They include Tabitha Sue James, whose son has been following an online curriculum at home since 2020. 

“I applied the first day,” she said. “I’ve paid thousands of dollars in property taxes to schools. Why shouldn’t we be able to have … homeschool choice?

While families won’t know until early April whether they have received funding, she could be among the nearly two-thirds of homeschooling families who say they use public dollars to educate their children, according to from the Rand Corp., shared exclusively with The 74.  

Of those who live in a state without education savings accounts or tax credits for private education, more than 70% said they would use public funds to offset homeschooling costs if they could, the data show. 

RAND’s American Life Panel on homeschool ESA use of parents who homeschool at least one child:

The similarity between the two figures is significant, said Angela Watson, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University and director of the Homeschool Research Lab.

“That gives some confidence that these responses are accurate,” she said. “Sometimes people will say they might do something when in reality, they wouldn’t actually do it. But here we see that people say and do things at the same rates.”

The lab commissioned Rand to ask the questions as part of its American Life Panel, a nationally representative sample of more than 2,400 parents with K-12 students. While homeschoolers only represented about 10% of the respondents, the data are among the first to independently measure their views on ESAs. The results follow from the ​​Arkansas Department of Education and the University of Arkansas showing that about a quarter of students who used that state’s ESA program last school year were homeschoolers. 

Most existing data come from advocates who private school choice, an issue that still sharply divides homeschoolers. Some remain strongly opposed to ESA programs and warn that they threaten parents’ rights to educate their children as they see fit. “Government cheese always comes in a trap,” one parent posted in the Texans for Homeschool Freedom Facebook group. 

On the topic of ESAs “there are not a lot of indifferent people,” said Kevin Boden, director of legal and legislative advocacy for the Home School Legal Defense Association. “They either think it’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened in education, or they think that it’s the thing to be most feared.”

James, for one, is grateful for the financial support. She wants to add music lessons and buy materials for STEM projects. The Texas program “makes those opportunities possible for us.”

Under the program, she’s eligible to receive $2,000 annually. But parents who choose an accredited private school will receive $10,474 or up to $30,000 for a child with a disability. 

While James prefers the “low-stress” environment of homeschooling, that funding gap is enough of an incentive to make some homeschoolers rethink their educational model.

“Maybe the family has always wanted to get into an accredited private school and now they can,” said Jeremy Newman, vice president of policy and engagement with the Texas Homeschool Coalition, which supports the state’s new program. “There are other families who say ‘Homeschooling is what would have been best for my child but we can’t afford what the child needs, so we’re going to have to go to this other option.’ ” 

Erin Flynn, lead instructor at , an Austin-area microschool for seventh through 12th graders, said she’s received several calls over the past few months from homeschooling families inquiring whether she will be accepting Education Freedom Accounts for tuition. 

Operating out of a converted house with a large porch, she offers a twice-a-week option for $600 per month and a full-time program for $950. She described the curriculum, which focuses on humanities, STEM and art, as “self-directed.” 

“We want to put the power back in students’ hands so that they aren’t just learning the canon; they’re learning how to identify what it is that they love,” said Flynn, a former English teacher. She was the principal of a charter school until she founded Hedge during the pandemic.

Microschools, she said, can be “a bridge” between homeschooling and traditional private school because they often allow students to attend part time. 

‘So many options’

According to Travis Pillow, spokesman for the Texas comptroller’s office, which runs the program, there’s no “seat time requirement.” As long as students are enrolled in a on the state’s list and take an annual assessment, they qualify as a private school student. 

To Pillow, who previously worked for the nonprofit running Florida’s school choice program, the different funding levels in Texas have been an adjustment. Florida’s program doesn’t differentiate between homeschoolers and private school students.

“I saw a lot of virtue in that idea because there are just so many options that don’t necessarily fit in a traditional box anymore,” he said. It’s hard in some cases, he said, to draw “a bright line” between schooling and homeschooling.

Some applicants educating their kids at home, he said, will likely enroll in approved online schools, which would qualify them for the larger award. But Newman, with the Coalition, also expects homeschoolers to pressure lawmakers to increase the amount for their children’s educational expenses. He thinks the proportion of homeschool applicants would be “dramatically higher” if the funds weren’t capped at $2,000.

“Many families homeschool because they have special needs children,” he said. Some types of therapy, “can very quickly surpass $2,000.” 

‘Out of necessity’

Texas isn’t the only state that offers different amounts for private school students and homeschoolers. Alabama’s awards $7,000 per student toward private school tuition and $2,000 for a “home education program.” Homeschooling families are capped at $4,000 even if they have more than two school-age children.

Texas and Alabama are “incentivizing people to go to private school and not to homeschool,” said Watson, with Johns Hopkins. But that could be a challenge for families living in rural areas without a lot of private school options, she said.

Like Florida, Arizona took a different approach when it passed the nation’s first universal ESA program in 2022. The base funding amount, which typically ranges between $7,000 and $8,000, is the same whether parents choose homeschooling or private school. Arizona parent Kathy Visser, whose son has disabilities, said $2,000 wouldn’t cover a month of his tutoring costs. In total, he receives about $40,000. Her daughter, formerly homeschooled, is now in a private school and receives $9,000.

“For families who choose to homeschool out of personal preference, I am sure the $2,000 is welcome,” she said. “For families like mine who homeschool out of necessity, because we could not find any traditional school that came close to meeting either of our kids’ needs, it wouldn’t go far.”

Arizona, however, is the state ESA critics most often point to for examples of a lack of guardrails on spending. A of expenditures turned up a number of “unallowable” items, like diamond jewelry, expensive gaming consoles and designer purses. State Superintendent Tom Horne of the program, but his methods for determining whether purchases violate the letter, or at least the spirit, of the law. 

Pillow said Texas limited homeschool awards to $2,000 because those families don’t have the “big ticket expense” of tuition. But another reason was to avoid “politically hard-to-explain purchases.” Parents also have to shop for supplies and materials within a “closed marketplace.” 

“Legos are legitimate educational items,” he said, noting purchases that have in Arizona. “But are we going to curate that marketplace with the latest and greatest collectors’ item? The $500 Harry Potter set is not necessarily going to be available.” 

Newman, with the Texas Homeschool Coalition, added that there’s much less “administrative weight” on the program when parents primarily spend the money on tuition. But both he and Pillow agreed that the state is likely to revisit the issue.

Don Huffines, who won the Republican nomination for comptroller, and is expected to easily win the general election in November, has said he the program. 

But the staunch conservative is also a . Newman said he hopes that means Huffines’ will be open to addressing the “disparities.”

“People have this idea of what they think homeschooling is,” he said. “It’s the people who have done it who really understand.” 

The National Assessment of Educational Progress is known as the nation’s report card. But as more students leave public schools, the test risks becoming less representative of the nation’s students.

Unlike public schools, private schools aren’t required to participate in the test, which is administered every two years to a representative sample of roughly half a million American students. Not enough private school students take the test to report distinct results for that group, even at the national level. Home school students aren’t included at all.

This isn’t a new problem — the last time NAEP reported separate private school results was 2013. But as more students attend private school or home school with public money, the significance of the information gap will only grow, NAEP governing board members and independent researchers told Chalkbeat.

“I see it as the most significant challenge facing the NAEP program in the medium term,” said Martin West, a Harvard University education professor and vice chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, “because it threatens our ability to speak with confidence about states’ success in supporting student learning.”

A dispute in Florida over the state’s 2024 NAEP results hints at a future where more states question the validity of their scores and where comparisons among states are trickier. When results were released in early 2025, . Then-Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. wrote a that blamed the decline, in part, on excluding private school students.

“This issue only stands to grow, as Florida has chosen a path that puts students and families before teachers unions and provides universal school choice,” Diaz wrote, before concluding with a call to “make NAEP great once again.”

Observers said the increase in Florida’s private school enrollment between 2022 and 2024 simply wasn’t large enough to account for the decline, but state education officials remain concerned.

Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist who frequently works with NAEP data, said “what happened in Florida in 2024 is a harbinger of the future as private school enrollment grows. It will become increasingly plausible for states to say that our public school results aren’t representative of our achievement.”

“If NAEP is the nation’s report card, then questions about private school achievement will become the dog that ate the homework,” added Kane, who is not involved in administering the test. “It will be a source of evasions and spin.”

Low private school NAEP participation leaves information void

NAEP is considered , a no-stakes test that allows reliable comparisons over time and between states.

The put the test in the public spotlight in a new way, fueling competing calls for greater investment in public schools — or more pathways out of them.

Congress intended for public and private school students to take the test, but federal law only requires public schools to participate in the main NAEP reading and math tests administered to fourth and eighth grade students.

Private schools make up about a quarter of American schools and educate about 9% of K-12 students, according to recent federal data. But a much smaller share of private school students take NAEP. In 2024, they accounted for about 1.3% of students who took the main tests.

Low participation means that NAEP doesn’t have enough data from private school students to report separately on how they perform. State results only reflect public school students in those states.

That lack of information already complicates state-by-state comparisons. The shows private school students account for 15% of Wisconsin students and 13% of students in Florida, Louisiana, and New York, but just 2% of students in Utah and Wyoming.

Higher private school participation would allow their NAEP results to be reported separately at the national level and incorporated into state-level results. That could help answer questions about whether changes over time or differences between states are driven by the share of students in private school, West said.

It would take dramatically higher participation to report private school results separately at the state level. That’s not a high priority, West said, because NAEP data isn’t as useful for comparing the effectiveness of public and private schools.

Meanwhile, 1.2 million students participated in some sort of publicly funded school choice program in the 2024-25 school year, according to , an advocacy group.

That’s still less than 3% of K-12 public school enrollment, but the numbers have surged in the last few years and are expected to continue to grow.

Private school leaders have mixed feelings about NAEP

Catholic schools participate at much higher rates than other private schools, and their NAEP results are reported separately. Catholic school students also showed some declines during the pandemic, but they have continued to post higher average scores than public school students.

“I’m not sure why people wouldn’t do it,” said Steven Cheeseman, president and CEO of the National Catholic Education Association. “The reality for us as Catholic schools is that we’ve always felt like it’s an important accountability measure.”

Michael Schuttloffel, executive director of the Council for American Private Education, said in an email that many private school leaders find the prospect of taking time out of the school day for a test that doesn’t directly benefit them “daunting.”

NAEP tries to by handling all the logistics. Officials hope a can find ways to reduce testing burden further and make results more useful.

Some private schools also may have a “philosophical disposition against the idea of a standardized test — especially one administered by the federal government — being the principal measure of student learning or school success,” Schuttloffel wrote.

Schuttloffel said he shares that perspective, but added: “Nonetheless, knowing whether kids can read and do math is an important piece of the picture when we are trying to get our arms around what, and how well, our kids are learning.”

Ron Reynolds, who represents non-public schools on NAEP’s governing board, believes private schools are not only “shirking their responsibility” but also missing “a magnificent opportunity for private schools to tell their story writ large.”

The leaders of private school organizations are , Reynolds said, but “the challenge is delivering the message effectively to school site leadership and inducing buy-in at the site level.”

A new calls for Congress to charge NAEP’s governing board with increasing participation across all school types. Reynolds said he would support making participation a condition of receiving money from . While he would prefer not to see a mandate, public money brings with it certain responsibilities.

But parents likely would object strongly to mandates as federal meddling, Schuttloffel said.

Rob Enlow, the president and CEO of EdChoice, has , but he sees less value in it for private schools. Parents and the public might learn more, he said, if those schools shared more data they already have.

If policymakers want more private school students to take NAEP, incentives such as automatic accreditation would be more appropriate than mandates, he said.

“Everyone says they want apples-to-apples comparisons, but we’ve had rotten apples for years and done nothing about it,” Enlow said.

Ultimately, the case for participating in NAEP is to contribute to reliable information and good policymaking, West said.

“It’s an appeal to the good of the nation or the quality of data we have for everyone,” he said.

The 2026 test administration is currently underway and expected to wrap up later this month. are expected in early 2027.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

Missouri lawmakers are considering expanding the state’s private school voucher program with proposals to open eligibility and remove demands on private schools who accept voucher funds.

But the program, which has spent a majority of the $50 million it received in state funding this fiscal year, may lack room to grow with Gov. Mike Kehoe proposing only a small bump for MOScholars alongside a .

MOScholars uses state money, funded directly in the state budget and indirectly through tax-credit donations, to subsidize K-12 education outside a student’s local public school. The program is . But some homeschool families use the funds to buy supplies, and a couple students have used the funds to enroll in neighboring public schools.

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The program is in its fourth year and provides scholarships to over 6,000 students, thanks in large part to .

State Treasurer Vivek Malek, whose office oversees MOScholars, wants to keep the momentum going this upcoming fiscal year. His in its budget request for the program, seeking to provide funding for 13,000 students next school year.

Kehoe, who lauded the program’s success in his State of the State speech Tuesday, budgeted $60 million in state funds to MOScholars.

“This program is working,” he said, “and Missouri families are counting on it.”

Malek’s office has already spent nearly $40 million on scholarships this fiscal year, according to the Missouri Accountability Portal. Most students with MOScholars funding return the next year, so without funding above and beyond last year’s appropriation, the program will not be able to offer scholarships to many new students.

Despite this funding challenge, the Senate Education Committee appears poised to prioritize MOScholars expansion.

State Sen. Rick Brattin, a Republican from Harrisonville, chairs the committee and has spoken in strong support of MOScholars. His children attend Summit Christian Academy, a school that in its first three years.

Among the first bills Brattin selected for a hearing Tuesday was a , a Republican from Cape Fair, to open eligibility to students already enrolled in private schools.

In the bill’s fiscal note, the treasurer’s office warns the legislation would “significantly increase the amount of funding needed for the program.”

Currently, eligibility for MOScholars is multi-pronged.

Students with an individualized education plan, which public schools administer to students with disabilities requiring accommodations, can apply without restrictions on family income. Students who qualify for free or reduced price lunch are eligible as long as they have attended public school for at least one semester in the past year or are entering kindergarten or first grade. Siblings of MOScholars recipients are also eligible.

Heather Smith, a mother from Cass County, told the committee the expansion would help families like hers. She told them about her son, who struggled in the local public school but “thrived” with the smaller classroom size at Summit Christian Academy.

“The financial strain has been absolutely crushing to our family,” she said.

This school year, her family couldn’t afford the private school tuition. But since her son has been out of public school for over a year, he doesn’t qualify for MOScholars.

“(School) should absolutely be a parent’s choice,” Smith said. “And that choice should not bring a family so far underwater financially that there is little to no way out.”

The bill also seeks to expand eligibility to students with disabilities diagnosed by a medical provider, but it does not define disability nor specify what types of conditions would be covered.

In addition to expanding program eligibility, Hudson’s bill would require judges to allow organizations representing parents to intervene in cases challenging the MOScholars statute. Currently, EdChoice, a nonprofit organization that advocates for school vouchers and similar programs, in a to fund MOScholars.

Hudson’s bill also seeks to bar administrative rules that would place requirements on schools accepting MOScholars students.

The Missouri House is not set to move MOScholars bills early in the legislative session, with its education committee concentrating on matters affecting public schools.

Moberly Republican state Rep. Ed Lewis, the committee chairman and a former public school teacher, said in the committee’s first meeting Wednesday that he is focusing on teacher certification and retention, literacy and transparency and accountability in public education.

The committee will consider bills outside of these topics, he said, adding: “We want to make sure that we focus on those things this session to try to move education in Missouri forward.”

Some bills seek to reign in MOScholars, adding requirements for private schools to be eligible to receive program funds.

A filed by state Sen. Barbara Washington, a Democrat from Kansas City, would require charter schools and private schools accepting MOScholars funds to follow accreditation and accountability measures set by the state, among other requirements.

Similarly, a by state Rep. Mark Boyko, a Democrat from Kirkwood, private schools with MOScholars students would be required to follow safety requirements, like teaching CPR in high schools and screening for dyslexia.

