from the Stanford Education Data Archives, or SEDA, a source that provides student performance on every state’s proficiency tests. We in fact report a ranking obtained from the SEDA data, which is calculated in a manner comparable to the one used to construct the PEPG ranking, in Table A.11 in the appendix to the paper available in the Journal of School Choice. That ranking correlates with the PEPG ranking at the 0.7 level, which suggests the two data sources yield broadly similar results. As we discuss in our article, however, the NAEP tests are preferable because they allow for a ranking of students’ scores on the same set of tests. Ranking states based on SEDA data requires the strong assumption that state tests may all be placed on the same scale. Also, state proficiency tests are high-stakes tests used to evaluate both charter schools and their teachers, providing incentives to manipulate test results. NAEP is a low-stakes test that is not used for student, teacher, or school evaluations. Lastly, SEDA excludes over 32 percent of all charter schools from its sample. By contrast, PEPG’s NAEP sample includes over 99 percent of all charter student observations in NAEP.

But Ladner would have us use the problematic SEDA test data because SEDA reports changes in student performance in each school district and charter school from one year to the next. That requires yet another assumption: that there is no change in the composition of a school cohort from one year to the next, a particularly strong assumption for a school of choice.

As we concluded in both versions of the paper, “the PEPG rankings are not the last word on charter-school quality.” We are hopeful that assessments of charter school quality will continue to improve in the coming years. But we can only make progress if criticism is accurate and straightforward.

Paul E. Peterson is a professor of government at Harvard University, director of its Program on Education Policy and Governance, and senior editor at Education Next. M. Danish Shakeel is professor and the director of the E. G. West Centre for Education Policy at the University of Buckingham, U.K.

Education savings accounts. Universal voucher programs. Charter schools. These are words guaranteed to inspire heated debates among policymakers, parents, and educators. Teachers’ union leaders denounce school choice as part of a malicious “war on public education.” School choice advocates rail against “failing government schools.”

These debates manifest themselves as morality plays in which one is either for empowering parents or supporting public education. The resulting debate manages to ignore that all kinds of choices are hard-wired into American public education. It skips past the fact that the affluent already choose schools when purchasing homes, so the debate is really about the options available to everyone else.

As I note in The Great School Rethink, the vitriol is disconnected from what most families care about. In the course of the pandemic, for instance, when schools closed and millions of families were told they needed to keep their kids home, there was little interest in abstract debates about school choice or home schooling. Indeed, conventional demarcations—between home and school, public and private, and teachers and parents—were blurred.

Families were simply focused on finding options that met their needs. The fact that families want more options doesn’t mean they dislike their local schools.

Today, for instance, more than three-quarters of parents say that they were satisfied with their child’s experience in a public district school even as more than 7 in 10 endorse education savings accounts, school vouchers, and charter schools. In short, parents overwhelmingly like both their child’s public school and school choice policies. They don’t see a tension here.

How can we reconcile parental support for more choices with affection for their local public schools? It’s not hard, really. Parents want options. They may want alternatives when it comes to scheduling, school safety, or instructional approach. They want to be able to protect their kids from bullies or from school practices they find troubling. At the same time, they can value schools as community anchors, want to minimize how much time their kids spend in transit, and like their kids’ teachers.

This suggests a path forward in finding constructive common ground in some of our school choice fights. After all, from start to finish, public schooling is a stew of choices made by parents, students, educators, system officials, and policymakers. Parents choose whether to send their children to pre-K, when to start kindergarten, or whether to opt their child out of sex education. Students choose groups and activities, which electives to take, and which books to read for book reports. Teachers choose where to apply for a job, which materials they use, and instructional practice. District staff choose policies governing discipline, curricula, field trips, and attendance zones.

Outside of school, we take for granted that families will choose child-care providers, pediatricians, dentists, babysitters, and summer programs. Indeed, many such choices involve parents or guardians making decisions that are subsidized by government funds. And the choices they make will have big implications for a child’s health, well-being, upbringing, and education.

For much of the 20th century, it was a struggle just figuring out how to get students, books, and teachers together under one roof. At a time when transportation and communication were limited, educational choice was naturally constrained.

Today, those constraints are dusty memories. New tools have made it possible to communicate, share materials, deliver instruction, manage data, assess learning, and coordinate in ways that were once unimaginable. Textbooks are no longer a bottleneck. Virtual tutoring no longer seems like science fiction. And after millions of students were remote for over a year, taking select classes from far-off online instructors no longer seems especially novel. This has eroded notions of where the schoolhouse ends and choice begins

Our time holds great promise for parents and educators frustrated with the inertia of stifling, impersonal systems. More options mean more ways for public schools to deliver and customize services. The same options that appeal to families can empower teachers and school leaders who feel stuck in unresponsive schools or bureaucracies.

