The Unprecedented Rise In School Choice A New Era In American Educatio

As universal school choice programs gain traction across the country, a new report from EdChoice Fellow Dr. Susan Pendergrass offers a timely look at a key question: Is the education marketplace keeping up with growing parent demand? The Supply Side of ESAs: How Universal School Choice Programs Have Affected the Number of Private Schools and Home Education Vendors explores how education savings account (ESA) programs and other choice programs are reshaping... For decades, the number of private schools in the United States has remained flat or even declined slightly. But Pendergrass finds a different trend in states where families are broadly empowered to use public funds for private school tuition. In those states, the number of private schools is increasing.

And private school growth is just part of the story. In Arizona—home to the country’s first ESA program with universal eligibility—families are not just choosing between schools. They’re assembling full education plans using a wide variety of providers. In a recent school year, parents used their ESA funds across more than 100 types of educational providers beyond traditional K–12 institutions. Public schools have been facing major enrollment and – thanks to state per-pupil funding—revenue challenges. COVID-19 closures led to dramatic drops in the largest districts.

Add in low birth rates and unaffordable housing and the exodus of students has left many urban districts practically unrecognizable. Los Angeles Unified currently enrolls just over 400,000 students, down by nearly half in 20 years. A February Gallup “Mood of the Nation” poll found that only 24% of Americans are satisfied with public K-12 education—the lowest since the survey began in 2001 and the third-lowest level of satisfaction with... Districts have fought back by offering choices. Magnet schools and immersion programs are popular strategies. Open enrollment has become more prevalent.

And some districts have tried to brand public schools as charters by providing limited autonomy even though the buildings are district buildings and teachers are card-carrying union members. But many parents have real choice in other important areas of their lives and know what that looks like. In a poll from the National School Choice Awareness Foundation, 60% of parents say that last year they considered moving their child to another school with 28% claiming they followed through. Where are public school students going? The most popular choice was private or faith-based schools. That’s a sea change from just two years earlier when the top three alternatives were public schools in the neighborhood, public schools outside the neighborhood, and charter schools.

So it’s likely that the biggest education story of the 2020s isn’t the Trump administration’s capricious crackdowns, the fall of college for all, or the rise of apprenticeships and earn-and-learn pathways, but rather the... For as long as I can remember, a common K-12 dynamic has been: bad system, but I like my kid’s school and teacher. So why the sudden shift? Perhaps because parents recognize their kids can’t read books. A system that has long prioritized learning styles and theories of pedagogy over content knowledge is neither producing equity nor—outside of a handful of urban magnets and a few dozen wealthy suburban districts that... Whatever the source, it’s been fueled by the rapid rise of Education Savings Accounts.

What used to be called vouchers are now Education Savings Accounts (ESAs)—a 529 plan-vibe, except the “savings” aren’t savings at all: it’s state funding that won’t be going to school districts. Nearly universal now in red states and making inroads in blue ones like New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, ESAs provide up to $16,000 per student per year for schooling, which some states define as private... Sign up for our free newsletter and start your day with clear-headed reporting on the latest topics in education. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter In August 2022, visitors to the Arizona Department of Education webpage were greeted by an unusual message: Due to a “high volume” of users, the note read, they might have trouble applying to participate...

It was the second such IT mishap of the year, following an episode in which a crush of parents temporarily overwhelmed the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s site that winter. Libertarian activist Corey DeAngelis, then rising to fame as an arch critic of teachers’ unions and Democratic politicians, said the trend convinced him that the experience of virtual learning had ignited in families a... “I’d been chugging away at this before COVID, but it really took off when we were getting into debates about reopening schools,” he recalled. School choice has made historic strides since the start of the pandemic, with states adopting (or expanding) education savings accounts (ESAs) and school vouchers at a head-spinning pace. This has been cause in some quarters for celebration and in others for fury. But I wanted to set aside the back-and-forth for a moment to go deeper into what we’re seeing in legislation and what we’re seeing in the research.

For that kind of conversation, one of the first people I’m inclined to turn to is Patrick Wolf, the 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas. Wolf has authored scores of scholarly articles on school choice and has led multimillion-dollar school choice research teams in places like Milwaukee and the District of Columbia. Here’s what he had to say. Rick Hess: As someone who’s been studying school choice for nearly three decades, what do you make of the legislative activity we’ve seen the past few years? Patrick Wolf: I’m surprised and impressed with the speed and scope of the school choice wave since 2020. I think many members of the education establishment—the teachers’ unions, National School Boards Association, etc.—underestimated the level of disappointment parents had with long school closures and low-quality remote instruction during the pandemic.