“If a school is being supported with state dollars, then I think it’s important that the state takes responsibility for the safety of those students, just like they would a public school student,” Boyko told The Independent.

He filed the bill last year, but it did not get a hearing. If MOScholars legislation makes it to the full House, Boyko said, he is open to adding his legislation as an amendment.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.

It’s a role this deejay is thrilled to fill at a school that encourages him to express himself any way he can. The magnetic and jovial Omoloju, a student at The International Academy of Hope, is legally blind, hearing impaired and nonverbal. But none of that stopped him from playing by Buckwheat Boyz mid-lesson on a recent morning.

“OK, Josh!” his teachers said, swiveling their hips and smiling. “Let’s go!”

iHOPE, as it’s known, was established in Harlem in 2013 for just six children and moved to its current location blocks from Rockefeller Center in 2022. It now serves 150 students ages 5 through 21 and is currently at capacity with 27 people on its waitlist, according to its principal. 

The four-story, nonprofit school offers age-appropriate academics alongside physical, occupational and speech therapy in addition to vision and hearing services. Every student at iHOPE has a full-time paraprofessional, who works with them throughout the day, and at least half participate in aquatic therapy in a heated cellar pool. 

The school has three gymnasiums fitted with equipment to increase students’ mobility, helping many walk or stand, something they rarely do because of their physical limitations. 

Its 300-member staff includes four full-time nurses and its six-figure cost averages $200,000 annually depending on each child’s needs. Parents can seek tuition reimbursement from the New York City Department of Education through legal processes set out by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, arguing that the public school cannot adequately meet their child’s needs.   

iHOPE focused primarily on rehabilitation in its early years but is now centered on academics and assistive technology, particularly augmentative and alternative communication devices that improve students’ access to learning. Mastery means users can take greater control of their lives. Shani Chill, the school’s principal and executive director, said working at iHOPE allows her to witness this transformational magic each day.

“Every student who comes here is a gift that is locked away inside and the staff come together to figure that out, saying, ‘I can give you this device, this tool, these tactiles’ and suddenly the student breaks through and shows us something amazing about themselves,” she said. “You see their personality, their humor, and the true wisdom that comes from students who would otherwise be sitting there in a wheelchair with everything being done for them — or to them.” 

Some devices, like the one Omoloju uses in his impromptu deejay booth, track students’ pupils, allowing them to answer questions and express, for example, joy or discomfort, prompting staff to make needed modifications. 

Because he’s unable to speak, Omoloju’s parents, teachers and friends assess his mood through other means, including his laughter, which arrives with ease and frequency at iHOPE. It’s a welcome contrast to what came before it at a different school, when a sudden eruption of tears would prompt a call to his mother, who would rush down to the campus, often too late to glean what upset him. 

“One of the things we saw when we first visited (iHOPE) was that they knew exactly how to work with him,” Terra Omoloju said earlier this week. “That was so impressive to me. I don’t feel anxious anymore about getting those calls.”

Yosef Travis, father to 8-year-old Juliette, said iHOPE embodies the idea that children with multiple disabilities and complex syndromes can grow with the right support. 

Juliette has a rare genetic disorder that impacts brain development and is also visually impaired. She squeals with joy with one-on-one attention and often taps her feet in excitement, Chill said. 

“Juliette has grown in leaps and bounds over the past three and a half years and the dedication and creativity of the staff played a significant role,” her father said. “When she is out sick or on school vacation, we can tell that she misses them.”

Travis said his family considered many options, both public and private, before choosing iHOPE.

“iHOPE was the only one that could provide a sound education without sacrificing the necessary supports and related services she needs for her educational journey,” he said. 

iHOPE currently serves one child from Westchester but all the others are from New York City. Parents are not referred there by their local district: They learn about it from social workers, therapists, doctors or through their own research, the principal said. 

Those seeking enrollment complete an intake process to ensure their child would be adequately served there. Parents typically make partial payments or deposits upfront — the amount varies depending on income — while seeking tuition reimbursement from the NYC DOE. 

iHOPE does not receive state or federal funding but some organizations that aid its students by the Trump administration, reducing the amount of support they can provide to families in the form of services and equipment. 

Principal Chill said her school is devoted to giving children the tools they need, even if it means absorbing added costs. 

“We’ll get it from somewhere,” she said, noting iHOPE can turn to partner organization and to its own fundraising efforts to pay those expenses so that every child, no matter their challenges, can learn. 

‘He knows he is in the right place’

Omoloju’ symptoms mimic cerebral palsy and he also has scoliosis. He’s prone to viruses and other ailments, is frequently hospitalized and has undergone surgeries for his hip and back. 

“He is also very charming,” his mother said. “He likes to have fun. He loves people. I feel very blessed that he is so joyous — even when he’s sick. He is very resilient. I love that about him. He teaches me so much.” 

This is Omoloju’s fourth year at iHOPE. He’s in the upper school program — iHOPE does not use grade levels — which serves students ages 14 through 21. 

He has made marked improvements in his mobility and communication since his enrollment. And his parents know he loves it there: Josh’s father, Wale, saw that firsthand after he dropped his son off at campus after a recent off-site appointment.

“I wish I had a video for when Keith [his son’s paraprofessional] came out of the elevator,” his father said. “[Josh] was beside himself laughing and was so excited to see him. He absolutely loves being there. I know he is in the right place and we love that.”

Principal Chill notes many of these students would not have been placed in an academic setting in decades past. Instead, she said, they would have been institutionalized, a cruel loss for them, their families and the greater community. 

“These kids deserve an education and what that looks like runs the spectrum,” she said. “You can have classrooms that feel like a babysitting facility with kids in wheelchairs given colored paper and crayons, which makes no sense. Or you have a place like iHOPE, which takes advantage of the age in which we are.”

Chill notes that assistive and communication-related devices have improved dramatically in recent years and are only expected to develop further. She’s not sure how AI might transform their lives moving forward, but highly sensitive devices that can be operated with a glance or a light touch could be life changing, for example, allowing students to activate smart devices in their own living space.

“This is a great time when you look at all of the technology that is available,” she said. 

‘Moved to tears’

Miriam Franco was thrilled about the progress her son, Kevin Carmona, 16, made in just his first six months at iHOPE, she said. 

Kevin, a high-energy student who thrives on praise from his teachers, is also good at listening: Ever curious, he’ll keep pace with a conversation from across the room if it interests him. 

Kevin has cerebral palsy and a rare genetic disorder that affects the brain and immune system. He has seizures, hip dysplasia and is fed with a gastronomy tube. 

“He was able to receive a communication device, which opened an entirely new world for him and allowed him to express himself in ways he could not before,” his mother said. “He also became more engaged and independent during his physical therapy and occupational therapy sessions. His attention and focus improved when completing tasks or responding to prompts, leading to greater engagement and participation.”

His enthusiasm for the school shows itself each morning, Franco said.

“You can see how happy he is while waiting for the bus and greeting his travel paraprofessional,” she said. “It starts from the moment he wakes up and continues as he gets ready for school. In every part of his current educational setting, Kevin is given real opportunities to participate, with the support in place to make that possible.” 

Principal Chill said she cherishes the moment parents visit the site for the first time, imagining all their child is capable of achieving. 

“They  are moved to tears, saying, ‘Now I can picture what my child can do someday,” she said.

Since the through the Opportunity Scholarship program in North Carolina, many have predicted an increase in the number of private schools across the state.

So far, EdNC has reported that market share — across traditional public, public charters, private schools, and homeschools — is .

This week, (PEFNC) announced the launch of EduBuilder, an initiative designed to help what it calls “edupreneurs” start and expand private schools in North Carolina.

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The initiative aims to “add thousands of private school seats across the state in the coming year,” according to a .

EduBuilder says it will provide resources, strategic guidance, and advocacy to school leaders.

Currently, according to the , there are 930 private schools across the state, including 603 religious schools and 327 independent schools. That number is up from 881 private schools statewide in 2023-24, growth that is consistent with historical trends.

This map shows by county how many students were enrolled in private schools in 2024-25.

Eleven counties didn’t have a private school in 2024-25, including Alleghany, Ashe, Camden, Caswell, Gates, Graham, Jones, Martin, Perquimans, Tyrrell, and Washington counties.

Here is how the number of private schools grew in North Carolina between 1994-95 and 2024-25. You can see the data along with the growth in the number of students .

In North Carolina, private schools are required to register with the (DNPE). Here is what is required to register:

According to , here is a look at how the fiscal year appropriations for the Opportunity Scholarship Grant Fund Reserve have grown and will grow between 2017-18 and 2031-32, thus incenting the establishment of more private schools.

(NCSEAA), “Once a school is registered with DNPE, the school may apply through NCSEAA to receive Opportunity Scholarship and Education Student Accounts (ESA+) program funding. Registration with each agency is separate and registration with DNPE does not automatically guarantee registration with NCSEAA.”

Registration with NCSEAA includes submitting a new school sign up request, a background check, and the submission of documents. Once registered, the private school is listed as a “direct payment school” by NCSEAA. is the current list of those schools for 2025-26.

will open in February 2026 for the 2026-27 school year. Schools must submit a new school signup request no later than June 15, and the final day for schools to submit their registration documents is June 30.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a .

Sitting on the Kentucky border, the Christian Academy of Indiana draws students from 56 different ZIP codes in southern Indiana. Some come from as far as 30 miles away and live in counties without private schools.

Families in those distant communities make the drive every day — sometimes carpooling — because they’re drawn to the school’s environment and extracurriculars, and especially its Christian teaching, said Lorrie Baechtel, director of admissions for the school, which is part of a three-school network in Indiana and Kentucky.

“There are lots of good public school options in Indiana. Families come to our Indiana campus more for that mission,” Baechtel said.

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The school’s enrollment has boomed in the last four years, driven in part by the expansion of the Choice Scholarship, Indiana’s signature voucher program. That’s made tuition more affordable, Baechtel said. More than 1,200 students attended in 2024-2025, up from around 700 in 2021-22.

That reflects a statewide trend: Voucher use has surged in recent years as Indiana lawmakers loosened eligibility requirements. In 2026, the program will open to all families, regardless of income.

But the Christian Academy’s ability to attract students from far away tells another story too. Even as vouchers have become more accessible, Indiana’s rural students aren’t using them at the same rate as their urban and suburban peers. That’s in part because one-third of counties don’t have a private school that accepts vouchers within their borders, and distance is a factor in parents’ decisions on school choice.

The result is that students who live closer to an urban center — which typically have one or more voucher-accepting private schools — may use vouchers at rates up to 30 percentage points higher than those for students who live in a neighboring district.

That also means rural families may be at a significant disadvantage when the state opens the Choice Scholarship to all, and when also begin to roll out in 2027.

“If there are no schools there for you to attend it’s unlikely it’s going to be all that useful for you,” said Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.

More than that, public education advocates say splitting state school funding with vouchers leaves less for the rural public schools these students do attend.

“We’re making the policy choice to fund a lot more choices than we used to,” said Chris Lagoni, executive director of the Indiana Small and Rural Schools Association, which represents public schools. “We’re inviting more and more folks to Sunday dinner. It’s a little bit of a bigger meal, but a lot more guests.”

But the state’s Republican lawmakers have dismissed the fears of a hit to public rural schools as a result of vouchers, saying that rural voters support choice and parents want educational options — whether that’s private, charter, or traditional public schools.

Meanwhile, school choice advocates say the latest expansion of the Choice Scholarship, along with a growing preference for smaller learning environments and the rise of voucher-accepting online schools, could mean more private school access for rural areas in the near future.

“I think we’re best when we have a robust ecosystem of private and public options,” said Eric Oglesbee of the Drexel Fund, a nonprofit venture philanthropy organization that funds new private schools in Indiana and throughout the U.S.

Location matters in accessing a private school

Across the state, for the 2024-25 school year — an increase of about 6,000 students from the year before. The program cost the state $497 million last year, and the average voucher recipient came from a household with just over $100,000 in income.

But around one-third of Indiana counties don’t have voucher-accepting private schools within their borders, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of state data, which also shows that voucher use is lower in rural areas than urban ones.

Voucher use can shift dramatically even between nearby areas. For example, around 16% of students who reside in the Madison school district in southern Indiana use vouchers, but that rate drops to as low as 1% in nearby districts that are more rural. Similar trends hold in other areas of the state, like Indianapolis, Evansville, Fort Wayne, and South Bend.

Location matters because driving distance has been shown to be a factor in how parents choose a school.

In a 2024 survey of parent preferences by EdChoice, an Indianapolis-based group that supports vouchers, around half of parents said they would drive a max of 15 minutes for their children “to attend a better school.” Just over a quarter said they would drive no more than 20 minutes, and the final quarter said 30 minutes would be their max.

Concerns about this issue have persisted in the state for years. Alli Aldis of the advocacy group EdChoice pointed to a 2018 report from her organization that called .” It estimated that in the 2017-18 school year, around 3% of Indiana students, many in rural counties, lived more than 30 minutes from a charter, magnet, or voucher-accepting private school.

Starting a new school anywhere, but particularly in a rural area, comes with challenges like finding a building, said Oglesbee of the Drexel Fund.

A 2023 Drexel Fund report found that facilities in the state are “inadequate to meet the needs of new entrants to the market.” Though the report notes that real estate is both affordable and available, there are no public sources of facilities funding, and surplus facilities are not available to private schools.

But new laws in Indiana have the potential to change that. House Enrolled Act 1515 established voluntary school facility pilot programs open to both public and private schools to “allow for additional flexibility and creativity in terms of what is considered a school facility,” like colocating with schools, government entities, and community organizations.

Oglesbee said the organization is fielding an explosion of interest from potential new private schools in Indiana, possibly as a latent result of the 2023 expansion to voucher eligibility, which made the program nearly universal.

School succeeds ‘if the community asks for it’

Other challenges to opening a private school include hiring staff and recruiting students, which can be a particular issue in rural areas with both fewer children and licensed teachers, advocates said.

Opening a school also requires a team of people with both education and business experience, Oglesbee said. And they’re more likely to succeed if they have roots in the community they hope to serve.

“I see less of the ‘if you build it, they will come’ idea,” Oglesbee said. “A school is successful if the community asks for it.”

At a recent , Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston said rural Indiana communities were “super excited” for school choice, and noted that no Republican lawmaker had been beaten in a primary for supporting the policy.

But Indiana voters haven’t voted on school vouchers, and don’t have a legal avenue to overturn the policy, said Chris Lubienski of the Center for Evaluation and Education Policy at Indiana University. Last year, voters in Kentucky and Colorado ballot measures in favor of school choice, while Nebraska voters partially repealed a state-funded scholarship program.

“There’s resistance: ‘Why do I want to have my taxes fund a program I can’t use?’” Lubienski said.

In rural areas, support for school choice may actually mean support for transfers between public school districts, said Lagoni.

Ultimately, the Rural Schools Association believes any school receiving state dollars should be subject to the same expectations of transparency and accountability, Lagoni said.

Asked about concerns that rural students often have difficulty using vouchers, Huston said he expects voucher usage to continue to grow once the program becomes universal in 2026-27.

“We want to make sure our policies align with what works best for families,” Huston said.

Vouchers add to financial stress for rural schools

With more school options in Indiana, , and declining population, rural public schools feel pressure to compete. Sometimes that means closing and consolidating schools.

Vigo County schools recently announced plans to close two rural elementary schools as part of a plan to renovate facilities and offer more programming. The school corporation’s enrollment has declined slightly, due in part to an overall decline in the county’s total population, said spokesperson Katie Shane.

More students who reside in the district are using vouchers, although they’re not the biggest reason for the district’s falling enrollment. While 429 students used vouchers to attend private schools last school year, an increase from 252 the year before, around 870 Vigo students transferred to another public school district in the fall of the 2024-25 school year. That reflects .

Without their nearest public elementary schools, students may have to travel by bus for half an hour or more to the nearest school, according to community members who have started a petition to save one of the two schools marked for closure, Hoosier Prairie Elementary School.