That’s the real promise of educational choice: It allows parents, educators, and students to blur the old lines and rethink the work of teaching and learning. It’d be a shame if that becomes lost amid the shouting heads and social media outrage.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

Students are returning to school this year on the heels of another summer of sobering headlines about the nation’s lackluster academic recovery. With multiple indicators showing stalled learning recovery and education policy experts sounding alarm bells at Congressional hearings, we must finally treat lagging educational outcomes as a pressing national emergency.

National trends mirror statewide trends in Indiana, where high school juniors take the SAT as their required high school state assessment. This assessment provides us with the most comprehensive snapshot of college readiness in a state that continues to see college entry rates decline.

Unfortunately, statewide SAT college-readiness rates decreased from spring 2022 to spring 2023 for Hoosier students. Most of the 11 school districts in Marion County, where Indianapolis is located, also saw declines. This was true for the county’s largest school district, Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS), where only seven Black students in high schools managed directly by the district demonstrated college-readiness on the SAT. Seven.

But there is good news: Students in Indianapolis charter schools drove outsized college-readiness gains that bucked both local and statewide trends.

There are two types of charter schools in Indianapolis. Independent charter schools operate completely separate from school districts, and innovation charter schools operate in partnership with IPS. Both types of charter schools have operational autonomy and are governed by nonprofit boards. Most of them are authorized by the mayor of Indianapolis.

The gains for Indianapolis students who attend innovation charter high schools were particularly impressive. As a group, innovation charter schools increased their college-readiness rates by 10.6 percentage points from the previous year, from 20.8 percent to 31.4 percent. These schools now surpass state averages for virtually every student group, including Black, Latino, and special education students. Students attending innovation charter high schools are over seven times more likely to demonstrate college-readiness than their peers in direct-managed IPS schools.

For Black students, the top 10 public high schools within IPS boundaries are charter schools. Black students in innovation charter high schools demonstrate college-readiness at nine times the rate of their peers in direct-managed IPS schools.

For Latino students, the top seven public high schools within IPS boundaries are charter schools. Latino students in innovation charter high schools demonstrate college-readiness at over four times the rate of their peers in direct-managed IPS schools.

What conditions are driving these significant results? The common factor is autonomy. Indianapolis charter school leaders can make building-level decisions that are tailored to their unique school communities. School founders, with support from The Mind Trust, an Indianapolis-based education nonprofit, have taken advantage of this autonomy successfully to create school models that not only spark students’ passions but provide instruction and support that meet their students’ needs.

The result is a diverse tapestry of quality high school options that rivals any city in the country. For example, high schoolers interested in early college can enroll at BELIEVE Circle City, which offers dual enrollment coursework as early as a student’s freshman year.

Purdue Polytechnic High School has two Indianapolis campuses that offer STEM-focused, project-based learning with opportunities for students to explore their passions independently and gain acceptance into one of Indiana’s flagship universities.

Herron and Herron-Riverside High Schools offer a rigorous classical, liberal arts curriculum that produces some of the highest college-readiness rates in the entire state.

Adults who previously dropped out of high school can enroll in one of several campuses of The Excel Center, a nationally acclaimed network of adult charter high schools that operate in partnership with Goodwill.

The demand for these innovative school models continues to grow. Last school year, charter high schools served 60% of public-school students within IPS boundaries.

If you had told an Indianapolis civic leader 20 years ago that many of Indiana’s best and most innovative high schools would be located in the city’s urban core, you likely would have been laughed out of the room. But that is now the reality within one of our state’s most impoverished communities.

Indianapolis has learned that the traditional factory model approach to high school education is unable to meet the needs of our 21st Century students. Our charter school sector has accelerated the move away from comprehensive high schools that pass students along in the name of efficiency toward a more nimble and relevant high school experience that unlocks the potential of everyone.

As our country takes the time to look back at these first few years of post-pandemic learning, it will be very clear which communities decided to grow innovative solutions that drive student achievement and those that decided to maintain the status quo.

Reversing learning loss will require a focus on growing proven methods that create better outcomes for students. Indianapolis serves as one model for how that can happen, at scale, for students who need it the most.

Brandon Brown is CEO of The Mind Trust in Indianapolis.

