School choice expands
Is school choice an effective education policy? Viewpoints from multiple sides.
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Awesome podcast
At Framechange, we’re about giving you tools to think, not telling you what to think. So when I find a resource that respects your intelligence and curiosity, I want to pass it along.
Lately, I’ve been listening to a podcast called Top of Mind with Julie Rose, and I think many of you will appreciate it as much as I have.
Julie Rose is a journalist with over two decades of experience, and she gets it: the news cycle can feel like an endless barrage of noise, outrage, and quick takes. Top of Mind is her answer to that. It’s not a news podcast. You won’t hear a rundown of the day’s events. Instead, each episode dives deep into a single topic – things like "Should marijuana be legalized?" or "How can we get money out of politics?" – and tackles it from multiple angles.
Top of Mind is right in line with what we do here at Framechange and worth a listen. You’ll come away feeling more empathetic, better informed, and a little more hopeful, not exhausted. You can find Top of Mind with Julie Rose on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Snippets
President Donald Trump finished a 4-day trip to the Middle East that included stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The trip yielded a series of deals, including a commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest $600 billion in the US, a partnership with the UAE to build a large AI data complex in Abu Dhabi, and a $96 billion agreement from Qatar to purchase 210 Boeing planes.
Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Istanbul to hold their first peace talks since the beginning of the war in 2022. The talks ended in less than two hours without a significant breakthrough, but the countries agreed to swap 1,000 prisoners each. Neither Russian President Vladimir Putin nor Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attended the meetings.
A group of 59 Afrikaners – a white ethnic minority group in South Africa – arrived in the US and were given refugee status for alleged discrimination. The South African government has refuted allegations of persecution.
The Supreme Court remains undecided after hearing arguments on whether to lift a series of nationwide court orders blocking President Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship.
President Trump said he would accept a $400 million Boeing 747-8 jet as a gift from the Qatari royal family that will be retrofitted to be used as Air Force One. Trump reportedly indicated the jet will be transferred to his presidential library foundation at the conclusion of his term.
What’s happening
Earlier this month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed into law Senate Bill 2, which creates a new “school choice” program that will subsidize K-12 education costs for Texas families wishing to send their children to private schools and other institutions instead of their district’s public school. The program will start in 2026 and provide up to $1B in funding over its first two years.
What is school choice: School choice broadly refers to publicly-funded programs that support families in paying for K-12 education alternatives to public school. Alternatives may include private schools, charter schools, magnet schools, or homeschooling. Funding is usually state- or local-government sponsored and provided in the form of school vouchers, education savings accounts (ESAs), or tax credit scholarships. Vouchers are typically limited to specific uses such as tuition while ESAs tend to be less restrictive in what the funds can be spent on (e.g., textbooks, supplies), although “school voucher” is sometimes used to describe both.
The Texas program: Texas will specifically provide ESAs of $10,300-$10,900 per child per year for qualifying families, which can be used for private school tuition or other learning support and materials. (The ESA range equates to roughly 85% of the funding provided to public schools per child.)
Any child that decides not to attend public school is eligible, but Texas will prioritize low-income and special needs students in the event demand exceeds the allocated budget. The ESA cap for homeschooled students is $2,000 while students with disabilities are eligible for up to $30,000 in additional support.
Existing state programs: Roughly 30 states and Washington DC have implemented some form of school choice program. Some of the largest and most notable include Florida (which counts 500,000+ students attending private school through state support), Arizona, and Ohio. Roughly 15 states have implemented new school choice programs since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Federal consideration: House Republicans introduced a bill this month that – if passed – would establish a nationwide school choice program that budgets up to $5B per year for scholarships provided to families via tax credits. Similar legislation was introduced in the Senate earlier this year on the same day President Trump issued an executive order that directs the Department of Education to provide states guidance on school choice programs.
National legislation on school choice is seen by many observers as unlikely to pass in the short-term due to how contentious it is as an issue. This week, we take a look at viewpoints from multiple sides. Let us know what you think.
Notable viewpoints
More supportive of school choice programs:
School vouchers provide freedom of choice and help students in underperforming school districts.
School vouchers give parents greater agency in the education of their children, enabling their tax dollars to more directly flow to schools that meet their children’s individual needs.
School choice programs provide students in underperforming schools the opportunity to gain a better education at higher-performing schools.
Most Americans support school choice initiatives. A 2025 poll by EdChoice / Morning Consult found that 60%-65% of adults support school vouchers in some form and roughly 76% of school parents support education savings accounts (ESAs), specifically.
School choice programs improve student outcomes and school performance.
