School Choice Enrollment Reaches Record High
Just in time for National School Choice Week, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has released its annual ABCs of School Choice report, detailing every private school choice program in the nation. The number of students participating in school choice programs has reached a record high of more than 301,000 students nationwide, up from about 260,000 in 2012–13. More than half of those students are participating in scholarship tax credit programs.
The Friedman Foundation’s report is an invaluable resource for understanding the dozens of school choice programs and their various rules and regulations. A new feature in this year’s report is an infographic ranking every school choice program along two criteria: eligible population and purchasing power. The Friedman Foundation’s view is that choice programs should have universal eligibility and that the purchasing power of the vouchers or scholarships should be on par with the per student spending at government schools.
Universal access to a variety of schooling options is certainly a noble goal, essential to fostering equality of opportunity. However, it should be noted that wealthier families can already afford school choice. Universal access to school choice does not require universal access to school choice programs. Targeting support to low‐ and middle‐income families is a more efficient way to ensure universal school choice as it directs scarce resources to those who need them most. Of course, measuring access is a lot more difficult than measuring program eligibility, so this is not a deficiency of the Friedman report.
There are other important criteria by which we should judge school choice programs, particularly the amount of regulatory interference imposed on private schools (e.g. — mandating state tests) and the amount of freedom granted to parents to tailor their child’s education (e.g. — New Hampshire’s tax‐credit scholarships for homeschoolers). Perhaps the Friedman Foundation will consider these and other criteria for future reports.