School choice victories made waves this year, with states like Arkansas, Utah, and Iowa adopting expansive choice programs that pay for private-school tuition and other educational expenses.

But what flew under many people’s radar is another form of choice that also achieved impressive gains, with four states adopting open enrollment policies that enshrine the right for students to attend any public school that has an available seat.

Unlike legislation to create private school choice programs, which faced stiff opposition from Democrats, these open enrollment bills garnered noteworthy bipartisan support. In total, nearly 95% of Republican and 82% of Democratic votes across four red states—Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and West Virginia—were cast in favor of public school choice. West Virginia’s House Bill 2596 passed unanimously in both of the state’s legislative chambers. Only in North Dakota did a majority of Democrats in either chamber vote against the measure.

But most of the recent momentum for open enrollment has been in red states with Republican governors and legislatures. For all kids to have unfettered access to public schools—34 states still allow school districts to discriminate against students based solely on where they live—Democratic policymakers in blue and purple states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina must lead the way. There’s a strong case to be made for Democrats to do exactly that.

First, open enrollment is a key step toward making public schools available to all-comers, a progressive value that most states fail to uphold. Research shows that many schools remain racially segregated decades after Brown v. Board of Education. For instance, a Government Accountability Office report found that in 2020–21, more than one-third of students attended schools where at least 75% of students were a single race or ethnicity. The biggest driver of persistent segregation is school-district boundaries, including demographic trends shaped by racist government policies like redlining and segregated public housing.

As a result, Black and Hispanic students are often concentrated in high-poverty schools, which studies have found to be less effective in raising student achievement than lower-poverty schools on average. “Every moderately or highly segregated district has large racial achievement gaps,” according to Sean Reardon, an education professor at Stanford University.

School district policies often make it difficult for these students to transfer to schools outside of their neighborhoods. Whether it’s public schools refusing to accept transfer students entirely or charging families transfer tuition—New York’s Rye Brook School District charges up to $21,500 per transfer student for its public schools—the system leaves many students without options. While open enrollment alone can neither eliminate segregation nor achievement gaps, it’s an immediate remedy for students who are zoned to underperforming public schools.

Open enrollment can also help strengthen public schools, another key aim for progressives. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, public-school enrollment nationwide has fallen by more than 1.2 million students compared to pre-pandemic levels. Research shows that parents want more agency over their children’s K–12 experiences and are increasingly choosing private schools or homeschooling. Giving families significantly more options within the public education system could help mitigate enrollment declines across many school districts.

Some districts will lose students to open enrollment, but this can be a good thing: A study by California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office found that school districts that lost students to open enrollment responded by engaging their communities and taking steps to improve their instructional offerings, with some achieving “significant drops in the number of students transferring out.” The study also reported that school districts with the greatest enrollment declines improved at a faster pace than a comparison group of districts with similar demographics, but without any students transferring out through the program. These results aren’t causal, but they should allay fears that public school choice will leave some students behind.

Finally, progressives should embrace open enrollment because it’s good for students. Studies of states like Colorado, Wisconsin, and Minnesota show that students tend to transfer to higher-performing school districts when given the opportunity. Research also suggests that they use open enrollment for diverse reasons, such as to escape bullying or to access specialized instructional approaches. Some studies show that disadvantaged students use open enrollment at lower rates, suggesting that they may face barriers to doing so. Yet other studies find that Black students are more likely than their peers to participate and that good policies such as transparency requirements and free transportation, can improve access for low-income students.

At a time of deep political divisions, open enrollment holds immense promise as a bipartisan policy to improve public education that lawmakers should rally behind. With a Morning Consult opinion poll showing 70% of Republicans and 68% of Democrats supporting open enrollment, all states should move swiftly to adopt public school choice. Although Democrats and teachers’ unions often fear that school choice will undermine public schools, open enrollment can clearly make public schools stronger. Democrats in a few red states have shown that it’s possible to do what’s best for kids. Those in blue and purple states should step up next.

Aaron Smith is the director of education policy at Reason Foundation.

More than a decade since Arizona adopted the nation’s first education savings account program, there’s been a decisive shift towards policies with expansive eligibility. With 2023 dubbed the year of universal choice, six states now have programs that nearly all students can participate in. To fully realize the potential of ESAs, state policymakers must now turn their attention to reforming K-12 funding systems.

Those funding systems weren’t originally designed to accommodate school choice. Every state is unique, but virtually all have revenue streams that aren’t connected to enrollment levels. As a result, school districts retain a portion of a student’s education dollars when the students leave. That creates a tension between ESA dollar amounts and state budgets: Funding participants on par with public schools creates additional new costs, but failing to provide that level of funding could discourage participation and undermine the goal of growing a robust marketplace of education providers.