“Hoosier Prairie isn’t just about going to school,” said Shyann Koziatek, an educational assistant at the school who also signed the petition to stop its closure. “Kids love to learn and love the routine we have.”

Rural schools also often function as large area employers and drivers of the economy.

“Schools are often the center and identity of the community, how people view who they are,” Lubienski said. “You go and cheer on your football team, it’s where you put on your school play.”

But private schools can serve the same role, choice advocates say.

“If people have stronger educational options, more choices, that only strengthens the community,” said Aldis of EdChoice.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at .

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at

A new universal school voucher proposal will be the first bill filed for Tennessee’s upcoming legislative session, signaling that Gov. Bill Lee intends to make the plan his No. 1 education priority for a second straight year.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson said this week that he’ll file his chamber’s legislation on the morning of Nov. 6, the day after Election Day. He expects House Majority Leader William Lamberth will do the same.

The big question is whether House and Senate Republican leaders will be able to agree on the details in 2025. The 114th Tennessee General Assembly convenes on Jan. 14 as Lee begins his last two years in office.

During the 2024 session, the governor’s Education Freedom Scholarship proposal in finance committees over disagreements about testing and funding, despite a GOP supermajority, and even as universal voucher programs sprang up in several other states.

Sponsors in the Tennessee House, where voucher programs have had a harder time getting support from rural Republicans and urban Democrats, attempted to woo votes with an that included benefits for public schools, too. But Senate Republican leaders balked at the scope and cost of the House version.

On Monday, Johnson gave a voucher update to school board members in Williamson County, which he represents, on the development of new legislation.

Similar to the new bill would provide about $7,000 in taxpayer funds to each of up to 20,000 students to attend a private school beginning next fall, with half of the slots going to students who are considered economically disadvantaged. By 2026, all of Tennessee’s K-12 students, regardless of family income, would be eligible for vouchers, though the number of recipients would depend on how much money is budgeted for the program.

“The bill is not finalized, but we’re all working together with the governor’s office to come up with a bill we all can support,” Johnson told Chalkbeat after the presentation.

Testing accountability is among chief issues to settle

Johnson said the Senate’s 2025 bill will again include some type of testing requirement for voucher recipients — either state assessments or state-approved national tests — to gauge whether the program is improving academic outcomes.

However, the Senate bill will eliminate a previous provision that might have allowed public school students to enroll in any district, even if they’re not zoned for it. That policy proposal had been included at the insistence of Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, a Bristol Republican who lost his reelection bid in .

Lamberth, the House leader, did not respond this week to multiple requests for comment about his chamber’s plan, which in 2024 had no testing requirement for voucher recipients. Instead, the House version sought to dramatically reduce testing and accountability for public school students, including replacing high school end-of-course assessments with ACT college entrance exams.

The House bill also included numerous financial incentives to try to garner support from public school advocates. One idea was to increase the state’s contribution to pay for public school teachers’ medical insurance by redirecting $125 million the governor had earmarked for teacher salary increases.

Johnson told school board members the governor is planning a “substantial” increase for public education funding in 2025 but didn’t specify how much or for what.

“I think we’re going to have some things in there that will be great for all public education,” he said when asked later about including costly incentives such as teacher medical insurance funding. “Whether it’s in that (voucher) bill or if it’s in a separate bill is a great question. We will see. I don’t know the answer.”

Williamson County school board rescinds earlier anti-voucher resolution

Johnson told board members in his home district that he expects “nominal” impact to Williamson County’s two suburban school systems south of Nashville, if the bill passes the legislature in 2025. Most enrollees, he said, would be in urban areas that have more low-performing schools and private school options.

Later Monday, Williamson County’s board, including four newly elected members whose voted 10-2 to rescind a opposing Lee’s Education Freedom Scholarship Act.

The governor is from Williamson County and graduated from a public high school there in 1977. So it was significant when his local board voted in March to join across Tennessee on record against his signature education proposal.

But Dennis Diggers, a new board member, argued that it was appropriate to revisit the issue given the recent election, and proposed rescinding the resolution.

“Four of the six candidates who won their election ran publicly for more than six months on this issue, so it was out there,” Diggers said. “I am not going to deny the parents in Williamson County the chance to help their kids.”

Meanwhile, a Tennessee policy organization that supports vouchers released a new poll showing 58% of the state’s voters are more inclined to support a candidate who supports letting parents collect public funding to choose where their child is educated, including public, private, charter, or home schools. The did not use the word “vouchers” in its question to voters, which than language about “school choice.”

Universal vouchers would mark a major expansion of vouchers in Tennessee, where lawmakers voted in 2019 to create education savings account options for students in Memphis and Nashville. That targeted program, which has since expanded to the Chattanooga area, has 3,550 enrollees in its third year, still below the 5,000-student cap, according to data provided by the state education department.

A spokeswoman for the governor said his administration continues to work with both legislative chambers on a “unified” universal voucher bill to kick off discussions for the 2025 session. She also noted that even though lawmakers didn’t approve the bill.

“We remain grateful for the General Assembly’s continued commitment to deliver Education Freedom Scholarships to Tennessee families by keeping funding for last year’s proposal in the budget,” said Elizabeth Johnson, the governor’s press secretary.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Historically, the majority of this funding was only available to students who were low income, had special needs or attended poorly performing public schools. 

Over the past three years, that’s shifted: Today, at least 33 states offer private school choice programs, and of those 12 are “universal,” meaning any student, regardless of income or need, can apply for government funding to subsidize private, religious and — in some cases — home schools. 

Comprehensive analysis of the scale of these initiatives and their implications — both for students and state budgets — has been sparse. But a released earlier this month by , a research think tank based at Georgetown’s School of Public Policy, looks to change that. 

Policy Director Liz Cohen and analyst Bella DiMarco studied the evolution of established or emerging universal programs during the 2023-24 school year across eight states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. 

Their research comes on the eve of an election where school choice measures are on the ballot in three additional states and when disagreement continues to spark over whether these programs give freedom and choice to families who have been historically locked out of private schooling or are part of a larger movement meant to undermine and defund public schools. 

FutureEd’s major finding about how universal choice has played out so far? “Policy design really matters,” Cohen said, in an interview with The 74.

While all of the studied programs are universal in that anyone can apply, whether families end up actually receiving money, how much they receive and what accountability measures the participating schools are held to varies greatly state by state. 

They calculated that in total, 569,000 students received subsidies across these states, representing 55% of the students attending private schools with public funding and costing taxpayers an estimated $4 billion. About 40% of the nation’s 50 million elementary and secondary students are now eligible.

Here are five key takeaways.

“Universal” is not necessarily universal, and no two states’ policies look the same. 

“We talk about [universal programs] as such a monolithic thing,” said DiMarco. “I expected there to be more similarities between the programs and to see more similarities in the data. But that just wasn’t necessarily the case.” 

In Ohio for example, families receive funding on a sliding scale based on need, private schools can’t charge low-income families more than what they receive from the state and participating private schools must use the same graduation requirements.

On the other end of the spectrum, in Florida and Arizona no student who applies for funding is turned down and participating private schools don’t need to be accredited. 

“If you listen to the sort of politically charged descriptions of these initiatives you get one fairly stilted perspective— both from proponents and opponents of these,” said Nat Malkus, the deputy director of education policy at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. “And when you look at them piece by piece, there’s a good bit of daylight between the arrangements from one city to the next.”

But there are a few overarching themes, some of which shouldn’t come as a surprise.

All states give participating families similar amounts of money, with the average award amount coming in at around $7,000, which is approximately 90% to 100% of state per-pupil funding. 

Most states require some sort of accountability testing — but not all. And most of the students who received the funding across all eight states were already attending private schools.

For example in Arkansas, 64% of students who received funds through the Education Freedom Act in its first year, the 2023-24 school year, were already enrolled in private schools. The majority were students with disabilities. 

“So much of the attention in general has been paid to the fact that the majority of kids are already in private school,” said Cohen. “But that’s actually the expected outcome if you are giving money to kids to go to private school, and anyone can get it.”

She said the bigger question moving forward is examining if that pattern will persist beyond the first wave of funding.

Josh Cowen, education policy expert and author of said he doesn’t anticipate the demographics of participating students to shift much over time, meaning he isn’t expecting an exodus of low-income students from struggling public schools to private school alternatives..

“Put me down for projecting that the next version of this [report] is going to find something very similar and even more stark… [because] no policy that isn’t directly targeted toward at-risk children or families, will remain primarily benefiting at-risk children or families.“

The income level of participating families is murkier than people think: Well-to-do families are signing up, but so are more modest ones.

While these programs continue to serve predominantly lower- and middle-income families, the researchers found that participation among higher-income families increased last year, in every state where eligibility expanded and data was available.

“One of the big sort of headlines you keep seeing around these programs is that it’s all affluent families,” said Cohen. “And I just think the nuance to that is that that’s not actually accurate.”

While it’s true that there are many more affluent families than in previous means-tested programs, there are still significant numbers of lower-income families who are entering these programs. She pointed to Florida where 30% of families participating are low income. 

DiMarco said they saw a lot of middle-income families taking advantage of the funds who were “sort of just above the line” under previous, means-tested programs.

Impacts of funding on state budgets remain unclear.

Because the majority of families who took advantage of this funding were not coming from public schools — and therefore not bringing their per pupil public funding with them — these subsidies represent a new state-level cost.

“They’re new expenses,” said Cohen, “which could ultimately down the road — if state lawmakers don’t really think this through — end up [putting] states in a position where they have to say, ‘We’re not going to build this highway … because we have to pay the bill on this private school choice thing.’”

Goals of the programs are rarely — if ever — clearly stated, making accountability tricky. 

Some states, like Arizona and Oklahoma, have no standardized testing requirements or other performance metrics, making it, “nearly impossible to gauge how much learning is taking place under the state’s private school choice programs,” according to the report.

Other states do have more stringent requirements, although Florida is the only state the researchers studied which has mandated funding to evaluate academic performance of participating students.

“The step it feels like a lot of these states skipped is identifying a clear goal for the program and then a clear metric of how you’ll know if you achieved your goal,” said Cohen. “And without stating those things up front, what are we even trying to measure?”

Malkus sees more of an effort to track student outcomes, though he emphasized additional data would help parents make better-informed choices. 

“I don’t think the testing requirements are as strict as some people would like them,” he said, “but the idea that there’s zero accountability for these isn’t true either. It’s somewhere in the messy middle.”

An Alabama lawmaker has filed a bill that would prohibit K-12 schools from not transferring student records based on unpaid balances.

sponsored by Rep. Matt Simpson, R-Daphne, would apply to transfers between private schools. Simpson wrote over text Monday that he is open to suggestions if someone wants to amend the bill.

“It just says these records, you can’t keep the records based on unpaid tuition,” he said in a phone interview. “If you need to get unpaid tuition, you have other ways to get that.”

Simpson said the bill came from a local school facing issues with their graduation rates because a private school will not release records to the public school.

“The theory behind the bill is that the student shouldn’t suffer over financials,” he wrote. “That’s out of their control.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alabama Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Brian Lyman for questions: info@alabamareflector.com. Follow Alabama Reflector on and .

They signed a lease with the local historical society for the and checked with the city to ensure that a tiny alternative school could occupy the building, erected in 1905 by a son of the city’s founder. They opened in February 2021 and moved in with just four students.

A month later, city officials broke the bad news: The Bryan House was actually zoned as a “learning center,” an informal space for tutoring and exhibitions — not a school. It had a sprinkler system, fire alarms and a fire escape. But if they were to stay, the historical society would have to install massive metal fire doors, among other changes. 

When the historical society balked, the couple persuaded it to let them back out of their lease. The change forced them to go virtual for the rest of the school year as they searched for a new space.

“That nearly broke us,” Slaven said.

But new regulations, approved last year by state lawmakers, could save future microschools from similar headaches. The regulations say private schools can occupy existing spaces from museums to movie theaters without seeking local government approval. 

Making more locations accessible to microschools could help the movement grow nationally, just as education saving account laws in places like Florida and elsewhere have opened them up for consideration by families who otherwise couldn’t afford them.

The new Florida regulations, Slaven said, “are a really big deal for the ecosystem.” If they’d been in place two years earlier, he and his students could have stayed at Bryan House. 

Florida was already a leader in the burgeoning microschool movement — the group counts more than 250 programs in its current directory. But the new regulations, first reported by , could be groundbreaking, advocates say, tempting lawmakers elsewhere to do the same. passed the first law limiting state regulation of “learning pods” in 2021 and similar changes have since taken place in .

“The first generation, so many of these were in church basements or people’s homes,” said Michael McShane, director of national research at , a policy organization. If the sector is to grow, he said, “they need to be able to operate in more readily available spaces.”

McShane and a colleague that between 1.1 and 2.1 million school-aged children nationwide, or 2% to 4%, used microschools as their main provider.

But microschools often face maddening regulatory challenges. McShane recalled hearing from an educator converting a commercial space into a microschool who installed half-inch drywall. Regulators said he had to rip it out and install the three-quarter-inch variety. In another instance, a microschool seeking to set up shop at an old mini-golf course had to not just decommission a play windmill but raze it.

Nathan Hoffman, senior legislative director for the , a policy group founded by former Republican Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, said the changes build on Florida’s 2023 that “really blew the doors open on what’s possible” in different forms of schooling. He noted that upwards of 400,000 to 450,000 Florida students are now receiving taxpayer-supported scholarships to attend private schools, including microschools. “It’s created, I think, a whole new way that parents are interacting with K-12 education that we’re only just now getting to understand.”

But policymakers are also realizing that if microschools are to thrive, they can’t be regulated the same as larger schools, Hoffman said. “They’re only serving 30, 40, maybe 50 families. They’re not serving hundreds of families. The size of the buildings that are necessary, the land that’s necessary, is not going to be the same.”

In that respect, microschools are reminiscent of a similar movement that began more than 30 years earlier.

Don Soifer, CEO of the , said the new microschooling founders remind him of “those life-changing educators that we had in the beginning of the charter school movement — it’s fun to be around them.”

A longtime school choice advocate, Soifer opened his own microschool near Las Vegas during the Covid pandemic. In the process, he began consulting with other operators and soon realized they needed help navigating the technical, legal and pedagogical obstacles they faced. He now trains school leaders and offers them access to digital learning and student management tools from providers that typically deal only with school districts. 

Families taking on all the risk

Not everyone welcomes the new changes — or the explosive growth of the sector. 

The Florida League of Cities the legislation, saying it would prevent cities and counties from having a say in school rezoning.

Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University and author of the The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, noted that Florida, like other states, requires students to be de-enrolled in public school to be eligible for education savings accounts, which give families state funds for tuition or homeschooling expenses. These accounts have helped microschools flourish, since they offer families “one more place to spend that money.”

To that end, Cowen called microschools “the food trucks of the new education industry.” 

As with food trucks, he said, these new models may allow for schools to quickly open and offer students new options. But even if they’re appealing, he said, safety monitoring “is probably poorer.” The hours are sporadic, and even in the best case, he said, it “could pick up and leave tomorrow — or close altogether because the margins didn’t work for the business model.”

That risk-reward equation, he said, “is fine when you’re shopping for a taco. Not when you’re shopping for a school that’s intended to give your kid a strong start in life.” Families also take on virtually all of the financial risks associated with microschools, he said, especially those backed by .

Hoffman, the Florida legislative director, said the food truck analogy is “extremely outdated,” invoking fears similar to those of early homeschooling as serving isolated rural, off-the-grid families. “That’s just not the case anymore,” he said. “The fastest growing segment of the homeschool population are ” in urban areas.

Likewise, he said, microschools “are fine options for families that want to use them.”

Soifer said microschooling will likely never be competitive with options like charter schools and private-school vouchers, noting that ESAs have typically been designed to help make Catholic schools more affordable and that many states saying programs must hold accreditation to participate. He pointed out that many microschools closed in Washington, D.C., because parents couldn’t take advantage of the city’s longtime . It requires schools to file, among other things, two years of audited financial statements. 

