Wave of School Choice Legislation Passes Across the US, Including Expansions in Some States

Proponents of school choice funding for K–12 students have had wide-ranging and rapidly growing success on the state level over the past two years.

State legislatures across the country are increasingly passing bills that their governors are signing to provide families with options for how their taxpayer dollars are spent to educate their children.

Many new laws allow for families to use money that had traditionally gone to state-run public schools, to help pay for tuition at private schools or to cover certain expenses involved in homeschooling.

Public school teachers unions are ardently opposed to school choice, with a primary reason that school choice laws transfer authority over education money from public school districts to parents.

School choice financial resources and spending options for parents include vouchers, tax credit education savings accounts, tax credit scholarships, and individual tax credits and deductions.

Chantal Lovell, vice president of communications for EdChoice, an organization that provides public education and advocates for school choice, spoke with The Epoch Times about the recent swell of support for and installment of school choice plans, including Ohio’s latest state budget that makes an existing school-choice voucher program available to all families, when previously there was an income cap.

“After the most recent growth in school choice programs, approximately 18 million students—or 37 percent nationwide—are eligible for a private-choice program,” said Ms. Lovell. “This is a 46 percent increase in access to private choice since just two years ago.”

Ohio Latest to Expand Options

There are 78 school choice funding programs across 32 states and Washington and Puerto Rico, Ms. Lovell said.

“Nearly one in five students live in a state with universal, or near universal, school choice,” she said. “And the recent growth of school choice has been astounding. West Virginia and Arizona already had universal school choice programs. And in 2023, six states—Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah—launched new universal programs. Indiana expanded its program to include 98 percent of students.”

Several states have expanded their existing school choice programs.

The first public policy issue that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, addressed in his 2023 state of the state address was the education of the children of Ohio.

“Our future is bright, but that future will be defined by how well we educate all our children and how we tear down the barriers to their success,” said Mr. DeWine. “We are challenged as never before, because at no time in our history has the full education of all our children been more important.”

A key component of the governor’s K–12 education plan has been expanding access to taxpayer-funded vouchers. Mr. DeWine has also pushed for more funds for public charter schools.

The Ohio General Assembly included the governor’s education initiatives in its 2024–25 budget bill.

Before the bill was signed, Ohio’s EdChoice Scholarship Program (there is no formal relationship between the EdChoice Scholarship and the EdChoice organization) offered vouchers for K–12 private school tuition to families with income below 250 percent of the federal poverty line, which amounts to approximately $58,000 for a family of three, and whose students were enrolled at the most underperforming schools.

Now all families are eligible for the program no matter income or the school a student attends.

Changes to Program

The law increases the full amount of scholarship from $5,500 to $6,615 for students in kindergarten through eighth grade and from $7,500 to $8,407 for a high school student.

The law also increases funding by about 12 percent for charter schools, with the highest performing charters to receive approximately 40 percent more in funding.

In his press conference on July 5 in which he discussed aspects of the budget, Mr. DeWine stepped aside for Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who led the creation of the EdChoice Scholarship when he served as Speaker of the Ohio House, to discuss expansion of the program.

“There are many reasons that parents might want to have choice in the educational options that they would have for their children that are different than what is offered in the local public schools,” said Mr. Husted. “We love our local public schools and by the way, I will add that there is a lot of funding [in the budget] to help support our public schools.

“But in many cases families want another choice, another option that might be for the safety of their child. It might be because of an academic offering that they can get somewhere else; or perhaps it’s because of the values or beliefs that those families have,” he said.

“For those reasons, they may want another choice, and that option is expanded to them in this budget.”