As ESA programs grow in popularity, some states will incur additional costs for students who switch away from “off-formula” school districts. These districts are primarily supported by local dollars that don’t follow students when they choose to attend other schools. In other words, states don’t contribute formula aid for these students when they’re enrolled in public schools but pick up the tab when they switch to ESAs. The magnitude of these problems will vary by state but are increasingly important with the rise of universal eligibility provisions giving non-public school students access to state funding for the first time.

State policymakers should strive for a unified K-12 funding system where dollars flow seamlessly to ESA participants without breaking the bank.

ESA Funding Approaches Across States

To begin, it’s important to understand how states currently structure ESA funding. Twelve states have statewide ESA policies, four of which exclusively serve students with disabilities. Of the other eight states, all but New Hampshire and South Carolina—which limit participation to lower-income students—have universal or near universal eligibility once fully implemented. Table 1 summarizes the key funding design elements for these states.

There are three key takeaways from this comparison. First, the per-student amounts ESA students receive—and the share of public education funding this represents—vary considerably. Average ESA amounts range from less than $5,000 in West Virginia and New Hampshire to more than $8,000 per student in Florida and Utah. In all cases, this is less than the per-student funding public schools received in 2019-2020, the most recent year federal data are available. The percentages are likely low estimates, because education funding has generally risen across states since that time.

Excluding federal dollars, estimated ESA shares range from 25% in New Hampshire to 87% in Florida. Utah and South Carolina are the only states where ESA dollars aren’t tied to the base funding amounts (West Virginia doesn’t have a base allotment). While Utah provides the highest dollar amount for non-disabled students, it also caps the number of participants based on appropriations. Florida’s ESA program is unique in that it is partially funded by tax credit donations, caps the number of participants eligible for differentiated funding, and establishes funding amounts that vary considerably across school districts.

Five states don’t provide differentiated funding for high-need ESA participants, although four of these states—Arkansas, Iowa, South Carolina and Utah—have separate school choice programs serving disadvantaged students. In contrast, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Florida target additional dollars to ESA participants in a way that mirrors their respective funding formulas. For example, participating students in Arizona with a speech language impairment or emotional disability receive up to an estimated $10,000 while students with disabilities in New Hampshire generate an additional $2,037—the same per pupil amounts students receive in public schools. While differentiated funding is costlier, it gives students access to the resources they would’ve received had they attended public schools and could provide greater access to specialized services.

Finally, West Virginia’s approach to ESA funding highlights the shortcomings of its resource-based school finance formula in an era of robust choice. Rather than using a base amount to deploy dollars, the Mountain State funds inputs such as staff salaries, transportation, and other operating expenses. As a result, it lacks a clear mechanism for setting ESA amounts. To get around this problem, the prior year’s average state aid per student is used. But this figure isn’t tied to the state’s formula, which delivers more dollars per student on average since it is funded with both state and local revenue. If West Virginia’s ESA funding were instead tied to formula amounts—which is possible but more complicated with a resource-based funding formula— ESA students would receive a greater share of per student education dollars.

A Closer Look at ESA Funding Amounts

Comparing New Hampshire and Arizona illustrates how school finance systems interact with school-choice funding. Both states employ funding formulas that allocate dollars based on student characteristics, including additional amounts for various categories of student disadvantage. They also have similar approaches to ESA funding, since program amounts are tied to their respective formulas. Yet, despite New Hampshire spending nearly twice as much per student as Arizona on K-12 education, its ESA participants receive far fewer dollars than Arizona’s participants on average.

New Hampshire delivers only 23.5% of state and local education dollars through its primary funding formula. Outside of the formula, school districts are heavily reliant on local funds, which are based on local tax rates and property wealth. As a result, the state’s base funding allotment—which largely determines what ESA participants receive—is a paltry $3,787 per student, even though school districts receive $19,182 per student on average. New Hampshire’s public schools are well-funded, but only a fraction of these dollars is delivered through its formula.

The Granite State’s reliance on local dollars has another important implication: About 16% of its school districts operate off-formula, meaning they raise their entire funding entitlement with property tax dollars. Because these districts’ revenue is unaffected by marginal enrollment changes, they retain all funding when students leave for the ESA program—even though the state incurs an additional per student expense. It’s easy to see how using state funds for ESAs could also be costly in a state like Nebraska, where nearly two-thirds of its school districts operate off-formula.