“Broadly speaking, the frameworks need to modernize,” he said. The changes in Florida are “one important lever that lets us do that.”

Hoffman, the Florida policy advisor, added that state regulations prevent “fly-by-night” operators who can “come in and come in on Tuesday and say, ‘I want to serve students,’ and by Wednesday you’re serving students.”

On occasion, however, microschool parents have had bad experiences, as with a West Virginia operation that one parent called “a glorified babysitter.”

‘Mystical alignment of the universe’

Not far from Fort Lauderdale, in Coral Springs, Fla., Frank Farro and his wife Natalie in 2020 were looking for a place to start their own microschool. Like the Slavens, they wanted to bring an Acton Academy network school to their neighborhood. And like the Slavens, they struggled to find a building. “Location has been the hardest thing for us,” Frank Farro said. “Not even close.” 

The couple found a suitable space in a commercial building, but ended up getting kicked out when another school reclaimed it after the pandemic. Looser regulations would open more spaces for consideration, he said.

Like many others, the Farros’ school has grown quickly, from just six students in 2020 to 32 this fall. They’re currently renting about 5,000 square feet from a church, but Farro anticipates they’ll reach capacity in about six months, with a planned enrollment of around 60 students.

“Then we’ll be looking for our forever campus,” he said. “And that’s when things will get even more interesting.”

In 2020, he recalled, they looked at a five-acre tree farm in nearby Coconut Creek. It had a few houses that could serve as classrooms and seemed perfect. But at a selling price of $1.5 million, it didn’t seem practical for just six students.

Farro noticed recently that the property is back on the market this summer — for a cool $4 million.

Finding the right space, with playgrounds and outdoor spaces, he said, is “near impossible,” but he hopes the new regulations open up other options. As it is, “you have to find some mystical alignment of the universe in order to land a place that is zoned for a school — or you have to be massive, with a massive amount of capital, to go find another place.”

More than two dozen private schools have applied as first-time participants in the second year of Arkansas’ school voucher program.

Created through the 2023 , the Educational Freedom Account program allows state funds to be used for allowable expenses such as private school tuition. It’s being phased in with expanding eligibility criteria each year until it’s available to all Arkansas students in the 2025-2026 academic year.

As of the end of June, 27 new private schools applied for the second year of the EFA program, according to the Arkansas Department of Education. There is no application deadline for schools, however, most approval will occur prior to the start of the academic year in August, ADE spokeswoman Kimberly Mundell said. If schools are approved in the fall, payments will be prorated, she said.

Twenty-three schools have received conditional approval pending legislative approval of the final rules governing the EFA program, Mundell said. Three schools are pending review and one school, The Lab School of Memphis, was rejected because it’s located outside Arkansas.

Madonna Learning Center in Germantown, Tennessee, however, is permitted to participate for its second year because the allows schools outside Arkansas that previously served Succeed Scholarship students to participate. The defunct program, which primarily supported students with disabilities, was absorbed into the EFA program.

Of the 100 schools approved to participate in the inaugural year of the program (not all participated), 86 have received preliminary approval and another seven are pending review, according to ADE. Two are closing — Avilla Christian Academy in Alexander and Cedar Heights Christian Academy in North Little Rock.

Instead of renewing, Lighthouse Homeschool Cooperative in Jonesboro is applying as an education service provider. Julian and Jaxon Academy in Little Rock was rejected for the upcoming year.

“From the very beginning of the EFA program, we have stated that participating private schools will be held accountable for providing a high-quality education to students, and we will investigate if bad actors are wasting taxpayers’ funds,” Mundell said. “During our ongoing review of participating schools this past school year, the department noticed some issues that resulted in a pause in payments to the entity. We have been in contact with school officials and will continue to investigate.”

First-time applicants

Christi Zumwalt, administrator for Garrett Memorial Christian School in Hope, said she was “a little apprehensive” about joining the EFA program its inaugural year and wanted to take time to learn more about it. Zumwalt said she wanted to be sure the school’s Biblical curriculum wouldn’t be compromised before applying the second year.

“We wanted to be able to stay true to what we had been doing for these 24 years, but we also wanted to help our families out and provide Christian education to anyone, even those who might not be able to afford it,” she said.

Tuition for the upcoming year at Garrett Memorial Christian School, which had nearly 170 students last year, will be $4,150 per child with discounted rates for siblings, according to Zumwalt and the application filed with ADE. There’s an additional $500-$550 in fees for enrollment, books, athletics and music.

For the 2024-2025 school year, EFA participants can receive up to $6,856 per student for educational expenses, an increase from about $6,600 last year.

Participation will be capped at around 14,000 students for the 2024-2025 academic year. Nearly 12,000 students have applied so far with 4,998 renewing students and 6,856 new applicants, according to ADE.

The department temporarily closed the student application portal in June to transition to a new vendor that will manage the program and it will reopen later this month, according to the .

The private school portal has remained open for applicants like Michael Maloy, Thaden School’s head of school, who said it made sense for his Bentonville institution to join the EFA program this fall because more students will be eligible as the school expands to include kindergarten and first grade.

Inaugural year eligibility criteria included foster children, children of active duty military members and first-time kindergarteners, as well as students who have disabilities, are experiencing homelessness or are enrolled in an “F”-rated school. Eligibility in year two expands to include students at “D”-rated schools and children of veterans, military reservists or first responders.

The independent school, which Maloy said offers a “challenging and engaging curriculum” that aims to prepare students for college, work and life, opened in 2017 with support from the Walton Family Foundation. A longtime supporter of charter schools and “school choice,” the foundation has invested more than $1 billion traditional district, public charter and private schools “to support innovative organizations” that want to give families the option “to choose the best school for their child, regardless of their ZIP code,” .

Thaden has historically offered grades 6-12, but plans to grow into a K-12 institution in the next few years. Tuition will range from $23,000 to $28,500 next year, and Maloy said they offer “a robust financial aid program” that includes indexed tuition, meaning families pay according to their income.

Participating in the EFA program will provide additional assistance to students’ families, more than half of whom receive some form of financial aid, he said.

“I think parents that have applied are very thankful to have the opportunity,” Maloy said. “The gift of a transformational education’s really important and being able to have help financing it I think is really important to parents.”

Accountability measures

While proponents praise the affordability aspect of the EFA program, critics argue it’s unfair because private schools receiving state funding don’t have to follow the same requirements as their public counterparts, such as admitting all students, providing transportation and administering certain standardized tests.

The LEARNS Act does require private schools to administer approved annual exams for EFA students.

For AR Kids, a ballot question committee, hopes to address the accountability issue through a that, among other things, aims to hold private schools receiving state funding to the same standards as public schools. The group has until Friday to collect from at least 50 counties to qualify the measure for the 2024 ballot.

Opponents of the EFA program have also criticized it for drawing students away from public schools and taking with them much-needed funding, particularly for smaller, rural schools.

Zumwalt said she doesn’t view it as a competition with public schools “because we do something totally different.”

“We offer the academic rigor that the other schools do, but we also teach everything through a Biblical lens … my colleagues that are in public schools, I don’t feel like I’m competing with them and I’ve told them that we’re not trying to take your students, we just want to be able to offer what we have to students who want it,” she said.

Curriculum flexibility is appealing to Marcus Baskerville, who wants to open a Little Rock private school that offers an AI-driven curriculum with Christian components. The Texas-based education administrator hopes to open the Baskerville Leadership Academy in Little Rock for the 2025-2026 academic year and said he’s applying for the EFA program now so he’ll already be in the system.

To qualify for the EFA program, schools that have not been in operation for at least one school year a statement by a certified public accountant that the school is insured and has sufficient capital or credit to operate in the upcoming school year and/or file with ADE a surety bond or letter of credit for the amount equal to the account funds needed by the school for any quarter.

Baskerville launched his nonprofit, Baskerville Squared, in 2020 after noticing a decline in students coming to school during the pandemic. He wanted more flexibility to try creative curriculums, which he said private schools provide.

“You’re afforded that autonomy to, if something’s not working, you can change aggressively to help that student out to make sure something’s going to work … to make sure they’re all getting the education that they need as opposed to a few of them and a majority of them not getting it,” he said.

Baskerville initially explored opening charter schools in , and . He later realized it would be easier to open a private school and learning about the EFA program solidified his plans to do so.

“We’re not here to take away from public schools or charter schools,” Baskerville said. “We’re here to be a help to those areas because parents want an affordable option that’s alternative, and if you’re not getting it from public or charter and [private’s] giving that affordability, you shouldn’t see it as a negative thing.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .

Indiana’s private school voucher program enrollment jumped about 32% in the most recent school year, marking a historic single-year jump, according to the state’s latest .

The state-funded program enrolled a record 70,095 students in 2023-2024, costing taxpayers $439 million — which is around 40% higher .

Even so, the report noted that — had all Hoosier voucher users attended their traditional public schools — the state would have paid around $516 million in education expenses. That’s because vouchers are paid at a lower amount than public school funding.

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After widening the Choice Scholarship Program in 2022, state lawmakers further expanded the and open to almost all Hoosier families.

Since the changes took effect, — which allows families to receive vouchers to attend private schools — have expanded to include households with incomes up to 400% of the amount required for a student to qualify for the federal free or reduced price lunch program, equal to about $220,000.

The latest numbers

The new statewide report released on Friday indicates that the latest surge in voucher participation was largely driven by students from wealthier families.

The average family income for a voucher student in 2023-24 was $99,121 — an increase of more than 20% from the previous year. That’s well above the state’s median household income of about $67,000, according to the .

Almost 8,000 students in the latest cohort came from households making between $150,000 to $200,000 annually — up from 2,800 in 2022-23.

Voucher students from families making more than $200,000 increased even more — roughly tenfold — from 354 students in 2022-23 to about 3,700 in 2023-24.

Story continues below.

Across other income brackets, around 2,000 more students came from families with incomes of up to $50,000, while another 2,000 came from households making between $50,000 and $100,000. More than 4,000 additional students came from families with incomes between $100,000 to $150,000, according to the report.

Two-thirds of voucher recipients in the last school year had never attended an Indiana public school, an increase of about four percentage points from 2022-23.

In total, 6.1% of all Indiana public and private-school students received a voucher in 2023-24, up from around 4.7% the year before, according to the report.

Data shows white students make up the majority of voucher users at 64%. Hispanic students account for 17.3% of voucher participants, while Black students make up just shy of 9%.

The average award amount was $6,264 and the average tuition and fees at a private school was $7,749, according to the report. Vouchers provide 90% of the amount of state-funding a public school corporation receives for each student, or covers all tuition and fees, whichever is lesser.

An ongoing push to increase vouchers

Indiana voucher participation has grown rapidly since the program began in 2011, when less than 4,000 students used a Choice Scholarship. Spearheaded by then-Gov. Mitch Daniels, the program intended to help children from poor families find alternatives to low-performing public schools.

Indiana is now one of 16 states with publicly funded vouchers, according to EdChoice, an Indianapolis-based group that backs voucher programs.

But that most Choice Scholarship students will attend private schools with or without a voucher, meaning their tuition is an added expense for taxpayers and only the state’s wealthiest will benefit.

Public schools officials and teachers unions also remain opposed to Choice Scholarship expansions, arguing that its projected cost over the next two years will stymie K-12 education funding increases for public schools. They point to state law, too, that allows voucher schools to reject students for their religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, or academic ability, among other reasons.

“This expansion, extending vouchers to wealthier families, funnels public funds to those who can already afford private schools. This shift adds a financial burden on the state without reducing public school costs, undermining claims of state savings,” said Keith Gambill, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association (ISTA). “Instead of helping wealthy families attend private schools at the expense of public school kids, we should be investing these tax dollars in our public schools.”

Still, change could be on the horizon for the state’s voucher system.

During the most recent 2024 legislative session, Sen. Ryan Mishler, R-Mishawaka, to completely overhaul Indiana’s private school vouchers with a grant program that would allow all Hoosier families — regardless of income — to choose where their students get educated.

Although the bill did not advance, discussion at the Statehouse previewed when the General Assembly reconvenes to craft the next state budget.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

A proposal to steer state dollars for K-12 public school students to private schools of their choice advanced Thursday from the Louisiana Senate, a week after members forced its author to sideline the measure.

In response, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry starred in a television ad campaign and asked citizens to contact state senators and tell them to vote for the LA GATOR education savings account (ESA) program. The governor was on the Senate chamber sidelines, taking time to talk to multiple lawmakers, before was approved in a 24-15 vote.

“I don’t feel like it’s a big win for me,” Landry told the Illuminator after the vote. “I think it’s a big win for the kids of Louisiana, for parents out there who overwhelmingly, irrespective of party affiliation or economic means, have said in poll after poll after poll that the money should follow the child.”

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In addition to the governor’s influence, sizable changes to the proposal’s financial framework were made Thursday. The updated version shifts the task of figuring out how much state funds will be needed for the ESA program from legislators to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). Once that amount is calculated, it will still be up to lawmakers to decide how much public money to put into the program.

“Let (BESE) do that, you know, then you don’t chip it in stone,” said Sen. Kirk Talbot, R-River Ridge, who authored the amendments approved Thursday. “… I’d rather give BESE the flexibility to determine how much they think that money should be.”

For the time being, there is a question mark over how much education savings accounts will cost the state once they are made available to all students, regardless of household income.

The bill still calls for the program to be launched for the 2025-26 school year, meaning the Legislature would have to determine during next year’s session how much money they want to put into ESA.

The initial participants will be current voucher recipients in the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program in addition to special education students and public school students from families that earn less than 250% of the federal poverty level. Based on federal poverty standards as of March, the qualifying income for a family of four would be under $62,400.

The Educational Excellence Program, enacted in 2008, provides private school tuition vouchers for students from low-income families who attend poor-performing schools. Some 5,500 students received the vouchers in the 2022-23 school year, and the program will lapse once LA GATOR is operating.

In year two of the program, the qualifying family income threshold will be 400% of the poverty level, which is below $124,800 for a family of four.

Education savings accounts would be made available to all families in year three, when the associated cost is projected to soar.

In the bill’s original version, the ESA program would have cost the state $260 million annually once any student could take part, according to the Legislature’s fiscal staff. An independent projection from the Public Affairs Research Council placed the amount closer to $520 million annually.

That uncertain yet sizable sum made some fiscal conservatives, who otherwise support the idea of school choice, wary of voting for the legislation.

“The dollar amount is still a concern,” Talbot said. “That’s our fiduciary responsibility to the state. That never goes away.”

Those cost concerns, along with an unwanted school accountability amendment, led the bill’s author, Sen. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, to temporarily shelve his measure last week. But Talbot’s changes included removing a stipulation that any student who uses an ESA be administered the same high-stakes testing required of public school students.

Results from the tests would have measured whether schools that accepted ESA students were spending state money effectively, with substandard private schools no longer being allowed to accept state money.

Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, authored last week’s amendment and objected to its removal Thursday.

“I’ve never understood why someone would be afraid of accountability for a great idea,” Jackson-Andrews said, adding that the lack of testing might signify doubts among ESA supporters in the program’s potential for success.

In place of Jackson-Andrews’ accountability provision, the revised bill allows — but doesn’t require — private schools to test ESA students on math and English language arts. The Louisiana Educational Assessment Program test public school students are required to take includes sections for English, math, science and social studies.

After her week-old amendment was removed, Jackson-Andrews submitted a proposal to align ESA accountability standards with the system in place for current voucher recipients. She excluded any punitive measures for schools whose ESA students perform poorly on assessments.

Edmonds argued that existing standardized tests at private schools will sufficiently measure the progress of ESA students. Jackson-Andrews maintained that private schools shouldn’t be allowed to pick their own assessments, but her amendment was rejected.

