Enrollment in private school choice programs have exploded in recent years, with Republican-led states collectively investing billions of dollars in subsidies for families to spend on private educational options of their choosing.
Vouchers go toward private school tuition. Education savings accounts, or ESAs, cover a broader range of expenses, including tuition, fees, equipment and material costs, transportation, and more. Tax-credit scholarship programs reward donors who give to organizations that in turn issue scholarships to help cover students’ private education costs. And direct tax credits offer a more direct form of monetary relief for families’ private educational expenses.
The list of state-level programs has grown increasingly complex in the last five years. Several states operate multiple programs simultaneously, often using the same terminology to mean different things, or applying different rules to similarly structured offerings.
These programs are also sparking all sorts of debates. In Texas alone, a new ESA program has recently raised questions as wide-ranging as whether the state should be allowed to block funds from private schools with a particular religious affiliation; whether schools receiving public funds should be permitted to deny admission to LGBTQ+ students; whether schools serving students with disabilities are getting adequate encouragement from the state to sign up; what the ESA application website should look like; and how the state can more effectively target families that might benefit most from the funds.
Now, billions of dollars in federal tax credits approved by Congress last July promise to shake up the private school choice landscape even further. Twenty-eight states so far have agreed to participate in the program, which will start next calendar year.
“There’s a lot of questions here that really could have pretty profound impacts that aren’t necessarily evident yet,” said Chris Lubienski, a professor of education policy at Indiana University Bloomington who studies private school choice.
Before the federal program fully kicks off, though, it’s worth taking stock of where existing private school choice programs stand, how they’ve evolved, and what questions they’re raising.
Programs keep getting bigger
Three states are far ahead of the pack on private school choice so far.
Roughly half a million K-12 students in Florida—more than 15% of the state’s overall school-aged population—are taking advantage of one of several private school choice program options. In Arizona, slightly more than 100,000 K-12 students, or close to 5% of the state’s school-age children, are using ESA funds. And last school year, Ohio became the third state to annually invest more than $1 billion in private school choice, with more than 140,000 students receiving state-funded vouchers.
Several other states’ programs are exploding in popularity as well. North Carolina’s school voucher program, fueled by increased budget investment, saw participation more than triple from 2023 to 2025.
Demand is even outpacing supply in some places. For the first time in a decade, Kansas gave out the legal maximum of $10 million in tax-credit scholarships in 2025. In Louisiana, 40,000 students applied for ESAs—more than six times the number the legislature approved to receive funds. And in New Hampshire, families this school year claimed all 10,000 available ESAs, and more than 300 interested students are currently on a waitlist.
Not every program is over capacity, though. Tennessee laws offered up to 5,000 ESAs this school year, but only 3,700 students ended up receiving one. Georgia budgeted $141 million for the first year of its ESA program, but the state has only awarded $55 million of that allocation to roughly 7,000 of the 20,000 students who have applied so far. The governor’s 2026 budget proposal includes a one-time funding cut of $86 million for the program.
Costs are growing
States are investing increasingly large sums of money to subsidize private education for K-12 students who were already attending private school.
Students who previously attended a public school are getting fewer than one-third of annual funds devoted to private school choice programs in at least nine states: Alabama (30%), Arkansas (12%), Florida (31%), Indiana (30%), Iowa (6.8%), New Hampshire (3%), North Carolina (8.4%), Oklahoma (8%), and Tennessee (28%).
The outlier appears to be Arizona, where state figures show more than half of ESA participants were previously in public schools.
Students who were already attending private school effectively represent new costs to their respective states, because they weren’t previously getting per-pupil allocations that go to students in public school.
The push for investment continues
EdChoice, the leading advocacy nonprofit for voucher and ESA programs, is aiming this year to convince states to expand their existing private school choice programs so that every student who wants funds can get them.
Eighteen states currently have “universal” private school choice programs—which means every K-12 student in the state is eligible, regardless of income or where they previously went to school.
But most states with universal eligibility restrict the number of students who can participate by capping annual funding or the number of students who receive awards.