In comparison, 67.8% of Arizona’s education dollars are allocated through its formula, with outside-the-formula dollars contributing less to overall funding. This is why its base funding allotment, which ranges from $6,000 per student to $9,000 per student, is more robust.

A state’s school finance system can affect ESA policy design. A streamlined school finance system yields an ESA amount that’s close to parity with per-student funding in public schools. Meanwhile, a funding system with a sizeable share of non-formula dollars can place a low ceiling on ESA values and create additional burdens for taxpayers.

Modernizing K-12 Funding Systems

School choice will be an enduring part of the K-12 ecosystem, and funding systems must be modernized to reflect this. Absent reform, ESA amounts will likely remain well below parity with public school funding, and large shares of education dollars will stay in school districts for students the districts no longer serve. Reasonable people can disagree on what share of K-12 funding should follow school-choice participants, but ESA amounts should be determined by intentional policy design rather than as byproducts of antiquated school finance systems. Policymakers can focus on three steps to make the funding systems more amenable to ESAs.

First, states should adopt a student-centered funding formula that allocates dollars based on student characteristics. Without a clear and consistent dollar amount attached to each student determining ESA amounts can be unnecessarily complex. The vast majority of states already have this type of mechanism in place, but others—such as Idaho, North Carolina, and Alabama—lag behind. While this alone doesn’t ensure funding portability, it’s the cornerstone of a unified funding system.

Next, policymakers must maximize the share of education dollars flowing through their state’s formula. This addresses the issue faced in New Hampshire where, despite having student-centered allocation, outside-the-formula dollars keep the state’s ESA values low. This is probably the most critical yet underappreciated component of funding portability. There isn’t just one way to do this, with much depending on a state’s existing tax policy, constitutional restrictions, and other political and economic considerations. But potential solutions range from Indiana’s full-state funding model to Texas’s recapture mechanism, as well as California’s strict limits on local operating dollars. While reforms of this magnitude are challenging, the basic idea is simple: limit outside-the-formula dollars.

Finally, ESA funding amounts should include differentiated funding. Just as school finance systems target additional state dollars to higher-need students, ESA programs should adopt the same principle to ensure accessibility for all students and ensure the right incentives are in place for providers. Fortunately, as Arizona and New Hampshire illustrate, this is easy to do once a student-centered funding formula is in place and funding is already delivered based on student characteristics.

Reforms of this magnitude can be a big lift. As an alternative, state legislators can find other ways to ensure more dollars follow ESA students even within a disjointed funding system, but these fixes will depend largely on local context and could still present political and even constitutional hurdles in some states.

Conclusion

Unless K-12 funding systems are modernized, ESA funding amounts and state budgets will continue to be at odds in many states. While overhauling school funding systems is difficult work, school-choice advocates could find an unlikely bedfellow in funding-equity advocates in state legislatures. Both coalitions want transparent, fair systems that attach greater resources to higher-need students. In many ways, funding equity and portability are two-sides of the same coin. Short of comprehensive funding reform, policymakers can pursue targeted fixes that increase the share of dollars following ESA students. Regardless, any discussion of school finance reform must recognize the role of school choice in public education. Only a unified funding system can provide policymakers, and parents, with the levers needed to match strategic priorities with dollars.

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

One in seven of America’s K-12 students has recently gained education freedom. Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, South Carolina, Utah, and West Virginia have funded education savings accounts (ESAs) for all or nearly all their families. Those families, in turn, can use their ESAs for a variety of education expenses, including tuition, curriculum, tutoring, and therapies.

ESAs empower teachers and families to customize the education for each unique child. As an added benefit, ESAs foster positive competition for public schools, bringing in a rising tide that lifts all educational boats for children.

These ESA laws mark the start of a major shift in how K-12 education in America is funded and delivered. Now, the real work begins. Passing strong ESA laws is hard, but implementing these programs with excellence is harder.

For the education freedom movement, nothing is more important right now than implementing with excellence. Education freedom will only thrive when the public trusts parents, not bureaucrats, to be in charge of their children’s education. That trust will only build as student outcomes improve, as parents and teachers are empowered, and as programs are executed with excellence. Quite simply, if we do not follow good policy with excellent, parent-centered implementation, we risk ruining it for everyone, starting with our children.

Students Over Systems

The logistics of ESA programs can be daunting, as states put purchasing power directly into the hands of millions of families, create a “marketplace” where families can select and pay from a wide selection of approved schools, tutors, and other education-related vendors, and then hold everyone accountable for complying with relevant laws and rules.