A blunted third attempt from Jackson-Andrews to insert accountability measures into the bill was successful. It calls for any assessment standards the state education department adopts to apply to every school in the state, but it doesn’t single out ESA students for separate evaluations.

Although lawmakers won’t make funding decisions on the ESA program until next year, they might help decide where the money might come from sooner. The 144 members of the Legislature and 27 appointees by the governor will take part in a constitutional convention from Aug. 1-15, based on organizing legislation that awaits Senate approval.

Landry and proponents of the event haven’t provided agenda specifics, but removing constitutional protections from certain funding streams is expected to be a priority.

The Minimum Foundation Program (MFP), which provides funding for Louisiana’s K-12 public schools, is one of those protected sources, but Landry has said it wouldn’t be touched during the constitutional rewrite.

The state will provide nearly $4.1 billion to public schools next academic year based on lawmakers are supporting.

Piper Hutchinson contributed to this report.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on and .

Gov. Brian Kemp signed a suite of education-related bills into law Tuesday, including a controversial measure that will allow parents of children in low-performing schools to claim $6,500 in state education funds to pull their children out of the public system and enroll them in private school or teach them at home.

Supporters say expanding school vouchers will help kids in schools that don’t meet their needs succeed academically. Opponents say they siphon needed dollars from underfunded public schools to private institutions with less oversight.

Kemp thanked the bill’s author, Cumming Republican Sen. Greg Dolezal, and House Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones for working on the bill for years before it finally passed this year.

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“I am grateful for that dedication because this legislation has always been about one thing, providing every Georgia child the opportunity to get the education that they deserve,” Kemp said. “To ensure that participating schools are living up to that promise, they must demonstrate their own sound financial footing and submit student performance data before enrolling students, and they must administer an education savings authority approved assessment to ensure quality student performance.”

Those additions Kemp mentioned were sweeteners added to help convince Republican holdouts in the House to support the measure. Other additions make temporary teacher pay raises approved over the last few years permanent and allow public schools to use state capital construction dollars to build or renovate Pre-K facilities.

The program is set to go into effect for next year’s fall semester and is limited to students zoned into the lowest 25% of Georgia schools. Except for kindergartners, participants must have been enrolled in public school for at least a year to qualify. The cost to the state is capped at 1% of the cost of the Quality Basic Education formula used to determine the state’s school funding share, which now equals more than $100 million.

Though some House members needed convincing, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones indicated the Senate is ready to move further.

“As a longtime proponent of school choice, I am proud of the General Assembly for passing the most substantive initiative in decades,” Jones said. “I want to thank Gov. Kemp for his support for school choice and education freedom within our state. Today’s signing of SB 233 is a great step in the right direction, however, there is still more work to be done to give parents the choice and resources that can meet their child’s unique educational needs. I look forward to working with Governor Kemp and my colleagues in the General Assembly to ensure educational freedom in Georgia.”

Many education leaders were not cheering as Kemp affixed his signature to the bill. Teachers and education lobbyists have long complained that the voucher bill will leave already cash-strapped schools with less money. In a virtual news conference hosted by the Intercultural Development Research Association Association following the bill’s signing, activists lamented what they called a rushed and non-transparent process that led to the bill’s passage and predicted that it will do little to help the families proponents say it will because $6,500 is not enough to pay for tuition at most Georgia private schools, which tend to be clustered around major metro areas.

Elijah Brawner, a divinity student at Emory University, said every private school in his area is Christian-based, which would further alienate some students.

“So if you can get a public school voucher and that lets you leave your supposedly terrible public schools and take your money with you, first of all, the voucher doesn’t cover the whole tuition,” he said. “So now you’re only letting people come through who can already afford to pay partial tuition through subsidizing students above a certain income level, and you’re not subsidizing any students that are of a diverse faith background.”

Tracey Nance, the 2022 Georgia Teacher of the Year, said she is concerned that families who take advantage of the program may be exposed to legal discrimination and give up rights that public school families would have.

“The private schools that accept these publicly funded vouchers are not held to the same standards as public schools, and they are in fact even legally allowed to discriminate,” she said. “They have little oversight students will not be required to take the same accountability test as the rest of Georgia students, they will not be held to the same instructional standards. Even more when parents use this voucher they waive all rights to federal protection and public education services, including services for students with disabilities and services such as transportation and school meals.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com. Follow Georgia Recorder on and .

After a court ruling that , members of the state Legislature have proposed a constitutional amendment that would allow public money to go to private and religious schools.

is scheduled for hearings Wednesday and Friday next week in the House Judiciary Committee.

If approved by two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate and voters this fall, HJR 28 would remove the part of Article VII, Section 1, that says, “no money shall be paid from public funds for the direct benefit of any religious or other private educational institution.”

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That clause was specifically flagged by Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman when he struck down a law dealing with payments to the parents of children in the state’s correspondence programs.

Some parents had been using the money to pay for tuition at private schools, and Zeman concluded that the law had been deliberately written to allow the practice, making it unconstitutional.

HJR 28 also proposes to change Article IX, Section 6, which prohibits spending public money except for public purposes. The proposed amendment would add a clause saying that the section doesn’t prevent payments “for the direct educational benefit of students as provided by law.”

In a statement accompanying the release of the draft amendment, Rep. Sarah Vance, R-Homer and chair of the judiciary committee, said that “by allowing public funds to benefit all Alaskans seeking educational opportunities, this amendment promotes fairness and empowers choice in education.”

Rep. Jamie Allard, R-Eagle River and a member of the judiciary committee, said that a public vote — required of any constitutional amendment — would empower voters and “ensures that all Alaskans have a voice in shaping the future of education in Alaska.”

While large numbers of state legislators and Gov. Mike Dunleavy have expressed alarm about the legal decision on correspondence programs, many have said they intend to postpone action until after the Alaska Supreme Court addresses the topic.

Talking to reporters on Tuesday, several members of the supermajority caucus in charge of the Alaska Senate said they would be unlikely to support a constitutional amendment eliminating the prohibition on public funds for private schools.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Alaska Beacon maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Andrew Kitchenman for questions: info@alaskabeacon.com. Follow Alaska Beacon on and .

A massive that expands a private school scholarship program and opens up Boone County to charter schools squeaked out of the Missouri House and to the governor’s desk on Thursday, winning the bare minimum number of votes needed for passage.

The 153-page bill, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Andrew Koenig of Manchester, is estimated to cost taxpayers $468 million when fully implemented. It passed 82-69 and heads to Gov. Mike Parson. Three Democrats joined with 79 Republicans in support of the bill, with 45 Democrats and 24 Republicans voting against.

State Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a St. Peters Republican, carried the Senate bill and sponsored the legislation in 2021 that created the tax-credit scholarships, called MOScholars.

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He said during Thursday’s debate that the bill combines his interest in the MOScholars program with investment in rural schools.

“We put together a package that serves all the diverse interests in education,” Christofanelli said.

The original bill was 12 pages, but led to the inclusion of over a hundred pages of education legislation.

“We’re all going to take a step together,” Christofanelli said Thursday. “This is the most substantive investment in public education that this state has ever seen.”

Lawmakers filed 53 amendments prior to the vote, but none were allowed by GOP leadership  to offer them for consideration.

Rep. Paula Brown, a Democrat from Hazelwood, said during debate that the Senate was controlling the process.

“This is an esteemed chamber, and we’re acting like we don’t matter,” she said.

Christofanelli said the Senate had listened to concerns, and amendments were made to another bill Wednesday to smooth over issues with the larger package.

“My concern was that if I did those changes on this bill and sent it back into the Senate, it would get caught in the abyss and we would never have a law at the end,” he said.

He gathered input from key lawmakers, and delivered suggestions to the Senate. Then, Wednesday evening, the a new version of on full-time virtual schools.

The House passed this second bill, with the fixes, after approving the larger education package.

Although the bill has measures to boost teacher salaries and school-district funding, Democrats had concerns. Many focused on the estimated cost.

“This is a bill that has some great, shiny things that we like in exchange for some really bad (things),” said House Minority Leader Crystal Quade, a Springfield Democrat. “But as we’ve talked about, the real problem with this bill is the amount of money we have.”

Democrats from Boone County also spoke against the addition of charter schools in their community.

State Rep. David Tyson Smith, a Democrat from Columbia, called the bill “poison” to Boone County.

“Our schools are accredited. We don’t need this bill,” he said. “We are hanging on by a razor’s edge financially already. You bring charter schools into Boone County, which is what this bill specifically does, and it hurts us.”

As the final votes rolled in and the bill’s passage was assured, Koenig sat on the House dais, smiling as the bill he has called his top legislative priority made it across the finish line.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

LINCOLN — The author of Nebraska’s new Opportunity Scholarships Act says she knows that the state tax credit for funding students attending private K-12 schools risks being rejected by voters in November.

That’s why State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Omaha and other supporters of the school choice law drafted several bills this year to preserve the heart of the program regardless of the election outcome. Each proposal would offset the cost of a private K-12 education with state tax dollars.

Recently, Linehan settled on Legislative Bill 1402 as this session’s vehicle for the changes. She originally designed the bill to shift the scholarship program created by the Opportunity Scholarships Act to the State Treasurer’s Office and away from nonprofit scholarship-granting groups.

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Her latest amendment to LB 1402 — Amendment 3016 — clarifies that school choice supporters intend to directly allocate state funds for private school scholarships instead of steering them to outside scholarship organizations, essentially eliminating the middlemen.

Public school advocates call Linehan’s push an effort to stifle voters’ voices. The advocates contend Nebraskans don’t want public funds spent on private schools, whether through a tax credit or directly. They say the latest amendment would start a voucher program that could cut into state funding for public schools or other priorities even faster than the Opportunity Scholarships Act.

Options for kids or funding grab?

Linehan and other private school advocates say the scholarships give low-income students and their families more options. One of the largest scholarship-granting organizations, Opportunity Scholarships of Nebraska, said Monday it had received 915 applications.

The group said it expects as many as 2,500 applicants by the April 30 deadline. Spokeswoman Lauren Garcia Gage said it had received calls from the families of more than 5,000 interested students, including many from families of students already attending private schools.

Linehan’s 2023 school choice law created a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for donors to scholarship-granting groups that fund tuition help for low-income students to attend private K-12 schools.

Public school advocates, including Stand for Schools Nebraska, have argued the tax credit favors the rich at the cost of the state treasury. Linehan and others say they have worked in recent years to add more funds to state aid to K-12 public schools, adding a new baseline of state aid and proposing additional aid.

Amendment 3016 would create a new program that would stand even if voters reject the original law. It does so by cutting the role of scholarship-granting organizations and donors.

“I’m trying to make sure all parents in Nebraska have school choice,” Linehan said. “Not just wealthy. … Not just those who are lucky enough to have grandparents help them.”

Linehan said she doesn’t have the $10 million she thinks she would need to fight the opposition to the Opportunity Scholarships Act at the ballot box. She pointed to opposition from deep-pocketed donors such as philanthropist Susie Buffett. Linehan said she won’t try to match public school supporters in raising funds.

“I am not going to go around raising $10 million to try and beat that when we’ve got 15 open legislative seats, and if we don’t win, then they’ll come back in and repeal it in the Legislature,” she said.

What the amendment does

Under the amendment, state funds per student would be capped at the cost of education but could not exceed 75% of the statewide average of what the state spends per student in general funds on public K-12 education.

The amendment allocates a baseline of $25 million a year and allows for annual increases of up to 25% a year, based on the total scholarship funding awarded each year, up to an annual cap of $100 million.

Taxpayers would fund the full $25 million from the beginning, at a time when the for other new programs. The Opportunity Scholarships law, by contrast, requires private parties to donate funds in order to receive the state credit.

People familiar with fundraising for scholarship organizations told the Examiner that demand has outstripped donations thus far. Many donors have to be told about the tax credit, organizers said.

Linehan confirmed last week that her amendment would pull private money out of the process and would fund the private school scholarships with an appropriation of public money, like school voucher programs do in other states, including Iowa.

If voters chose to retain the Opportunity Scholarships Act this fall, the state could be on the hook for both programs, the tax credit and a separate allocation of money for scholarships. (A different related bill would sunset the original program if a new version passes.)

Most political observers expect the ballot measure to fail because Nebraskans have rejected voucher programs in the past, and opponents of the new law are planning a campaign that will include heavy rotations of advertising.

Court fight likely

Linehan acknowledged the amendment could make a court fight with Stand for Schools and others more likely. But she said school choice advocates have case law and a conservative U.S. Supreme Court on their side.

Linehan and the school choice advocacy group Keep Kids First have said courts have allowed similar programs in other states that have similar constitutional prohibitions.

Keep Kids First, which advocates for school choice in Nebraska, has ties to the American Federation for Children and Betsy DeVos, a major political donor and former education secretary under then-President Donald Trump.

Anthony Schutz, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln law professor, is one of several legal experts who argued previously that the tax credit program might run afoul of the Nebraska Constitution. He and others said the new amendment might be even more problematic.

“Since last year, we’ve wondered whether or not we have an appropriation to a non-public school,” Schutz said.

Now, he said, “We’ve got a bill that clearly appropriates money.”

Under AM 3016, the State Treasurer’s Office would have the responsibility for overseeing the scholarship program, much like it does with Nebraska’s college savings plans. The office would have the authority under the amendment to hire a private vendor to do so.

The amendment would place the state closer to providing public money to a private school, Schutz said.

‘Shell game’ gone

Dunixi Guereca, a legislative candidate speaking for Stand for Schools, said the legal point of the scholarship-granting organizations was to create a shell game filtering public money to private schools through a third party.

Schutz said courts have thrown out constitutional provisions in other states prohibiting private school funding, ruling that those restrictions encroached on religious freedoms.

Constitutions in those states prohibited state funds from being spent on religious education.

Nebraska’s Constitution, by contrast, prohibits spending on all private schools, he said, including secular schools.

Article VII, Section 11, of the constitution says, “No appropriation or grant of public funds or property shall be made to any educational institution which is not owned and controlled by the state or a governmental subdivision thereof.”

Linehan’s amendment to LB 1402 would allow access to scholarships for families earning up to 300% of the federal poverty level, or up to $93,600 for a family of four.

Families earning less would get first dibs, including families already on means-based scholarships and those earning up to 185% of the poverty level, meaning $57,720 for families of four.

Other students prioritized for scholarships under the amendment include those on individualized education plans (IEPs) and students fleeing bullying or violence in school.

Critics point out that private schools still can refuse to educate students of their choosing, with a handful of exceptions under federal law, including a student’s race or gender.

Stand for Schools, in an internal analysis of the amendment, wrote that tying the measure to this federal law would let private schools discriminate based on a student’s disability or sexual orientation.

Annual reports

AM 3016 would require the Treasurer’s Office to file a report with the governor each  Dec. 1 starting in 2025 that spells out how the scholarships can be pursued.

The report would include the number of students receiving scholarships the previous year, the number of students wait-listed or denied scholarships and the reasons they were denied.

It would also list the demographics of scholarship recipients, including income level, grade level and location.

Observers said that similar reports have been used in other states to justify the expansion of school choice scholarships or voucher programs. It’s a way to gauge demand and popularity.

Stand for Schools says research in school choice states found that more than 70% of those who apply for such scholarships or vouchers already attended private schools or intended to do so.

Linehan and Keep Kids First have argued that means nearly a third of students who accept scholarship funds might not otherwise have been able to attend a private school of their choosing.

The amendment would let the Treasurer’s Office spend up to 7.5% of the appropriated funds on administrative costs, including on internal managers providing oversight to private contractors.

The amendment limits the state’s ability to control or influence the governance of any “qualified” school accepting the money. It cannot force the schools to keep educating scholarship students.

It includes an emergency clause, meaning it would go into effect immediately if passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.

Who’s applying

Opportunity Scholarships of Nebraska says more than 40% of its early applicants are students of color, more than half are from outside Omaha and Lincoln and 40% are at or below 185% of the poverty level.

Jeremy Ekeler, the group’s executive director, said the new law “is already giving hope to hundreds of students.”