“Education freedom, by design, is meant to put families in the driver’s seat, empowering them to access an education best fit for their needs,” wrote Ed Tarnowski, director of policy and advocacy for EdChoice, in a Jan. 29 blog post. “And as state restrictions grow, options shrink, and with it, the competitive effects resulting from a vibrant education marketplace.”
Now, many states are inching closer to a vision of universal accessibility.
Some increases are already built into existing laws—Alabama’s ESA program, signed into law two years ago, will become accessible this coming school year to students from families with higher incomes, and funding will double to $200 million.
At least five GOP governors are currently pushing lawmakers to invest more in private school choice during their states’ ongoing or upcoming legislative sessions.
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster wants lawmakers to approve a new investment of $61 million to make 5,000 more K-12 students eligible for ESA funds, and to increase the award amount for each ESA from $7,500 to $7,634.
Other states with similar proposals from governors include Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.
Meanwhile, officials overseeing the ESA program in Arkansas are asking state appropriators for an additional $32 million to make sure all 43,200 participating students receive their full allocation of funding.
And in Kansas, GOP lawmakers have resigned themselves to waiting until Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly wraps up her last term after this year before pursuing a full-fledged ESA or voucher program. For now, they’re hoping to raise annual funding for the state’s existing tax-credit scholarship program from $10 million to $15 million or $20 million.
Some states are still holding out on private school choice
As of this year, with Texas now in the process of launching the nation’s largest universal ESA program, all of the largest Republican states have major ongoing investments in private school choice. But a handful of smaller states haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon.
In Mississippi, top federal officials have urged the state to establish private school choice programs that are more widely accessible than its current, narrow offerings for certain students with disabilities. But despite a new ESA program securing a narrow margin of victory in the House last month, Senate lawmakers have already said they have no intention of approving it.
North Dakota lawmakers last year considered several proposals for investing in private school choice, but all of them fell apart, and no new ones have emerged so far this year.
Both Mississippi and North Dakota will, however, take part in the federal private school choice tax-credit scholarship program.
Meanwhile, a handful of states are facing pressure to rein in private school choice programs rather than expand them.
A bipartisan pair of lawmakers in the Ohio state House last month introduced a bill that would make families earning more than $500,000 a year ineligible for state-subsidized school vouchers.
Researchers last month pitched West Virginia lawmakers on restricting participation in its Freedom Scholarship ESA program to students from low-income families. Public education leaders in Utah have recently urged budget cuts for private school choice.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, has continued a similar push in her state, though a Republican-majority legislature is unlikely to agree.
The number of legal challenges is growing, but likely aren’t a major choice impediment
Lawsuits challenging private school choice are underway in eight states—including four where a judge has already ruled an existing program unconstitutional.
Officials in Ohio, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming are each appealing court rulings against their existing voucher or ESA program.
As a result, Montana’s ESA program for students with disabilities and Wyoming’s universal ESA will halt at the end of this year without further legislative action. Vouchers in Ohio and ESAs in Utah will continue while higher courts review the ongoing legal challenges.
More such rulings could be imminent. A Missouri county circuit court judge held a two-day trial last November reviewing a legal challenge to the state’s tax-credit scholarship program. Idaho’s supreme court in January heard a case against the state’s universal private school choice tax credit. Both cases are awaiting rulings as of early February.
Private school choice programs in Arkansas and Tennessee are also facing legal challenges that haven’t yet reached trial.
Legal arguments vary from case to case, but the gist is fairly consistent. Plaintiffs—including school districts, teachers’ unions, public education advocacy organizations, and K-12 parents—argue that state constitutions prohibit spending public dollars on private education in general, or religious education in some cases.
Even when courts strike down private school choice programs, though, that doesn’t guarantee the programs disappear. In South Carolina, after a judge nixed the state’s funding mechanism for its ESA program, lawmakers revived the program eight months later by supplying funds from a different source.
None of these lawsuits have ended up before the U.S. Supreme Court—but critics and advocates alike feel confident that the court’s conservative majority would likely endorse a private school choice program, Lubienski said.
“There’s some minor speed bumps rather than roadblocks here, for now,” he said. “Choice advocates haven’t seen that as an existential threat to what they’re promoting.”