School vouchers improve learning outcomes for students that would have otherwise been limited to underperforming public schools. For instance, a 2025 Urban Institute study found that 64% of participants in Ohio’s EdChoice voucher program during the years 2007-2008 and 2013-2014 went on to attend college compared to 48% of students of similar demographics that stayed in their public schools. The study also found the voucher participants were more likely to graduate college.
School choice programs actually improve performance at underperforming public schools, rather than “leaving behind” students at those schools as some opponents argue they will. A 2019 meta analysis by University of Texas, Austin and other researchers found that increased competition among schools – driven by school choice initiatives – resulted in a small positive effect on student achievement.
School choice programs can benefit minority and historically underprivileged students. In Florida’s FTC program, for instance, 55% of students are black or Hispanic while 39% of students come from single-family households.
School choice programs are a more efficient use of taxpayer money.
School choice programs save taxpayer money by directing it more efficiently toward educational services demanded by individuals. For instance, a 2024 EdChoice analysis of school choice programs across 26 states found the programs collectively generated $19.4B–$45.6B in savings for taxpayers.
“Should enrollment drop, public schools wouldn’t need to fear that they would suddenly lose their funding: States often have protections that shield districts from immediate financial losses due to declining enrollment. They would be given time to adjust their budgets, meaning that the financial effect of school choice would be gradual and manageable.” (Martin F. Lueken, Director of EdChoice.)
More opposed to school choice programs:
School choice programs hurt public schools.
School choice programs drain resources from public schools that are in need of more funding to provide a better education to students, not less funding.
School vouchers shift money away from public schools, exacerbating resource constraints for underperforming schools that serve a disproportionate level of low-income or underprivileged students. State funding for a public school is commonly tied to enrollment; therefore fewer students means less funding. An analysis by Every Texan, for example, estimated that the Texas school choice program would cost Texas public schools a collective $2.3B statewide per year.
“‘School choice’ is a Trojan Horse for privatization, a web of false promises and negative consequences for communities of color, low-income families and public schools.” (Jasmine Bolton and April Callen, US News.)
School choice disproportionately helps higher-income students and leaves disadvantaged students behind.
Because school vouchers usually aren’t enough to cover full private school tuition (typical private school tuitions in Texas, for example, range between $14,000-$25,000 while Texas school vouchers will amount to roughly $10,500 per student), lower income students do not gain enough financial support to switch schools. Instead, they are left behind in underperforming and underfunded institutions.
Students from wealthier families that are already enrolled in private schools benefit more from school vouchers than lower-income students. For instance, data shows that in 2023, among the 120,000 new students participating in Florida’s school voucher program after it broadened its eligibility requirements, only 13% were students switching from public schools while 69% were already enrolled in private schools and the rest were entering private kindergarten. In Ohio, after the state broadened its program to permit higher-income students, the percentage of participating students that were already enrolled in private schools increased from 7% in 2019 to roughly 55% in 2023.
School vouchers function as a subsidy for the wealthy, which has encouraged some private schools to increase their tuition costs in order to capitalize on the higher purchasing power of the families attending them.
School choice does not improve student outcomes.
Historically, voucher programs have not proven to increase academic performance of participating students, and in some cases have actually been shown to lower performance. For example, a 2018 study found that standardized test scores in Louisiana declined after the introduction of school choice programs in the state, an effect concluded to be driven partly by the influx of new, lower quality private schools incentivized by the vouchers. A separate 2018 study found a similar pattern in Indiana.
School vouchers can fail students with special needs. Private schools aren’t required by law to provide minimum accessibility features at their schools, rendering a school voucher useless for some students with specific unmet needs – leaving them behind in a public school that may subsequently receive less funding to support those needs.
Be heard
We want to hear from you! Comment below with your perspective on school choice and we may feature it in our socials or future newsletters. Below are topic ideas to consider.
Are you more supportive of or more opposed to school choice initiatives? Why?
What are some arguments or supporting points you appreciate about a viewpoint you disagree with?
Give us your feedback! Please let us know how we can improve.
Music on the bottom
Here’s a very chill version of a very high energy rock song from the 90s. I simply won’t apologize for two 90s tunes in the span of three weeks. Maybe it’s that time of year.
Listen on Spotify, Apple Music, or Amazon Music.
The US public education system was once the envy of many countries. That is no longer the case. How about Making America Great Again by putting that funding back into re-envisioning and working to improve our education system for all students. Providing an advantage for some at the expense of a significant number of others is simply not right.
Furthermore, one of the societal advantages of a public system is learning about other people who are different from you. Another is creating a shared concept of what it means to be a responsible citizen in our communities and our country.