Universal School Vouchers and Education Savings Accounts Are Good Policies

Abstract

Private school choice is having a moment. After a slow start, voucher and Education Savings Account (ESA) programs experienced explosive growth in their numbers, geographic scope, and enrollments recently. Vermont and Maine established the first voucher programs in rural areas that lacked public schools in 1869 and 1873, respectively. They were the only private school choice initiatives in the United States until Wisconsin established the first modern voucher program in Milwaukee in 1990 (Witte and Wolf 2017). Ohio followed in 1995 with the Cleveland Scholarship and Tutoring Program. Arizona launched the first tax-credit-funded scholarship (voucher) program statewide in 1997 and followed with the first ESA program in 2011. By 2025, 35 states, plus DC and Puerto Rico, operated 70 tuition voucher or ESA programs serving over 1.2 million students.1

Until 2022, eligibility for private school choice programs was targeted to students disadvantaged by disability, geography, or family income in all states. That year, Arizona expanded eligibility for its pioneering ESA initiative to every K–12 student in the Grand Canyon state. In the three short years since Arizona launched the first universal private school choice program, 16 other states have followed suit, including Idaho, Indiana, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming in 2025 alone.

On July 4, 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes a national voucher-type program that states can opt into beginning January 1, 2027. Private school choice programs initially were few, exclusively in the tuition voucher mold, and narrowly targeted. Now, choice programs are common throughout the country, often take the more flexible form of ESAs, and are either building toward or have reached universal eligibility.

Is universal private school choice good policy? I think so. Levin (2001, 9) argues that private school choice programs should be evaluated based on their effects on four key dimensions: expanding consumer choice, improving the productive efficiency of K–12 education, promoting equity, and advancing social cohesion. Here, I apply Levin's evaluative framework to the existing research on school choice. Although robust evidence on the effects of U.S. universal private school choice programs is just now emerging, we can draw inferences from studies of universal choice programs in other developed countries, evaluations of targeted U.S. programs, and descriptive data from new universal initiatives in the United States. These inferences are provisional, given the inherent uncertainty regarding how such policies will evolve.

Universal voucher and ESA programs expand consumer choice by allowing more parents to access the schools they prefer for their children. According to Morning Consult's recent polling, 36% of parents of school-age children would prefer a private school placement for their child, and 14% would like to homeschool them (EdChoice 2025a). Among that same representative sample of parents, only 9% of students are currently enrolled in a private school and only 5% are homeschooled. Thus, 36% of parents report the inability to access their preferred schooling option for their child.

In states with large school choice programs, the enrollment decisions of parents more closely match their schooling preferences. In 2023–2024, the first year that every Florida student was eligible to receive a voucher or ESA for private or homeschooling, 643,022 students enrolled in Florida private or homeschools, representing 18.3% of the school-age population in the Sunshine State (Gibbons 2025). Sweden instituted a universal private school choice system in 1993, when its nascent private school sector enrolled less than 2% of Swedish students. In 2022, 20% of Sweden's secondary students were enrolled in private schools (World Bank Group 2024). Finally, the Netherlands instituted universal private school choice in 1917. By 2008, over 70% of Dutch elementary students and over 80% of Dutch secondary students attended publicly financed private schools (Patrinos 2011, 57).

Parents who participate in choice programs tend to be more satisfied with their child's school. In a systematic review of 19 studies of the effect of choice programs in the United States on parent satisfaction with schools, Rhinesmith (2019, 114) concludes, “Whether students enrolled in their choice program through lottery or self-selected into their private school of choice… providing choice in education leads to higher levels of parent satisfaction.”

An experimental study in the review drew upon data from the original congressionally mandated evaluation of the DC school voucher program. Kisida and Wolf (2015, 274) report that the overall positive impacts of the voucher program on parent satisfaction ranged from 0.34 to 0.53 standard deviation (SD), using either average school grade or a multi-item satisfaction scale. The parent satisfaction impacts were higher if the student was a lower performer at baseline, was in the middle or high school grades, or had switched into the program from a public school that was not failing. Satisfaction impacts were higher for the parents of children whose achievement impacts were higher, and vice versa.

The extent to which school voucher and ESA programs improve the productive efficiency of K–12 education is fiercely contested. The question is multi-faceted, involving three primary considerations: (1) participant effects of choice programs on student achievement and attainment, (2) competitive effects of choice on the performance of affected public schools, and (3) fiscal effects.