Public schools are sounding the alarm
Enrollment decline is an increasingly urgent concern for school districts nationwide. Private school choice is one of several factors making a dent in the number of students attending public school—though it can be difficult to precisely determine the effect of private school choice.
For instance: The Monroe County school system in Indiana, according to district figures, saw enrollment fall from 10,399 students in 2021 to 10,062 students three years later—a drop of 337. During the same period, the number of students living within the district’s boundaries who enrolled in Indiana’s voucher program rose from 276 to 582—an increase of 306.
Glancing only quickly at those numbers, it would seem that most of the district’s enrollment loss could be attributed to private school choice.
But a closer look reveals a more nuanced picture: Between 2021 and 2024, the number of students living within the district who instead attended an out-of-district public school also grew by 176.
Without knowing how many private school students within the district were attending their local public school before taking the ESA, or how many of the students opting out of their local public schools are incoming kindergarteners or new to the area, it’s difficult to pinpoint how much of the district’s enrollment shifts can be traced specifically to private school choice. Natural demographic shifts unrelated to private school availability also play a role.
Still, in some places, financial strain on public school systems is significant.
Florida’s ESA program has come under scrutiny from lawmakers after an independent audit revealed that it persistently struggles to keep track of students who were switching between public and private school during the school year.
As state officials scrambled to correct the errors, some districts reported getting notifications of massive mid-year changes to their state aid allocations, and thousands of students participating in private school choice temporarily lost access to their funds.
The same audit also found that $400 million in private school choice funds awarded to families were sitting unused. And despite a state law that caps individual ESA awards for students with disabilities at $50,000, hundreds of students appeared to have unspent balances that were higher.
Broader state budget concerns—including a substantial decline in projected revenue from federal sources such as Medicaid and food stamps—are also drawing attention to private school choice.
In Idaho, where the governor has ordered state agencies to begin cutting budgets by up to 3%, public education advocates are decrying the state’s ongoing annual investment of $50 million in tax credits to cover families’ private school tuition. The program’s advocates contend the relatively modest sum shouldn’t be the primary target for austerity cuts.
At some point, Lubienski said, the ballooning costs of these programs could drive a wedge between private school choice advocates and traditional conservatives who favor decreased government spending. But that clash largely hasn’t materialized yet, he said.
“I don’t think it’s going to be as much of an issue in the future when [states] can shift a lot of these costs to the federal tax credit program,” he said.
Accountability debates are growing more contentious
Florida isn’t the only state where private school choice is drawing increased scrutiny over transparency and accountability.
New Hampshire law requires a legislative oversight committee to complete an annual report on the state’s ESA program by Nov. 30 each year. But the committee didn’t meet all year in 2025 until Dec. 17, and Democratic lawmakers say other ongoing audits don’t investigate the program thoroughly enough.
Idaho’s tax-credit scholarship program isn’t required to report key details like the number of participants who previously attended public school. Instead, the decision on whether to publish those data is up to the state’s tax commission. Similarly, Tennessee isn’t tracking where ESA recipients previously attended school or how many students with disabilities are participating—details Republicans who voted to establish the program say they want.
The state also won’t require program applicants to supply evidence of instructional materials the funds are ostensibly paying for. Concerns over the educational efficacy of expenses covered by these dollars are also arising in Arizona, where Democratic Attorney General Kris Mayes in December threatened to sue the state education agency over its ESA program’s policy of approving all parent-submitted expenses of $2,000 or less.
Local reporting and law enforcement investigations have found instances of taxpayer dollars paying for items of questionable educational value, including lingerie and diamond jewelry, as well as cases in which parents secured funding for children who don’t actually exist.
Only 12 state agency staffers are reviewing reimbursement requests for the state’s ESA offering, the program’s executive director told lawmakers last summer. Five hundred requests come in a day; staff only have time to process 200 in that time, leaving them virtually no time for other tasks like developing stricter audit procedures.
Some states are moving toward even less transparency. The Missouri state treasurer’s office last July deleted a publicly available listing of donors who contributed to the state’s tax-credit scholarship program just weeks after the Missouri Independent published an article about it.
2026-02-03 22:30:20
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