“We hear every day from families who aren’t eligible but wish they were. Nebraskans are recognizing what the rest of the country has already discovered: Once parents have educational opportunity, their desire for options only increases,” he said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on and .

AUSTIN, Texas — In rural Texas, public schools are the cultural heart of small towns. People pack the high school stadium for Friday night football games, and FFA classes prepare the next generation for the agricultural life. In many places, more people work for the school district than for any other employer.

For years, many rural Texas school districts, often barely scraping by on lean operating budgets, have relied on their local representatives in the Republican-led state legislature to fend off school voucher programs. Some of these GOP lawmakers, along with many of their liberal colleagues from larger cities, have argued that giving families taxpayer dollars to send their children to private schools or to educate them at home would drain money from the public schools.

That wall of resistance is now on the verge of collapse, thanks to a multimillion-dollar political offensive led by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and heavily funded by billionaire out-of-state allies committed to spreading school choice nationwide.

Six of the Republican House members Abbott targeted for opposing his school choice initiative were defeated in the March 5 primary election, and four others were thrown into a May runoff. Abbott said last week that his side is within two votes of enacting a school choice program in Texas.

“Even individuals who voted against school choice who won need to rethink their position in light of Abbott’s success on the issue,” said Matt Rinaldi, outgoing chair of the Texas Republican Party. “It’s sure to pass after these election results.”

Similar dynamics have been on display over the past two years in other states where rural opponents, sometimes aligned with labor groups and teachers unions, have sought unsuccessfully to head off the widening push. School choice can come through vouchers, refundable tax credits or education savings accounts.

In Arkansas, lawmakers sent  to Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders last year for her signature after proponents overcame years of opposition from rural Republicans allied with Democrats.

In Oklahoma, Tom Newell, a former Republican state legislator who works for a  that advocates for school choice, said rural resistance has steadily diminished in that state, too, enabling lawmakers to equip parents with education tax credits that became effective this year.

Rural Texas educators who have long opposed school choice are now bracing for it. “We really are the heart, soul and backbone of Texas,” said Randy Willis, executive director of the Texas Association of Rural School Districts, which has long opposed school choice. “We’re going to be left with a lot less resources as this progresses and goes through.”

In the small Texas Panhandle community of Booker, which has two blinking traffic lights and is closer to Cheyenne, Wyoming, than the state capital of Austin, school Superintendent Mike Lee has similar concerns.

“In all likelihood, that makes it where Abbott could pass vouchers,” Lee said of the primary election results.

Like many other rural school leaders, Lee said any loss of funding would make it even harder for his district to pay for basic operations and new, state-mandated safety programs launched in response to school shootings.

Primary battles

Despite the concerns of school officials such as Willis and Lee, school choice proponents say the rapid spread of the concept in Texas and other states dismantles the perception that rural residents oppose it.

“There’s been a myth in Texas that rural Republicans do not want school choice,” said Genevieve Collins, state director of the Texas branch of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group. Voters “put that myth to bed” in the recent Republican primary, she told Stateline.

Abbott said during a speech last week that parents frequently approached him on the campaign trail “begging” and “pleading” for school choice. “Any Republican House member who was voting against school choice was voting against the voice of the Republicans who voted in that primary,” he said.

School choice advocates argue that giving families public education dollars to pay for private school allows everybody — not just the wealthy — to choose the school that is best for their child. Though most Republicans support school choice and most Democrats oppose it, the issue doesn’t break cleanly along party lines: Just as some rural Republicans oppose vouchers, some Black and Hispanic Democrats support them, arguing that families should have an alternative if their local public schools are substandard.

“When you look at this, you can see that the majority of parents want school choice. They just want to be empowered with the decisions of their children’s future,” Hillary Hickland, a mother of four who defeated Republican incumbent state Rep. Hugh Shine of Temple, said of the primary results. Shine was one of 21 Republicans who voted to take vouchers out of the education bill last year,  to The Texas Tribune, and the governor endorsed Hickland.

“I think the arguments against school choice are based in fear and control. Ultimately, we have to do what’s best for the students. That’s the purpose of education,” said Hickland, who added: “For the majority of families, public school will always be right and best, and that’s great. We’re not giving up on our public schools.”

Janis Holt, a former teacher in the Silsbee Independent School District northeast of Houston, defeated incumbent Republican state Rep. Ernest Bailes, another voucher opponent who earned Abbott’s ire. Holt said she is reassuring rural superintendents in her district that she is a staunch supporter of both public school funding and school choice.

“We’re going to make sure that we protect the students that will be in our public schools, our teachers and administrators, but will also give parents opportunities to get their kids out of a failing school when they need to,” Holt said.

Republican state Rep. Gary VanDeaver, one of the House members targeted by Abbott, hasn’t wavered from his opposition to school choice initiatives. VanDeaver survived in the first primary round on March 5 but wound up in a May 28 runoff against an opponent backed by the governor.

“I’m just going to try to dodge all the bombs that are dropped on me and keep working to get a positive message out there and make sure everybody understands what’s at stake,” said VanDeaver, a former school superintendent.

He fears Abbott’s school choice drive will redirect billions of dollars a year from rural Texas school districts to urban and suburban ones. “The economies of the small communities are struggling as it is,” he said. “There’s just a lot of reasons that something like this is bad for rural Texas.”

Rapid spread

School choice programs have spread rapidly in recent years, aided by groups such as the American Federation for Children, which was founded by the billionaire family of former U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Americans for Prosperity, affiliated with the conservative billionaire Koch family.

“Nationally we really saw that momentum take off a couple of years ago,” said Chantal Lovell of EdChoice, a nonprofit group that tracks and promotes school choice. “After 2023 there was no stopping it, and it’s clear that universal educational choice isn’t a fleeting trend, but here to stay.”

As many as 73 programs have been implemented in 32 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, including 11 with a comprehensive statewide reach and 62 that serve various portions of the population, according to EdChoice.

Alabama Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a program into law earlier this month, and a bill is awaiting the governor’s signature in Wyoming.

Texas emerged as the most closely watched school choice battleground after Abbott last year made the issue one of his top priorities and called repeated special sessions in an attempt to overcome opposition from a coalition of rural Republicans aligned with Democrats.

Abbott unleashed millions of dollars from his campaign funds and traveled into the home counties of resistant Republicans after a school choice initiative collapsed in the Texas House.

Other dynamics were also at work, including endorsements by former President Donald Trump, who has equated school choice with civil rights, and Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, who sought to settle scores against House members for initiating an unsuccessful effort to oust him through impeachment.

Big money

An avalanche of campaign dollars from both inside and outside the state helped propel Abbott’s offensive, according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit research organization that tracks political spending.

Billionaire Jeff Yass, a megadonor investor based in Pennsylvania and one of the nation’s leading school choice advocates,  the governor’s campaign more than $6 million, which Abbott officials described as the “largest single donation in Texas history.”

Abbott, who is not up for reelection until 2026, was one of the biggest spenders in the undertaking, drawing $6.4 million from his campaign fund to help finance opposition expenditures against incumbents on his hit list.

The AFC Victory Fund, a super PAC the American Federation for Children created in September, directed its resources into 20 Republican primary races in Texas, opposing 13 Republican incumbents, supporting six others and financing a 20th candidate for an open seat, according to Scott Jensen, a former Wisconsin House speaker who is now a senior adviser to the American Federation for Children.

For many of the targeted legislators, the political attack was insurmountable. “We gave it everything we had, but you can’t overcome being outspent over 4-to-1,” said Republican state Rep. Travis Clardy, who lost to Joanne Shofner, former president of the Nacogdoches County Republican Women.

“We spent more money in this campaign than all my other campaigns combined,” said Clardy, a Nacogdoches attorney who first won election in 2012. “But the money aligned against us and the power and political clout behind it were too much.”

Among other things, targeted incumbents said, the AFC Victory Fund financed a bombardment of mailings and ads that often went beyond school choice to focus on other issues, such as being lax on border security. One mailing was fashioned like a wanted poster.

Republican state Rep. Drew Darby, who prevailed over his challenger and doesn’t have a Democratic opponent, said the tactics were out of bounds and called Abbott’s involvement in his race “sad” for the state. “That’s a situation I’ve never seen in my political career,” said Darby.

Jensen said the AFC Victory Fund spent almost $4 million in Texas and plans to spend $15 million nationally on state school choice campaigns during the 2024 election cycle.

“Welcome to politics,” Jensen said of the criticism from targeted lawmakers. “These guys are long-term incumbents. I’m sorry if they haven’t been in a tough race for a while, but everything we said was accurate. And I don’t think any of it was misleading or unfair.”

At least 70% of the AFC Victory Fund’s communications, he said, focused on school choice.

In the Robert Lee Independent School District in West Texas, which has one campus and about 250 students, Superintendent Aaron Hood fears the potential impact on his district.

As with other districts, inflation has put a whammy on operating expenses, leaving Robert Lee with a budget deficit for the second year in a row. And because state funding is based on average daily attendance, if any students were to transfer to a private school under a school choice plan, Robert Lee would face a drop in state funds. (The nearest private school is 30 miles away, in San Angelo.)

For now, Hood says, it’s a bit too early to assess the potential impact of the primary results. But if Abbott prevails in the next round of electoral combat, he said, “then I would say that choice is coming to Texas.”

Jimmy Cloutier of OpenSecrets provided data on campaign contributions and expenditures for this article.

This story was originally published by , which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on  and .

Missouri Senate Democrats ended their filibuster Tuesday of a bill that seeks to expand the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program — agreeing to let the legislation come to a vote after Republicans added provisions boosting public school funding and teacher retention efforts.

receiving first-round approval by a 20-13 vote in the Senate Tuesday evening is the second version to come to the floor this week. The original 12-page bill ballooned to 76 pages before expanding to 153 pages Tuesday after negotiations.

“There are plenty of things (in the bill) that I dislike,” Sen. Lauren Arthur, a Kansas City Democrat, told the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Andrew Koenig.

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Koenig, a Republican from Manchester, acknowledged the compromise.

“That makes two of us,” he said.

“I know that there are things you wish you could change, and there are things that I wish I could change. At the end of the day, I think we’ve gotten to that right balance,” Arthur said.

Republican Sens. Justin Brown of Rolla, Mike Moon of Ash Grove and Elaine Gannon of DeSoto joined Democrats voting against the bill.

Gannon has spoken against the bill at the committee level and told The Independent that she fears tax-credit scholarships pull money from public schools.

“If you want choice, pay for it. If they’re not happy, there’s other options out there, like charter schools and private schools.” she said.

On the Senate floor Monday evening, she spoke about six counties who removed tax-credit scholarships from their local Republican Party platform.

“These six counties feel if they take public dollars, the government’s going to come in and regulate those parochial schools and private schools,” she said.

Currently only available in charter counties and cities with at least 30,000 residents, the legislation that won initial approval Tuesday would open the state’s K-12 tax-credit scholarship program, MOScholars, statewide.

It would also increase the salary one can make to qualify for the program as low-income from 200% of the amount used to determine reduced lunch to 300%. The income cap, for a family of four, would be $166,500, under this school year’s reduced lunch eligibility.

The bill would additionally increase the amount awarded to those with limited English proficiency, those who qualify for free or reduced lunch and students with individualized education plans.

MOScholars currently has a ceiling of $50 million in tax credits, which it has not reached in its first couple years of the program. The bill seeks to raise the cap to $75 million, with an adjustment tied to the “percent increase or decrease in the amount of state aid distributed to school districts.”

Koenig has launched a campaign for State Treasurer, the office that oversees the MOScholars program.

The bill also would permit charter schools to open in Boone County. Currently, charter schools are only allowed in Kansas City and St. Louis.

Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, who is in his last year in the Senate, spoke in favor of adding a charter in his home county.

“We’re just trying to give another option for Columbia,” Rowden, a Republican from Columbia, said on the Senate floor.

These provisions were in place as Senate Democrats led a filibuster lasting roughly four hours before the chamber adjourned at 8 p.m. Monday. After closed-door negotiations, Koenig’s bill was amended to impact 24 additional sections of state law.

The changes include incentives for school districts in charter counties or cities with 30,000 or more residents to have instruction five days a week, changes to the state formula that funds public schools and boosting the minimum teacher salary to $40,000.

The foundation formula, which currently has a multiplier of student attendance, would shift to enrollment in its place. A commissioned by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education last year.

“It is well understood that average daily attendance rates tend to be lower (relative to enrolled, eligible pupils) in districts that are higher in child poverty and in minority concentrations. As such, when state aid is calculated based on average daily attendance, that aid is systematically reduced in higher poverty, higher minority concentration districts,” Baker wrote.

A fiscal note has not been completed for the current version. Koenig said the changes to the state-aid formula, which would be ushered in 10% increments, would cost $70 million for each 10%.

Also added to the bill is the proposed creation of a literacy fund that could receive up to $5 million from the state’s general fund to provide grants for weekly reading programs.

Other additions include a proposal to permit school districts to pay teachers more who fill roles in “hard-to-staff” schools and areas, a boost to the career ladder program and additional pathways to teaching certifications.

One piece of the bill discussed Tuesday would allow people with bachelor’s degrees to complete an 18-hour teacher training program for credentials to teach in Missouri private schools.

Public schools could get more teachers into classrooms through a provision giving bachelor’s degree recipients “subject-area certifications” only for their areas of expertise. The bill also would strike an entrance exam to receive training in education.

Debate ended at 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, with Senate leadership promising to send the bill to fiscal oversight in the morning. It needs to be approved by the Senate one more time before being sent to the House.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com. Follow Missouri Independent on and .

A top GOP state senator wants to completely overhaul Indiana’s private school vouchers with a grant program that would allow all Hoosier families — regardless of income — to choose where their students get educated.

The proposal will not advance in the current legislative session, but discussion at the Statehouse on Thursday previewed likely legislative momentum in 2025.

, authored by Sen. Ryan Mishler, R-Mishawaka, would bring an end to Choice Scholarships, which allows most Hoosier families to receive vouchers to attend private schools.

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The special education-only Education Scholarship Accounts (ESAs), as well as the newly-established Career Scholarship Account (CSA) Program, would also come to an end.

Instead, Mishler is seeking to merge those programs into a new “Indiana Funding Students First Grant Program” for students ages five to 21.

The bill removes all income caps on current “school choice” grants and allows any Hoosier parent to apply for an annual grant that can be used for “qualified” education expenses. That includes tuition and fees, exam fees, services for students with a disability, transportation, payments for tutoring, and costs associated with extracurricular activities, apprenticeships or other programs.

Students already participating in the state’s choice programs would be unaffected and continue to receive funding to attend their desired schools.

“It’s a work in progress. We’re going to start the discussion on the issues within the bill … we have a year to try to decide what we want to do,” said Mishler, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Mishler said the legislation “mixes” various school choice concepts. The intent of hearing the bill now, he added, “is to gather information.” Even so, testimony on the bill lasted less than an hour on Thursday due to scheduling restraints.

“The goal here was to give parents more flexibility,” said Mishler, who noted that many Hoosier students continue to struggle with foundational curricula in schools, even though the state “keeps putting more money into K-12 education.”

“When we drafted the bill, we felt like every type of student would benefit in some way,” he continued. “But we’ll be working on this over the summer to try to perfect things, so we have plenty of time for discussion.”

A universal ‘school choice’ landscape

As currently drafted, the bill sets up a two-year pilot program. Mishler said that won’t be the case when it’s refiled next year, though.

Rather, Indiana’s treasurer would be tasked with running the Funding Students First program.

“This bill is an option that lets parents control education dollars. This bill is a tool that gives parents more than two choices. This bill is an opportunity to allow parents the freedom to customize their child’s education,” Elliott continued. “We have found that when parents control the flow of dollars to their children’s education, they’re more engaged, more focused on their child’s needs, and in the best position to make sound educational choices.”

