Does it deliver on its promises?

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School choice proponents make lofty promises, but it is increasingly evident that this type of  legislation falls short of those promises, particularly when weighed against the heavy cost. School choice programs tend to give money to those who are already able to afford private school tuition, essentially acting like a tax break for the wealthy. Conversely, school choice funding does little to help low income or special needs students. It does not live up to its claim that it will help public school students to escape failing schools. Worse, school choice actually harms rural schools and communities.

Special Needs 

Special needs families can be particularly vulnerable to the empty promises of the school choice movement. Public schools struggle to educate children who fall outside the status quo. Like every other homeschool family, parents of special needs children embrace homeschooling to create the best educational environment for their beautifully unique children.

Sadly, these parents often end up trapped between two incompatible choices. They know home is the best learning environment for their child, but they sometimes struggle with the financial burdens that come with the unique and challenging needs of their child.  Some parents resort to navigating the bureaucratic maze of eligibility, testing, and paperwork to obtain an IEP (Individualized Education Plan) through the public school system. School choice funding, though, doesn’t actually help with access. In fact, it creates entirely separate criteria for access to IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) resources, complicating the process further. In either case, the public school is the gatekeeper of IDEA funding. Thankfully, local homeschool communities are richly diverse, with families who have experience homeschooling children with a broad range of abilities. These parents bring hope and help to other families, showing what a difference a loving home environment makes in educating kids with physical, learning, or developmental disabilities.  In addition, there are generous resources available from private organizations to help these families homeschool independently of government funds and services. 

The average cost of educating a child with disabilities is over $16,000/year, so the amount of money that school choice offers usually falls short for families in that situation. Just getting a proper diagnosis could eat up the entire benefit of an average school choice payment, leaving little for therapy, tutoring, or tuition. Interestingly, Arizona’s school choice program shows that special needs students from lower income areas actually receive less funding, on average, than students from wealthier areas. One reason for the disparity is that higher-income families can afford to make up the difference between the government funds and the expense of tuition or therapy for their disabled child. Therefore, the intended beneficiaries – lower income families – are not receiving the funds.

Parents of unique learners often look to private schools when the public school system fails them. However, even when private schools accept school choice funding, they are usually not required to accept children with special needs, or do not have the resources to fully aid them. School choice funding is not a solution for families of special needs children who choose private schools, because it does not come close to covering tuition and other added expenses. In fact, state funding for special needs students in private schools is often less than that same student would have received if enrolled in a public school. A main benefit of private schools is their separation from government oversight of educational content. The higher cost of attendance is because private schools traditionally avoid state and federal funding. If private schools begin to accept school choice funding, it follows that rules will be put in place to require that those private schools comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA). This changes the very nature of private schools, forcing them to become just another government school option.

It is deeply concerning that parents hoping to homeschool could remove their child from public school, take the promised amount of school choice funds, perhaps obtain a proper diagnosis, only to discover that addressing their child’s learning disability properly is beyond what they can do or afford on their own. In most cases, once parents accept school choice funding, there are barriers to placing their child back in public school for the remainder of the school year for which they received funding. This situation can unfortunately lead to education or therapy gaps.

School choice funding does not fulfill its promise to aid families of children with special needs.

Low Income

School Choice proponents claim that state funding will help more low income families leave public school by helping them afford enrollment in private schools or to homeschool. However, the statistics from states that have passed school choice legislation paint a starkly different picture.

Many of these new school choice funding schemes raise, or even eliminate, household income caps, giving wealthier families the same access to public money as low income families. The trend of the wealthy benefitting from state funding while the poor remain in poorly performing public schools is a reality across the nation. In Florida, 69% of new school choice funding recipients were already enrolled in a private school. In Arizona, the highest ESA participation rate is in populations with the lowest poverty rate. Further, school choice legislation doesn’t actually help low income families escape failing schools. These patterns are evident in states that offer school choice funding (see here and here and here and here). 

Even if school choice programs were successful in helping low-income families transition to private schools, any improvement in academics has been overstated. Major studies in Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, and Washington D.C. have shown that low-income students actually do not see improved test scores while attending private schools. If anything, students’ scores tended to decline.

Another barrier to homeschooling is household income. Either both parents must work, or the one parent in a single-parent household must work. School choice funds do not amount to a replacement income. While it may help with curriculum purchase or partial tuition costs, all cost-of-living expenses still fall on the shoulders of parents. There is also research that suggests that universal school choice actually increases the total public cost of all education by 11-33%, thus actually increasing the tax burden for families already struggling to make ends meet. See our What Does It Really Cost (hyperlink) page to learn how school choice funding drives up tuition and curriculum costs.

School choice funding simply cannot fulfill the empty promise of helping low-income families.

Those Who Want to Escape Failing Schools

The stark truth is that school choice funding enables very few students to make the transition from public school to private, parochial or homeschools. The vast majority of families using school choice funding already have their children enrolled in a private school (see here and here and here). In fact, as few as 4% of students in Arizona were able to escape those failing public schools. Families that will not or cannot actually leave public schools, are forced to subsidize private school or home education costs for families who can afford to leave the public schools in the first place. Interestingly, there is some indication that even in cases where families can make the jump to private schools, as many as 20% annually leave those private schools to return to public school (if there is a public school to return to).

In those rare cases where a student does escape a failing school, studies are showing that school choice funding actually fails to improve academic outcomes (see here). Idaho has not passed school choice legislation yet, but they do have public school bridge programs that somewhat mimic school choice funding mechanisms. Students enrolled in these programs are consistently behind their in-person and statewide peers on academic achievement measures. 

In Idaho, most private schools are located within the Treasure Valley region. Nearly half of Idaho counties don’t have a single private school option. This means that school choice funding would have minimal benefit for rural, and generally poorer, families. Even if the myth that school choice funding helps families escape public schools was true, the theory only works if there are private schools to escape to. Families in rural locations have fewer education options to start with and therefore school choice legislation has an outsized negative impact in rural communities. In Indiana, rural communities felt the impact of school choice legislation, including higher local property tax bills. This reality is being ignored by school choice advocates.

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