OPINION:
President Trump has been a clear champion of educational choice. By signing an executive order expanding school choice opportunities for military and American Indian families and voicing his support via social media for various state school choice bills with universal eligibility, he has undoubtedly moved the needle toward educational freedom.
The idea of universal school choice isn’t new. Nearly 70 years ago, Milton Friedman’s essay “The Role of Government in Education” challenged conventional wisdom in America by proposing the idea of school choice. At the time, students’ home addresses dictated their educational opportunities, trapping many families in underperforming schools because they couldn’t afford homes zoned for better school districts. The system’s design ingrained inequality, creating educational haves and have-nots. Our K-12 structure remains essentially unchanged, but Friedman’s idea of directly funding families so they could choose the best learning environment for their children has begun to disrupt the status quo.
Friedman wrote, “Education spending will be most effective if it relies on parental choice and private initiative.” His idea took more than three decades to gain traction, with the first modern school choice program launched in 1990 in Milwaukee. Progress in subsequent years remained incremental, but pandemic school closures catalyzed families to demand more educational options. Since 2020, nearly two dozen choice programs have been created and more than 1 million students have benefited from private educational choice programs.
In the vein of Friedman’s imaginings, educational choice is no longer a fringe idea or a fad from the pandemic. It is here to stay. Mr. Trump’s support shows that the fight for educational freedom is only beginning. The next horizon for school choice is clear: universality.
West Virginia, Arizona, Florida and Arkansas have implemented universal school choice programs designed to allow all families to access funding for any educational purpose they choose. Many other states, even those with school choice programs, fall short of delivering on the full promise of educational freedom to all families. Most programs are not open to all students, do not provide the full per-student fund amount that students generate for public schools and have limited educational options available to families.
Indiana’s voucher program, though open to nearly all students, requires families to spend funds exclusively on private school tuition. Options outside the traditional school setting aren’t available through this program. This limitation overlooks the idea that learning occurs inside and outside schoolhouse walls. The design of educational choice programs should embrace this reality and allow families to use funds for educational resources such as tutoring or special needs therapies that meet students’ unique needs.
The Utah Fits All Scholarship falls short of meeting the standard of a universal program despite being advertised as such. The program allows all Utah students to qualify and use funding for various education purposes but was given an arbitrary allocation of $80 million in 2023. With scholarships valued at around $8,000, only 10,000 students could claim funding before it dried up. Every other family that applied to the program was left on a waiting list, unable to find better learning environments for their students.
The program needs to be improved before it works for all families. Educational funding should be tied to students, not arbitrary budget caps. States can fix the problems this year by linking program funding to student-weighted formulas.
Despite the progress in creating more than 75 school choice programs across 31 states, the fight for universal educational freedom remains a work in progress. Every student stands to benefit if states follow Mr. Trump’s lead and embrace Friedman’s words by ensuring that every educational choice program is universal in access, usage and funding.
• Cooper Conway is a research assistant for the Fiscal Research and Education Center at EdChoice. Follow him on Twitter @CooperConway1.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.