In 2022, state lawmakers expanded the Choice Scholarship and open to almost all Hoosier families. Private school voucher program in the current school year — in the number of students in 10 years.

Under the new proposal, participating families with students attending private school would get 90% of the amount of money per child that their neighborhood public school gets from the state, identical to the existing Choice Scholarships available now.

Families would get 50% of the state’s base funding for students who are enrolled in a public school. In those instances, grants could be used for services outside of the public school’s jurisdiction, such as tutors, disability service providers and occupational therapists, among other education-related costs.

Rolling out Mishler’s new plan is expected to increase state spending by upwards of $46.5 million, according to a legislative fiscal analysis. But that estimate is based only on a pilot program.

Exact projections are dependent on changes to the state tuition support funding formula in the next biennium and changes to the number of students who participate in the school choice programs.

Given the significant financial impacts — and the Republican majority’s refusal to open the budget during the 2024 short session — Mishler’s proposal will remain on hold. In 2025, the measure must get approval from both the Senate education and appropriations committees before it can be passed to the House for additional consideration.

It’s not clear where the opposite chamber stands on the proposal.

‘Many’ questions still to be answered

Denny Costerison — representing the Indiana Association of School Business Officials, the Coalition for Indiana Growing and Suburban School Districts, and both the state superintendent and school boards associations — said the groups are so far neutral on the bill, pending interim discussions about the new program’s funding mechanisms and likely impacts on local school districts.

Searching for some answers now, Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, questioned how students would juggle multiple learning opportunities provided by the grants, both logistically and academically.

For example, one student could use a grant to attend both public school classes and receive lessons from an outside, private music teacher during the school day. Another student might apply the state dollars to online schooling and an apprenticeship.

“How is that all going to happen?” Yoder asked.

Homeschool parents also spoke before the Senate committee, asking lawmakers to ensure the new grant program won’t infringe on their autonomy to educate their children as they wish. Mishler promised to honor that request.

But Donnie Bowsman, superintendent at the Randolph Southern School Corporation, cautioned that the grant program would cause more students to leave public schools — in some cases, because parents want to “avoid the hassle of dealing with school officials or being responsible or accountable to their child’s education.”

“We’re going to talk about paying people to take their child out of my school,” Bowsman said. “There needs to be parameters on this, and guide rails, especially if we’re talking about state funding and appropriations.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

Surrounded by “school choice” advocates in the Statehouse, Sen. Lori Den Hartog, R-Meridian, and Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, announced the $50 million “parental choice tax credit” program. 

It’s the latest Idaho proposal that seeks to open up public funds for private education. Den Hartog and Horman, who have been leading proponents of the “school choice” movement in Idaho, plan to introduce the bill during the , which starts Monday. 

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“In a time of high inflation and economic uncertainty, the increased concern over the alignment of family values and education, this proposal is designed to support Idaho parents as they make decisions about their child’s education,” Den Hartog said.

The proposal has two parts. First, private school families of any income could claim $5,000 tax credits for expenses “related to the nonpublic academic instruction,” Den Hartog said. That includes tuition, fees, transportation, tutoring, test-taking and exam preparation, among other things.

Qualifying students would be school-aged and enrolled in a non-public school, which could include religious schools and home schools. The tax credits would be first come, first served with a $40 million cap. 

A second bucket of state funds — $10 million — would be set aside for a “kickstart” program benefitting low-income students. Rather than claiming private school expenses on their taxes, families who qualify for the federal earned income tax credit could collect up to $5,000 in grants for one year. After a year, those families would be rolled into the tax credit program. 

In recent years, similar legislation has failed in the face of widespread anxiety about expending public funds on private schools. Opponents of similar mechanisms — often called “vouchers” — worry about a lack of accountability for private school expenses and fear that limited public school funds would be siphoned. 

Public school leaders have bitterly fought proposals to fund private education at the state level. Quinn Perry, policy and government affairs director for the Idaho School Boards Association, told Idaho Education News this week that private school voucher programs in other states have been “budget busters.”

Arizona’s expanding school voucher program is expected to $900 million this school year. Initial estimates in the Grand Canyon State pegged the cost at $65 million.

The Arizona Mirror last week that the state faces a $400 million deficit, because of the rising cost of private school vouchers and decreasing state revenue due to a new flat income tax — which Idaho also enacted, in 2022.

Den Hartog and Horman brushed aside those concerns Friday. They touted the proposed spending caps and the fact that the State Tax Commission would oversee the tax credits and grants, creating an “accountability measure” backed by the threat of perjury for lying on one’s taxes. 

Horman, a former public school board trustee who co-chairs the Legislature’s powerful budget committee, said the program would be “complementary” to Idaho’s public school system. She said she wouldn’t support a policy that harms public education. 

“I am not a fan of budget-busting bills,” Horman said. 

Den Hartog and Horman also acknowledged that those caps could increase in future years, if demand calls for it. 

House Assistant Minority Leader Lauren Necochea slammed the proposal in a conversation with reporters Friday. The Boise Democrat said funneling the money through the Tax Commission is likely a strategy to sidestep the House Education Committee, which blocked similar legislation last year. 

“Whether it’s the state Tax Commission cutting the check or another agency, the result is the same: dollars are being siphoned out of the fund that we use for public schools and will go towards private, religious and, potentially, for-profit institutions with zero accountability,” Necochea said.

National groups that advocate for “school choice” in recent years have spent heavily lobbying Idaho lawmakers to pass a private school voucher policy. But Friday’s news conference demonstrated homegrown support, as well. Dozens of children and parents held signs reading “support the parental choice tax credit program.”

Robbe Hart, a single father from Emmett, said he commutes more than 60 miles, round-trip, for his sons to attend Greenleaf Friends Academy. The travel is “extremely expensive,” Hart said, but his sons have “thrived” at the Christian school.

“If this bill passed, it would help thousands of other people that are going through the same thing that I go through,” he said.

As the Texas Legislature debates school vouchers, one of the staunchest supporters of the initiative has been the Catholic Church.

Texas Catholic leaders have been among the longest-running advocates for Gov. ’s top current legislative priority, which would allow parents to use taxpayer money for private education expenses. That’s true even as some other religious leaders have firmly opposed the legislation.

Why are they divided? Catholic leaders say other religious leaders don’t fully appreciate the voucher program’s benefits, particularly its potential to expand access to private education. Voucher critics say Catholic leaders are acting in the interest of their own schools, which have experienced declining enrollment for decades, while promoting a program that could harm public schools.

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A voucher program would give parents the opportunity to choose a religious education regardless of their income level, said Jennifer Allmon, executive director of the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops, which oversees all 254 Catholic schools in Texas.

“It’ll take a few years, but our primary hope is that it will open the doors of our schools to even more low-income families and provide even greater access for those who wish to use Catholic schools for the education of their children,” Allmon said.

Historic enrollment decline

Aside from a post-pandemic surge, Catholic school enrollment has been declining nationwide since the late 1960s, . In 2021, Catholic schools across the country saw the largest single-year decrease in enrollment in more than 50 years.

Texas has not escaped the trend. From 2019-22, enrollment at Catholic schools in the state fell by more than 5,000 students, or 7.6%. Only four states had sharper declines. Eight Catholic schools in Texas closed during the pandemic, Allmon said.

But, she added, Texas Catholic schools saw an uptick in enrollment among high-income families during the pandemic — which she said underscores the need for a voucher program to help low-income families afford religious education.

“In the 2021 to 2022 school year, because we opened up in-person and didn’t have mask requirements in most places, families with means had choice, and they used it,” Allmon said. “And the low-income lost their spots because their income took a dip.”

The Texas Catholic Conference, which , has pressed for no limits on the number of low-income families supported by a voucher program.

, passed by the Texas Senate on Oct. 12, “no more than” 40% of spots in the program are reserved for students who receive free or reduced lunch and “no more than” 30% to families who earn between 185% and 500% of the federal poverty line. , however, low-income students with disabilities and places no limit on how many of the education savings accounts can go to these underprivileged students — which is why the Catholic conference supports the House version, Allmon said.

More than 62,000 students were enrolled in Texas Catholic schools in the 2021-22 school year, according to the Texas Catholic Conference. In a 2022 survey, the conference found 16,832 vacancies in 122 Catholic schools — with an average of 109 open seats in grade schools and 60 in high schools.

Lois Goudeau, head of St. Mary Magdalene Catholic School in Humble, said her pre-K through 8th grade school currently enrolls 365 students but has capacity for 25 more. The church’s Catholic Christian Education program, an after-school religious education class, has about 800 students, so Goudeau believes more families in her community would seek Catholic education if not for the tuition barrier.

Education savings accounts, the school voucher program being debated by the Legislature, would provide families with state money to help pay for private school tuition and other education expenses. SB1 would give families $8,000 annually, while HB1 would give them 75% of the average amount their public school receives in per-student funding.

On average, Allmon said, annual Catholic school tuition in the state is $6,800 for grade schools and $10,300 for high schools. St. Mary’s tuition is $6,000, Goudeau said.

“We hope that we get a boost from [vouchers] because enrollment in a lot of our private schools, particularly Catholic schools, has been down over the past few years because people don’t have that expendable money, and they’re not looking to spend it on tuition for their students,” Goudeau said. “It is something that the archdiocese and all of our schools and our organizations have been pushing for.”

Questions over church-state separation

For some voucher critics, funneling taxpayer dollars to religious schools raises concerns about the separation of church and state.

The Texas Constitution prohibits using money from the state treasury “for the benefit of any sect, or religious society, theological or religious seminary.” However, in a 2022 religious discrimination case, the that tuition assistance programs, or school vouchers, must include religious schools if they are available to nonreligious private schools.

The ruling was a major win for pro-voucher religious schools and leaders, but opponents say it raises thorny issues when people’s tax dollars are sent to religious institutions that have beliefs they do not share.

“As a Baptist, I don’t believe in the infallibility of the Pope like my Catholic friends, nor do I believe in the veneration of marriage like my Catholic friends,” said Charles Johnson, a Baptist pastor and executive director of Pastors for Texas Children, which opposes vouchers. “I don’t want to pay for those two teachings in Catholic schools.”

Johnson said his organization represents almost 1,000 churches that share these concerns.

But Allmon said there is a long tradition in Texas of partnerships between the government and religious groups. Texas provides that parents can use at religiously affiliated day care centers and that college students can use at private religious universities.

“We’ve not had any government intrusion or problems in either of those two sectors,” Allmon said. “It’s worked perfectly well to have that partnership for kids under 5 and people 18 and over, so it’s just a matter of applying it to kids 5 to 18.”

Goudeau said her concern with a voucher program would be government intrusion into the private school admissions process. Voucher critics that selective private school admissions may keep special needs or other underprivileged students out of these schools, even if they were selected for a voucher.

SB1 bars the state from taking any measures to regulate the curriculum, admissions or religious values of private schools that enroll students with vouchers.

A student’s potential for academic success and adherence to the school’s Catholic standards are both factors in the admissions process at St. Mary’s, Goudeau added. Along with typical grade-school classes, St. Mary’s students attend religion class daily and mass weekly.

“If we’re allowed to continue operating as we do now, we wouldn’t just accept every kid anyway,” Goudeau said.

A complicated divide

Twenty years ago, church-state separation was the primary concern for religious leaders who oppose vouchers, said Bee Moorhead, executive director of Texas Impact, an interfaith advocacy group fighting vouchers. But more recently, she said, leaders and congregation members have joined Texas Impact primarily over worries that a voucher program would .

“The conversation has gotten much more dire,” she said. “People see this as not just a preference for not using tax dollars to subsidize religious education. They see it as … a nail in the coffin of public schools.”

Erik Gronberg, the Lutheran bishop of the Northern Texas-Northern Louisiana Synod, said he has taken particular issue with Abbott recruiting religious leaders to advocate for the program. Earlier this month, the governor, who is Catholic, declared a “” and joined a handful of religious leaders across denominations to host a virtual town hall in support of vouchers.

“He was trying to encourage pastors to speak in favor of vouchers and that, from my perspective, was a real crossing of the line,” Gronberg said. “We are called to advocate for justice. We’ve got to advocate for the poor and marginalized. We’re called to talk about issues as they arise, but this is clearly a very partisan issue and something that is very near and dear to his heart.”

Still, some non-Catholic religious schools see merit in a voucher program. Chrystal Bernard, head of Braveheart Christian Academy, oversees a 20-student school founded in 2021 that primarily serves students of color.

Many Braveheart students come from low-income families, Bernard said, and the school has a program allowing parents to volunteer in exchange for tuition discounts. Still, the discounts are modest, and not all families can make up the difference.

“This would be life changing for some of our students,” Bernard said of education savings accounts.

David DeMatthews, an associate educational policy professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said there is not a clear divide on vouchers between the Catholic Church and other religions.

Some religious leaders see vouchers as antithetical to supporting public schools and equal access to education for all children. Others, amid dwindling enrollment, see it as an opportunity to allow more parents to choose schools that align with their family’s religion and values.

“For private religious schools that have a moral underpinning, it’s a really tenuous spot to support a bill that allows schools, for example, to discriminate against children with disabilities, especially with public money,” DeMatthews said. “There’s a moral aspect to this, especially when religious organizations claim to take the moral high ground.”

Disclosure: Pastors for Texas Children and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

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By the time Kelly Santos found the Education Freedom Account program, she felt out of options.

The Hudson resident had fought for years for disability accommodations for her son James at his public school, beginning in the first grade. By his fourth grade year, she had arranged letters from teachers and had paid $5,000 for a neuropsychological exam to prove to school administrators that he needed help. But without a formal evaluation, the accommodations did not appear.

“I fought to keep him with his community and his friends,” she said, speaking to members of the State Board of Education this month to advocate for the program. “Special education did not work for me because I could not get past step one, which is evaluation.”

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Santos applied for local charter schools, but lost the lotteries necessary for admission. Then she found the Education Freedom Account program, and with it, an opportunity to send James to Second Nature Academy in Nashua.

It’s changed her son’s relationship to school, she says. “When I asked James, ‘What’s the difference between your old school and your new school?’ he said to me: ‘Mom I was sitting in a prison and I was bored… And when I went up to my new school that was the key that let me out of jail,’” Santos said.

“If it wasnt for the EFA, we would have been stuck without a school to go to,” she said.

The program is continuing to see similar interest. More than 4,200 New Hampshire students are participating in the Education Freedom Account program this school year – a 158 percent jump from the first year’s enrollment.

But most new participants are not following Santos’s exact path: 28 percent of the 1,577 new students this year transferred directly from public school. The others were either homeschooled or attending non-public schools before they transferred.

In total, the state will spend $22.1 million toward EFAs this school year, up from $8.1 million in the 2021-2022 school year and $14.7 million in the 2022-2023 school year, according to numbers released by the Department of Education Thursday. That money comes out of the state’s Education Trust Fund, which spends about $1 billion per year on public education. The enrollment grew by 20 percent since last year.

Launched in 2021, the Education Freedom Account program allows parents to take the state education funding dollars that would go to their child’s public school and use them for private and homeschooling expenses instead. To qualify, families must have an income below 350 percent of the federal poverty level – or $105,000 for a family of four.

Republicans, including Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut, have hailed the initiative as a means for lower-income families to receive assistance to enroll their children in programs they might not otherwise be able to afford, providing alternatives if the public school is not a good fit.

But Democrats have criticized the program as wasteful and unnecessary, and argued that the Education Trust Fund dollars should be exclusive to public schools. Democrats have attempted unsuccessfully to both repeal the program and , including that students be attending public school before they can receive the vouchers. Currently, the vouchers are also available to qualifying families that don’t attend public schools.

This year, the Republican-led Legislature increased the eligibility for the program the income cap from 300 percent of the federal poverty level – where the program started – to 350 percent. Some Republicans, including gubernatorial candidates Chuck Morse and Kelly Ayotte, removing the income caps entirely in the future.

An examination of the latest numbers reveals some differences between public school students and EFA recipients. There are 4,211 students who receive EFAs and just over 160,000 students in New Hampshire public schools this year.

