This piece originally appeared in The Grade.
The rapid expansion of private school choice has drawn a good deal of news coverage — as it should.
We’ve never put so much public money in the hands of individuals to pay for private education. In the 2023-24 school year, nearly one million students used upwards of $4 billion in public funds for private or home schooling.
I’ve followed school choice for almost 20 years, and even I was surprised at the speed with which private school choice policies have spread in the past several years.
FutureEd, the Georgetown University-based think tank where I’m policy director, has spent the last year carefully studying many of these new programs, and we know there are stories best told by those closest to the action.
Journalists, advocates on all sides, and voters should ask many questions about new private school choice programs. Some of the most critical, and interesting, questions could use more attention, especially around the issues of new families, homeschooling, quality, and comparable public options.
In the 2023-24 school year, nearly one million students used upwards of $4 billion in public funds for private or home schooling.
Who are the new participants, and how do they access the program?
It’s well-established that in some states, most participants in the new choice programs were already enrolled in private schools and many of those families are also affluent. But a substantial proportion of new participants each year do come from low-income households. In Florida last year, 30 percent of new ESA recipients were from households earning under $60,000 for a family of four.
How are they finding out about the program? What is driving them to pull their child from public schools? How do they hope the public funding will change their child’s trajectory?
About one-quarter of students in Indiana’s program last year came from households earning less than $50,000. How many of these are new to the program? Are there other low-income parents who would want to participate but don’t know about the programs, or don’t know how to navigate the system?
Eli Hager and Lucas Waldron of Pro Publica explored these questions in Arizona, and drew important conclusions about the barriers, primarily transportation and additional costs like having to provide lunch and uniforms, that keep lower-income families from participating. It’s also important to hear from similar families who are participating about how or why they made their choice.
We know almost nothing about the process of applying and getting accepted to a private school under these programs. This information doesn’t exist in any sort of available data set and so can only be discovered by reporters willing to build relationships with families. How many schools are they applying to? Are they getting accepted to their top choices? How far are they willing to travel to access private school?
A substantial proportion of new participants each year do come from low-income households.
Who are the new homeschoolers?
As private school choice programs in many states allow parents to use funds to pay for homeschool costs, there’s an understandable urge to report on alleged fraud, grift, or even allowed uses of funds that may seem surprising. What’s harder to know, but equally valuable, is what’s happening with the homeschool population. Data on homeschoolers is scarce by design—these are families who aren’t interested in participating in government-run systems and their data collection.
So why are they interested in using public funding? Has the mantle of fiscal conservatism, previously a hallmark of right-leaning or Republican voters, been completely abandoned as homeschool parents see a role for public funds to support education of any sort? Are homeschool families even Republican? How do families justify wanting to take government money with no government strings attached?
We should probe whether this is really a policy shift, or if it represents a fundamentally new philosophical approach to government spending on American children.
Are families “owed” money by the government to educate children, as some private school choice proponents argue? And if some people make that case for K-12 education, should that be the case for infants and toddlers as well? There could be a surprising overlap between those who support private school choice and those who support the social safety net, with agreement that public funds should pay for a safety net despite disagreement on whether it should be publicly or privately provided.
Available data suggests the homeschool population has grown since the pandemic. At least 19 states reported an increase in the number of homeschool students just between 2022-23 and 2023-24. A staff member in the California Department of Education’s Private School Data office told me that the number of homeschool students there jumped from 14,000 to 28,000 during the pandemic and has remained at least that high.
While there’s no chance that California enacts a private school choice program, a 100 percent increase in the number of homeschool students begs similar questions. Are they distributed evenly across the state? Are there robust homeschool communities in certain parts of the state? If those students were previously enrolled in public schools, those schools are no longer receiving per-pupil funding of $9,000 or more per student. Has that mattered to school or district budgets?
Something more could be known or better understood about homeschool families in almost every state or community. What do homeschool families say about changing demographics of their own communities? Are there more families of color participating, as is often suggested? Are there barriers to access in the homeschool community? Does everyone feel welcome, or does it not matter because each family does what they want?
We might be concerned that more families homeschooling leads to fewer communal connections, and what impact that has on civic engagement or community institutions. We might also posit that homeschool communities could exhibit stronger communal ties than other groups in how they support each other or create opportunities for their children.
A staff member in the CA DOE told me that the number of homeschool students there jumped from 14,000 to 28,000 during the pandemic and has remained at least that high.
School quality and parental perceptions?
Access is of limited value if the quality of available schools is low. Are the private schools that students, especially students from lower-income households, choose of good quality? What information on school quality do states provide to families participating in private school choice programs? How do participating parents define school quality? What are the signals parents look to when evaluating a school?
There’s evidence that elite private schools often don’t participate in private school choice programs, especially if the programs cap tuition on students in the programs, mandate curricula or require public accountability of student performance. For example, Ohio requires participating private schools to agree to certain curricular requirements, to have students take standardized tests, and that low-income students cannot be charged more than the maximum amount of the state’s education saving account. For these reasons, or perhaps simply because they don’t need more students applying, many of the “prep” schools in Ohio choose not to participate. But if elite schools do participate in the private school choice programs in Ohio or elsewhere, that would be an interesting story to explore.
Why did they decide to participate? Is the program changing the demographics of who applies to or who attends the school? If they aren’t participating, what does that mean for the average quality of available private school seats?
One nationally representative survey of parents earlier this year found that communication from teachers is now the most trusted form of information for parents about their child’s progress — more than grades. Do parents who move their student to private school feel that they get more or substantively different communication from teachers? If so, are there best practices that public schools could adopt that would help them compete with the private school appeal?
Do parents who move their student to private school feel that they get more or substantively different communication?
What is the broader context?
Private school choice programs should be considered within the broader context of public education.
Many children are poorly served by public schools, including the 23 public schools in Baltimore City where zero students are proficient at math or the 22,000 fourth-grade students in Los Angeles Unified School District who were not proficient in reading at the end of last year.
It’s one thing for educators or district administrators to oppose private school choice. It’s another to ask them: what do you say to the parents whose children aren’t able to read or perform math on grade level? What can you offer them that’s better than what they might receive in the private sector through an education savings account?
When students aren’t learning in their public schools, parents understandably want something different. That can be a different teacher, a different curriculum, or a different school. Whether private school choice programs address this challenge is a critical question.
Finally, many are concerned about the impact of private school choice programs on public education, where 90 percent of the nation’s students are enrolled.
Let’s say we demonstrate a detrimental impact on public schools’ enrollments and funding (though, importantly, there’s no evidence of this yet). How much of an impact is the American public willing to stomach to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children?
In other words, if universal private school choice programs work to the best of their potential, what might the nation get for it, and is the price something it’s willing to pay?