Do universal voucher and ESA programs promote equity? Compared to what? Before there were any modern, private school choice programs, K–12 education was highly inequitable. Access to a high-quality public or private school depended heavily on family wealth (Wolf 2005). Families of school-age children paid thousands of dollars a month in premiums on their mortgages to live in residential areas zoned to high-performing public schools (Barrow 2002). As former Milwaukee Public School Superintendent Howard Fuller often says, “School choice is widespread in America, unless you are poor.” Will universal vouchers and ESAs create a more even playing field than what occurs in the absence of choice?

Universal choice programs promote equity as they march toward universality. The Arizona ESA program was targeted to low-income students, Native Americans, students with disabilities, students in D- or F-rated public schools, students with severe disabilities, children of active-duty military, and children of first responders before it became universal in 2022 (EdChoice 2022). The 12,127 disadvantaged students in the program during the 2021–2022 school year had the advantage of “first movers.” They received access to their preferred schools of choice before advantaged students did. Most universal ESA programs have adopted similar eligibility limits as they scale, with over 48% of Year 1 and over 36% of Year 2 participants in the Arkansas ESA program having a disability (Daniels et al. 2025, 9). Universal ESA programs are attractive to students with disabilities because they provide them access to an education customized to fit their unique needs without the notorious proceduralism that dominates special education in the public-school sector (Wolf and Hassel 2001). An increased number of disadvantaged students will have access to school choice through universal programs, and they get to go first as those programs expand.

Universal voucher and ESA programs advance social cohesion by reducing the compulsion attached to the residential assignment to public schools and replacing it with voluntaristic behavior. Horace Mann (n.d.), the father of the public school system in the United States, stated clearly, “We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.” That is hardly a vision for social comity!

Forced segregation has typified public schooling in the Unites States throughout its history (Glenn 1988). From 1890 to the 1960s, the public school system in the South enforced strict racial segregation on students (Foreman 2005), while northern cities achieved de facto racial segregation in their public schools by redlining African American families into specific neighborhoods, concentrating their children in racially uniform schools (DeRoche 2020). Achieving cohesion within public schools also has been a challenge, as political battles have raged over public-school curricula, library books, and lessons on sexuality, race, religion, patriotism, and other contentious topics (Cato Institute, n.d.).

In contrast, many European countries have achieved a high level of social cohesion by instituting universal private school choice. In Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, parents can choose the public or private school their child attends. Both public and private schools receive equal per-pupil funding from the state. Berner (2016) characterizes the European system of private school choice, which also operates in most parts of Canada and Australia, as “educational pluralism.” The Netherlands enshrined its universal school choice policy in its constitution in 1917, expressly to promote social cohesion (Vermeulen 2005).

Citizens engage in more social cooperation if they have the ability to send their child to the school of their choice. Thus, it is unsurprising that a meta-analysis of the effects of private schooling on the civic outcomes of political tolerance, political behavior, political knowledge and skills, and community engagement concludes that private schools of choice tend to outperform government-run public schools in instilling these civic values in young people in the United States and globally (Shakeel et al. 2024).

Universal voucher and ESA programs are still a new development in the United States. Much remains to be learned about their long-term effects. However, the available evidence—from both targeted U.S. programs and universal choice systems abroad—offers a promising foundation for evaluating these reforms.

Applying Levin's (2001) framework, the evidence thus far suggests that universal choice programs meaningfully expand consumer choice, enhance productive efficiency under the right conditions, promote equity through phased implementation that prioritizes disadvantaged students, and have the potential to foster social cohesion by allowing families to select schools that reflect their values within a pluralistic educational system.

While these programs require upfront public investment—especially during their transition to universality—the long-term fiscal outlook may improve as the pool of public-school switchers grows. Evidence on student achievement effects on participants remains mixed, particularly in the short run, but longer-term outcomes like high school graduation and college completion tend to be better for students in private school choice programs compared to those in public schools. Furthermore, competitive pressure from choice programs improves outcomes in nearby public schools.

Given these findings, the case for universal private school choice is strong. These programs offer families more meaningful agency in selecting educational environments that fit their children's needs, while laying the groundwork for a more efficient, equitable, and socially cohesive education system. Policymakers should continue to expand and refine these programs—while researchers rigorously monitor outcomes—to ensure their promise is realized and their risks are mitigated. The early evidence suggests that universal choice, when carefully designed and equitably implemented, is good policy.