Of the students receiving EFAs this year, about 44 percent are enrolled in free or reduced price lunch program, meaning their families make below 185 percent of the federal poverty level, or $55,500 for a family of four. That represents a higher proportion than in public schools, where 26 percent of students are in the free or reduced lunch program.

Of all EFA recipients, 6.3 percent are receiving additional state funding for special education services. In public schools, 20 percent of students receive special education funding.

The state is spending an average of $5,255 per EFA recipient this year, according to the Department of Education. That’s a higher amount than in previous years and comes after the Legislature raised the base amount of state funding that schools receive per pupil in the two-year budget passed in June. The state is spending $6,161 per student in public schools this year, according to the department.

Among the 4,211 students receiving EFAs, 1,577 are new to the program this school year and 2,634 are returning. Since the last school year, 109 students have graduated, 75 have re-enrolled in public schools, and 524 have made “other exits,” a category not defined by the department.

In a statement Thursday, Edelblut praised the increased numbers, saying “it is apparent that New Hampshire families are taking advantage of this tremendous opportunity that provides them with different options and significant flexibility for learning.”

“With three years of data under our belt, we know that students are coming and going from the program, which is exactly how it was designed – to allow various options for personal learning needs that may fluctuate from year-to-year based on whatever path is appropriate in the moment,” Edelblut said.

Megan Tuttle, president of the National Education Association of New Hampshire, the state’s largest teacher’s union, disagreed, accusing Edelblut of “(focusing) his energy on a small sliver of the population that was never in public schools.”

“Let’s be clear – vouchers take scarce funding away from public schools and give it to private and religious schools that are unaccountable to the public,” Tuttle said in a statement Friday. “Taxpayer funds should be spent to resource neighborhood public schools to ensure they are desirable places to be and to learn, where students’ natural curiosity is inspired.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. New Hampshire Bulletin maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Dana Wormald for questions: info@newhampshirebulletin.com. Follow New Hampshire Bulletin on and .

The Texas Senate’s main school voucher proposal this special session, which was given in the Texas Senate on Thursday, closely resembles two of the biggest such programs in the country.

Like in Arizona and Florida, a voucher-like program known as education savings accounts. It would give families access to taxpayer money to pay for their children’s private schooling, be open to most students in the state and prioritize disabled and poor students if there are more applicants than funds available.

In some aspects, the bill’s architects took notes from those programs’ mistakes. In an effort to prevent fraud and misuse of funds, which has been a problem in Arizona, the Texas proposal doesn’t give parents direct access to the cash and requires the comptroller’s office to audit participants’ accounts.

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In other areas, Texas repeated ideas that garnered criticism in other states. Critics across the country point out that private schools receiving state funds through existing voucher programs aren’t required to show that students are succeeding academically, like public schools are. And like in other states, voucher supporters in Texas say that’s by design. Sen. , a Republican from Conroe and SB 1’s author, has argued that the market will weed out underperforming private schools.

Those voucher programs in other states also sparked vigorous debates, came with the same promises and faced similar concerns, providing a window into the impact they might have in Texas once enacted. The Arizona program, for instance, confirmed critics’ concerns that it would require increasingly larger amounts of funding as it grew — just like opponents in Texas fear. But it of students from public schools.

Here’s how education savings accounts have performed in other states.

Arizona and Florida

Education savings accounts around 2012 and currently serve more than 90,000 students across the country, according to EdChoice, a nonprofit organization that advocates for these policies.

There are 13 education savings account programs nationwide and 31 states — plus Washington, D.C. — offer some sort of voucher program that allows children to use either taxpayer money or tax-credit donations for private schooling.

To date, Arizona and Florida have the largest and most expansive education savings account programs in the country, where almost any child is eligible.

Arizona — which has “set the standard” for education savings accounts, according to EdChoice — began with a limited version of the program in 2011 that only served students with disabilities. It expanded this year and opened its doors to virtually every child in the state.

In 12 years, enrollment in the program grew from about 150 students to over 60,000. The Arizona Department of Education believes it would need $900 million by June to cover 100,000 students in the program. What once was a small program is now expected to balloon to nearly $1 billion.

Meanwhile, the state’s public school funding per student at the bottom when compared to the rest of the country.

Carrie Sampson, an assistant professor of educational leadership and innovation at Arizona State University, argued that the money being poured into this program could’ve been used to increase funding to the state’s public schools.

Earlier this year, Florida’s education savings accounts were also expanded to include virtually every child. — most already enrolled in private schools — have been admitted to the program, making it the biggest in the country.

Florida launched its program in 2014 focused on students with disabilities. The state launched another education savings accounts program that prioritized low-income families in 2019.

show that this school year about $1.5 billion will be diverted from Florida public schools to private schools as students leave.

Plenty of families have education savings accounts in both states for giving them access to other educational opportunities. But the programs have also attracted criticism for their loose financial oversight and for not requiring private schools to report student test scores or meet the same academic standards as public schools.

Arizona parents have spent on including buying chicken coops, trampolines and tickets to SeaWorld. The problems stemmed from the practice of sending program funds to participants through debit cards issued by the state, said Tom Horne, the Arizona superintendent of public instruction.

Horne, a Republican, said the program has phased out debit cards in an attempt to curb misuse of funds. Now, parents log on to a website where they can browse through pre-approved vendors and choose the services they need, which allows the state to approve the purchases.

“We want the program to be administered totally within the law and the money can only be used for educational purposes so we can prove that it’s a successful program both for Arizona and for the country, since other people are looking to us as an example,” he said.

In Florida, flat screen TVs, paddleboards and entry to Disney are . Critics there say that’s not how taxpayer money should be used; defenders of the program say education has evolved and those can be justified expenses.

Who uses the funds is also a concern for those against education savings accounts. In Arizona, as in Texas, the program was promoted as a way for low-income families who might feel confined within the public education system and want to explore other educational options for their children. But after the program expanded, the Arizona education department found that 75% of those in the program were not previously enrolled in public school, meaning they were already home-schooling, enrolled at a private school or had never entered the school system.

The Grand Canyon Institute, a non-partisan think tank, echoed those findings and that 45% of applicants were among the wealthiest quartile of students in the state.

Horne admitted that most of the money went to families already at private schools jumping into the program to get financial help from taxpayers. But he projects that the distribution of funds will eventually balance out as more families not in private schools apply.

And while program supporters promote them as a tool to help students with disabilities get a better education, only 17% of education savings accounts in Arizona have gone to students with disabilities, to the Arizona education department.

Arizona does not provide data on demographics or income for those enrolled in the program.

Texas

SB 1 would allow almost all Texas families access to $8,000 of taxpayer money to pay for private schools and other educational expenses such as uniforms, textbooks, tutoring or transportation, among other things.

Texas would become the third largest provider of education savings accounts in the country if the bill is approved with its current eligibility requirements and budget. It could serve nearly 60,000 students.

“Educating the next generation of Texans is a fundamental responsibility, and it is my belief that empowering parents with school choice will encourage competition, innovation and ensure that every student in Texas has the opportunity to find an educational path for their unique needs,” Creighton said in a statement.

SB 1 seeks to address some of the problems the Arizona and Florida programs have had.

The bill would allocate $500 million from the state’s general revenue fund for the next two years to pay for the program. The state comptroller’s office would establish and administer the savings accounts; be in charge of preventing fraud and misuse of funds; and hire a contractor to help process applications and approve vendors and participating private schools.

In addition, the bill would require the comptroller to compile an annual report that would include how many students are in the program, the number of applications received or waitlisted, feedback from users, public and private school capacity, and how many kids are considered ready for college, the military or a career after graduating in the program.

The legislation would also mirror much of what Florida and Arizona are already doing.

While almost any child is eligible for the program, SB 1 has a prioritization system if applications exceed the funding. To prioritize entry to underprivileged groups, the bill proposes that no more than 40% of spots be reserved for students who receive free or reduced lunch; no more than 30% for families who earn between 185% and 500% of the federal poverty line; no more than 20% for students with disabilities; and 10% for all other applicants who attended public, private or home-school in the last school year.

The prioritization system has garnered criticism though. Sen. , D-San Antonio, said the “no more than” language implies there will be a cap on how much funding goes to underprivileged applicants, instead of prioritizing them.

And like programs in other states, the bill does not require private school students to take a state-administered academic achievement exam, something that school voucher critics in the Texas Legislature have said an education savings account proposal should have to even consider it.

Creighton says that the program will not siphon money away from public schools — a recurring criticism of school voucher programs — as the funding comes from general revenue, not the Foundation School Program, which is the main source of funding for the state’s K-12 public schools.

But according to the bill’s financial analysis, school districts are set to receive less money as students sign up for education savings accounts and leave public schools. School districts in Texas receive funding based on student attendance.

Research

School vouchers — a term used to describe government programs like education savings accounts that provide taxpayer money to pay for children’s private schooling — have been a goal of conservative, free-market groups for decades.

Plenty of research has been produced on these programs. Creighton himself has from EdChoice that shows vouchers have a mostly positive impact on student scores.

But research on vouchers is often contentious, with studies ranging in methodologies, sample sizes and demographics. Donors advocating for and against these programs have directly funded their own research.

The Texas Tribune looked at independent research and spoke to experts who have studied voucher programs for decades. For the most part, studies suggest that test scores go down for students in such programs, especially in math. This has been the case in states like Indiana and Louisiana.

Some research from the suggests that there is a case that, as competition from voucher programs ramped up, test scores in public schools slightly improved. But there isn’t enough evidence to suggest vouchers are the main reason for improved outcomes.

Patrick Wolf, a proponent of vouchers and a distinguished professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, said he’s found that test scores among students in voucher programs have been mixed but tend to have a slight positive tilt.

But in 2016, Wolf and his colleagues found that within two years after Louisiana expanded its limited voucher program to all students, there were “substantively large” negative effects on math scores of students in the program. Louisiana first only offered vouchers to students in low-performing public schools.

Wolf attributed the decline in academic achievement to Louisiana’s strict regulations on private schools, like requiring them to take a state assessment. In his research, he found that high-quality private schools did not want the state oversight that Louisiana proposed, leading those schools to opt out of the program.

Results “depend on policy design and context,” Wolf said.

Wolf believes voucher programs work if they start on a small scale and gradually grow and set up systems to avoid misuse of funds as best as possible.

“I don’t think many states are prepared to implement a universal school choice program instantly from the jump,” Wolf said.

Joshua Cowen, an education policy professor at Michigan State University who has studied school choice programs for more than a decade, said test scores for students in voucher programs decrease in part because of low-quality private schools. Some just open to collect tax dollars, he said, and most of the high-quality private schools cost too much money for parents to afford anyway, often leaving them with few viable options.

“They’re not these elite college, prep type environments,” Cowen said. “These are sub-prime providers.”

In Wisconsin, home of the oldest voucher program in the country, a study found that 41% of all private voucher schools operating in Milwaukee between 1991 and 2015 closed.

Cowen said Texas lawmakers should stay away from voucher-like programs because he still doesn’t believe that there is enough credible data that shows vouchers are good for student test scores.

Disclosure: EdChoice and SeaWorld have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This article originally appeared in at .

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The academic year is already underway at Clear Spring School, one of 94 schools participating in the inaugural year of Arkansas’ education voucher program.

Head of School Jessica FitzPatrick said the nearly 50-year-old independent school in Eureka Springs is participating in the Educational Freedom Account Program to alleviate financial barriers faced by some families.

“One of our stated goals is social justice and socioeconomic access to independent schools…the EFA program is worthwhile to us because I feel like that’s really important, that socioeconomics not prevent a family from making the choice to send their child here,” FitzPatrick said.

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Created through , the EFA program provides state funds for allowable educational expenses, including private school tuition. Approximately $6,600 will be available per account for the 2023-2024 school year. The average cost of tuition at EFA schools is around $7,600.

Clear Spring School’s tuition ranges from roughly $9,500 to $11,500, but FitzPatrick said the progressive school provides scholarships that are supported through fundraising efforts. FitzPatrick estimates 75% to 80% of students receive financial assistance.

If students access EFA funds instead of school-supported scholarships, Fitzpatrick said Clear Spring could instead use the money it raises to support other initiatives, such as increasing teacher pay. Teacher salaries at the Eureka Springs school range from $25,000 to $35,000, she said.

The LEARNS Act raised the minimum teacher salary for public school teachers to $50,000. Private schools are not required to meet this minimum.

“As an independent school and having to fund our school entirely, I think raising teacher salaries is really important,” FitzPatrick said.

Easterseals Academy, a private school in Little Rock that serves students with disabilities, is raising its tuition from $10,650 to $14,250 in an effort to remain competitive with teacher pay. As a result, the school and its families are fundraising to help cover the increase.

Allison Grigsby Sweatman’s son is an Easterseals student with Down Syndrome. He’s being grandfathered into the EFA program as a Succeed Scholarship recipient, and while the funds will help with tuition, Grigsby Sweatman said she doesn’t support a universal voucher program.

“Whenever that is the end goal, we will always be defunding public schools where a lot of kids with disabilities are going to have to be no matter what because they won’t have proximity or there won’t be space to a school that can meet their needs,” she said.

A voucher system doesn’t address the issue of special education being underfunded in Arkansas for years, Grigsby Sweatman said.

“We need to be investing in robust, innovative public special education statewide,” she said.

Grigsby Sweatman is a former Democratic candidate for the Arkansas Legislature.

Participation rates

Aug. 1 marked the deadline for schools and students to participate in the inaugural year of the EFA program. Students may continue applying on a rolling basis, but their acceptance will be contingent upon available funds.

The Arkansas Department of Education allocated $46.7 million in state funds for the first year of the voucher program. The department will disburse the funds for qualifying students directly to a participating school or service provider in quarterly installments, according to the program’s emergency rules. ADE may withhold up to 5% of funds allocated for each EFA for the purpose of program administration.

As of Friday, 4,152 of 4,880 applicants had received approval to participate in the EFA Program. Approximately 12% of applicants are Succeed Scholarship recipients, according to ADE spokeswoman Kimberly Mundell.

The EFA program absorbed the Succeed Scholarship Program, which provided about $7,400 for private school tuition to students with disabilities, as well as students in foster care living in a group home or facility, and students that are children of military members.

Students who participated in the Succeed Scholarship during the 2022-2023 school year will continue to receive the scholarship amount awarded to them, according to the LEARNS Act.

The EFA program will be phased in over three years with this year’s participation capped at 1.5% of enrollment, or around 7,000 students, according to ADE officials. First year eligibility is limited to one of six criteria, including having a disability or entering kindergarten for the first time.

Of the current applicants, 38% are students with disabilities, 32% are first-time kindergarteners, 6% are foster children, 4% are children of active duty members, 1% are students experiencing homelessness and 1% are students enrolled in a “F”-rated school or school in need of Level 5 support, according to ADE.

Patrick Wolf, head of the University of Arkansas’ Department of Education Reform, that when the program has universal eligibility in three years, he expects to see a large increase in participation by students already in private schools. This would mirror the experience in Arizona, which became the first state to offer this type of universal program in 2022.

The Arizona Department of Education last year 75% of students enrolled in its Empowerment Scholarship Account program had previously been attending private school.

Mundell said she doesn’t know how many EFA applicants were already enrolled in private school because ADE does not track that information.

All but one of the 94 schools that applied to the program are located in Arkansas. The Madonna Learning Center is located in Germantown, Tenn., and was previously approved as a Succeed Scholarship Program school by ADE.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is pleased with the amount of students and schools participating in the inaugural year of the program, communication director Alexa Henning said in an email.

“The Governor is excited that starting this school year nearly 5,000 Arkansas students and 94 schools are participating in Education Freedom Accounts giving our kids access to the best education that fits their needs,” Henning said. “The Governor wants to empower every parent in Arkansas to determine what is best to put their child on a path to success.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com. Follow Arkansas Advocate on and .