Fortunately, past experiences from across the country offer lessons on how to make a daunting task easier as we move from policy to practice.

The policy shift is partly a mind shift. For a century, policymakers have largely chosen to put the needs of the K-12 system above those of individual students in a drive for efficiency, consistency, and uniformity. The result is a factory model where children and teachers are too often treated as widgets, and where nearly one-third of children are failing to learn how to read a basic, grade-level text.

The system’s current multi-layered bureaucracy will have trouble adjusting to a system designed to meet the unique needs of each child. Most of the current system’s government workers will be reluctant, at best, to publicize the availability of education freedom. Their jobs depend on having captive customers, and it is difficult for them to embrace a world where students are not forced to attend a zoned school and get assigned to classrooms.

At least for the near-term, this means that groups outside the system will need to carry the weight of broadcasting the availability of ESA programs and engaging parents to take advantage of them. If outside groups don’t step up, parents won’t learn about the program, much less understand or use it. Lawmakers could help this effort by earmarking funds for the marketing of ESAs and training of new parent-users.

Choice and Charge Cards

In policy and program implementation, the devil is always in the details. For ESA programs to work well, states need to have program clarity from the start—clarity about program details; clarity about the different roles of government, families, and education providers; clarity around payment options and processes; and clarity around the appropriate use of funds. For example, it is vital to clarify the full process for payment approvals and processing, so that educational providers get paid quickly. There are too many reports from Arizona, Florida and elsewhere where someone provides ESA services to a student and then waits weeks for agency staff to approve the expenditure so they can receive payment. Every incident like this erodes support for ESAs from education providers.

States need to establish clear rules and communicate them to families and providers. It is especially important that these agencies are unambiguous about what decisions have been relinquished to families. And they need to appreciate that many families, while they will abide by government rules, believe that all decisions about their children’s education should be made by them. For example, if specific educational therapies, such as equine therapy, are disallowed, then parents need to understand this before they research and schedule a session; otherwise, their time will be wasted, and they will be disappointed.

Moreover, it is important that parents know quickly about whether their choices will be paid for. For example, a parent who purchases all the materials to make a baking=soda volcano needs to know quickly if the baking soda for the experiment is a “covered expense” or not. By the way, these are questions rarely asked when the same experiment is done in a traditional brick-and-mortar public school. Parents want freedom and utmost flexibility over how they use their ESA funds, so they can ensure the best possible education for their children. For one child, that might mean a different school. For another, a special tutor or therapist. For yet another, a mix of home school and classes at a local district or charter school. The possible permutations are endless.

To maximize educational opportunities, states need not only to expand the available options. They also should make it easy to facilitate payments to schools and other education providers. Most families, for example, cannot afford to make advance payments and then wait for the government to reimburse them.

That’s why most ESA states have turned to robust digital wallets and marketplaces where families can conveniently purchase tuition and educational services.  Families can use their wallets to pay qualified vendors directly using ACH payments, to shop at an integrated, e-commerce site, or to get reimbursed. For states, digital wallets are much more efficient than current payment systems because they eliminate paperwork and streamline processes. They also provide a digital audit trail and enable states to review every transaction, essentially eliminating opportunities for fraud and abuse.

Why is this important? Because digital wallets and marketplaces allow programs to scale dramatically. In recent months, Arizona went from serving about 12,000 ESA families to more than 50,000. Florida is currently moving toward serving 350,000 ESA students. None of this would be possible without platforms that automate processes, streamline operations, and ensure compliance with arcane rules.

Maintaining Public Confidence

Despite their clear benefits to students, ESAs are constantly under a microscope. Opponents stand ready to launch vicious, often unjustified attacks. The school unions and other ESA opponents want you to believe that traditional public schools are both highly virtuous and unfailingly effective at educating children. They also want you to believe that ESAs allow corrupt parents to commit crimes.

To stymie their propaganda campaign, states should commit to high levels of transparency, strong management and parent-based accountability, and consistent, clear communication to taxpayers and ESA families. In this politicized environment, ESA program administrators and stakeholders must resist infighting and vilifying parents for temporary political gain. Real change takes time, patience, and competence.

ESA supporters should support programs by ensuring high levels of program transparency and constantly expanding their usefulness. They should also understand that ESAs are complex programs with intricate moving parts, which demand experienced agency managers who are highly competent.

In the end, ESAs are now the law in several states. How much they lead to true transformation is up to all of all us who care about the education of children.

Robert Enlow is president and CEO of EdChoice.