The establishment seemed to be caught flat-footed by the expansive private school choice bills proposed and enacted in the pandemic’s wake. In June, the advocacy group EdChoice announced that more than 1 million students are enrolled in a private school choice program. That’s a doubling of private school choice enrollments in less than four years. Amazing! Hess: How much of what we’re seeing is a gradual evolution and how much is a fundamental shift in the political firmament? Wolf: It’s a combination of both factors.

Some states, like Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and Wisconsin, have gradually and persistently expanded their school choice enrollments over the past decade. Other states have gone from zero to 60 in mere seconds. For example, West Virginia went from having no private school choice to enacting a universal education savings account program in 2021. Arkansas had a disability voucher program that enrolled 600 students and a tax-credit scholarship program that supported an additional 300 before it enacted a universal ESA program in 2023. The first fundamental shift was moving from narrowly targeted programs to universal eligibility, and the second shift was transitioning from vouchers or private school tuition scholarships to ESAs that allow parents to fully customize... At the National School Choice Awareness Foundation, our mission is to raise positive awareness of all K-12 education options for families, and provide them with

Student Ambassadors Cohort 2024 Since 2023, the Conoce tus Opciones Escolares (CTOE) team has been selecting talented students and recent graduates each year to join Sarah Lee AI generated Llama-4-Maverick-17B-128E-Instruct-FP8 6 min read · May 25, 2025 Discover the latest trends and innovations in school choice and their potential to reshape educational inequality and public policy. The landscape of education is undergoing a significant transformation, driven by technological advancements, changing societal needs, and the quest for more equitable and effective educational systems. School choice, once a controversial topic, has become a central theme in educational reform discussions worldwide. As we look to the future, several emerging trends are poised to reshape the school choice landscape.

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of online and hybrid schooling models, demonstrating their potential to expand access to quality education. These models combine the flexibility of online learning with the benefits of face-to-face instruction, offering a personalized learning experience that can cater to diverse student needs. "The pandemic has shown us that online learning is not just a stopgap measure, but a viable and effective way to deliver education." - 1 American public education is undergoing a seismic change. As more states adopt universal school choice policies, the U.S. Supreme Court continues to define the constitutional rights and limitations of religious freedom and the civic obligations inherent in compulsory education.

In a series of recent decisions, the Court has made clear to states that though they are not constitutionally required to offer school choice to families, they must not exclude religious schools from any... Further, the Court has made clear that public financial support of religious schooling does not violate the Constitution. In the last two years, eight states (Arizona, West Virginia, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Oklahoma, and Ohio) either adopted universal school choice programs or expanded existing programs through Educational Savings Accounts (ESAs). These accounts provide parents with public funds that they can use to purchase schooling (through, for example, tuition or educational materials), including religious schooling, for their children. Meanwhile, many other states seem politically averse to universal school choice and to public support for religious schools. (A state is considered to have “universal school choice” if it makes funding available to all families of school-age children, without income restrictions or a cap on the number of students who may participate.)...

Challenges to this exclusion will come before the courts in the years to come. In 2023, the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board approved an application for a charter school to be operated by a Roman Catholic diocese, which would make it the first religious charter school in the... The religious school is appealing the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.[2] In states that adopted universal school choice, the impetus came from a heightened awareness among parents that traditional public schools were not being responsive to their strongly held wishes for the education of their... Huge historical legislative victories have occurred over the past four years, advancing school choice in states nationwide.

In some states, the wins have entailed the creation of new school choice programs, while in other states, it has involved expanding existing programs to reach more students. Most noteworthy has been the enactment of universal or near-universal school choice in 12 states since 2021. The public education monopoly isn’t working, and it is failing to fulfill its function to a greater degree than in years and decades past. There is a better way: education freedom, which allows parents to choose the school or other learning avenue that best fits their unique child. A few years ago, widespread school choice was nearly unimaginable, but historical education freedom has occurred: Laws supporting access to private school choice come in various forms, including private school scholarships, education savings accounts, and tax-credit scholarships.

Public school choice avenues that allow students to enroll in a public school other than their residentially-assigned district school include intra-district (within the district) open enrollment, inter-district (outside the district) open enrollment, magnet schools,...

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