A growing number of states are adopting a comprehensive new type of school choice program that would pose a threat to public schools if many students were to leave them for a private education. 

Eight states – including Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia – have approved “universal” or near-universal school choice laws since 2021. They open the door completely to school choice by making all students, including those already in private schools and from wealthy families, eligible for about $7,000 to $10,000 in state funding each year for their education. 

What’s more, most of these states have also enacted education savings accounts, or ESAs. They give families much more freedom than traditional tuition vouchers, depositing state funds into private accounts to spend on virtually anything related to learning, from homeschooling and online classes to therapy and supplies. 

The universal laws amount to a bracing change in school choice. Such programs have existed for decades but until now have been limited to a narrow set of students, such as those from low-income families, or in poor performing public schools, or in need of special education. 

By making all students eligible, regardless of their ability to pay for a private education, universal programs in the eight states expand the pool of possible participants by about 4 million students, according to an estimate by EdChoice, an advocacy group. That’s a 40% increase in eligibility since 2021, bringing the total to 13.6 million students after the programs start in the next few years. 

School choice advocates – led by grassroots conservative Christian groups, big money political lobbies like American Federation for Children, and education nonprofits like EdChoice – call the universal programs a major milestone in their long and contentious battle for parental rights. They argue that parents, not the government, are best suited to direct the education of their children and should receive taxpayer support to do so as a competitive check on public schools they also pay for but consider failing or inadequate. 

But over the years, school choice has suffered from a low participation rate, with fewer than 1 million students partaking in state programs today, mostly to attend religous schools, in a nation with about 50 million public school students. The big question is whether universal laws, paired with the flexibility of ESAs to customized learning, will spur a major exodus to private schooling. 

“Universal choice is really a significant move beyond the existing programs we have now,” says Professor Patrick Wolf at the University of Arkansas, who has studied school choice for 25 years. “In terms of regulating education providers, this is a much stronger move into the free-market provision of K-12.” 

Why Now? 

This sudden success reflects both long-term trends and recent events. Americans’ satisfaction in public education has slowly eroded over the last two decades. And during the pandemic, student test scores in math and English plummeted as a result of ineffective remote learning, with satisfaction dropping sharply from a majority before COVID to a mere 42% last year, according to Gallup. 

Advocates in Republican-controlled states seized the opportunity created by COVID, when teachers unions blocked the reopening of schools, spurring parents to search for educational options, including homeschooling, to keep their kids from falling behind. 

“Parents saw there were many ways to educate kids,” says Robert Enlow, president of EdChoice. “It opened up a world of possibilities for them.” 

At the same time, the spread of a woke curriculum following the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 provided some parents with another reason to seek alternatives to public schools. In cities from Seattle to Buffalo, students have been taught a version of history casting white Americans as privileged oppressors and blacks and Latinos as powerless victims of structural racism. 

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis made these two related educational crusades ‒ curbing political correctness and passing universal choice ‒ his own in the runup to his campaign for president. In 2022 he spearheaded a Florida ban on teaching that America is racist at its core, and also won restrictions on instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity – prohibitions embraced by several other states as well. Then earlier this year, DeSantis won legislative approval of a universal law, making Florida the largest state to adopt school choice for all. 

But just as progressives have embraced a race- and transgender-conscious agenda that has spurred a backlash in many states, the universal choice program pushed by conservatives is stirring much controversy, too. In addition to solid opposition from Democrats, who fear a flight of students and funding from public schools, some Republicans, particularly in rural areas, also object to the costs of giving taxpayer dollars to wealthy families to pay for private schooling. 

Although Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Utah have joined the four other red states in approving universal choice, Republicans in Texas have joined Democrats in blocking efforts to pass it, suggesting the program may have limited room to run nationwide. 

Academic research can only hint at the value of universal choice programs, which have never been studied. The exhaustive research on restricted school choice has shown neutral to negative effects on test scores in statewide programs, which include middle-income students. But the programs have had clear positive benefits on scores for low-income students in particular and have improved high school graduation and college admission rates for some students. 

“Universal choice is a great leap into the unknown,” says Professor Wolf. “Parents are experts on their child’s needs, but parents are not experts on private educational providers. They need accurate and complete information about them.” 

The Godfather of Universal Choice 

Milton Friedman, who won the Nobel Prize for economics, is considered the first prominent proponent of universal choice, bringing his theory of efficient competitive markets to education in a 1955 paper. He and his wife Rose later started a foundation for educational choice in their names that morphed in 2016 into EdChoice. 

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