This National School Choice Week, It's a Boom Time for Education Freedom

People want choice in how they teach their kids and are happy when they get it.

This week is National School Choice Week, and there's a lot to celebrate. Innovation in education was accelerated by pandemic-era school closures, as was interest in alternatives to one-size-fits-some schooling. With education funding following the student rather than being assigned to government-run institutions in a growing number of states, more families are choosing what works best for their kids—and the majority are satisfied with their decisions.

Proliferating School Choice Programs

"By the end of 2024, more than one million students in America were participating in a private school choice program," EdChoice's Colyn Ritter reported this week. "Participation growth has climbed rapidly, having more than doubled since the beginning of 2020."

"Florida leads the way with nearly 13% of students enrolled in a private school choice program. Arizona follows close behind, with 10% of their students participating in a private school choice program," he adds.

By "private school choice program," Ritter refers to the rapid adoption in recent years of programs that allow students to use all or part of the funding allocated by their state for public school education to pay for private schooling, microschools, homeschooling, and other alternatives. A majority of states now offer some sort of education savings account (ESA), tax credit, or voucher program. The terminology can get confusing and implementation varies from place to place, but ESAs are generally the most flexible while vouchers offer direct payment for tuition at private institutions.

Families Choose a Wide Range of Education Options

That's not the end of it. Plenty of families make their own education decisions without going through one of these programs. Drawing on the most current data, Ritter breaks down school attendance accordingly: 2.2 percent of students attend private schools through an educational choice program, 6.8 percent attend private school by other means (paying tuition themselves, private scholarships, and the like), 74.8 percent attend a traditional public school, 4.9 percent attend a magnet school, 6.6 percent attend a privately run but publicly funded charter school, and 4.7 percent are homeschooled.

Along with private school choice programs, homeschooling has seen rapid growth in recent years. Many families stepped in to teach their children when public health policies shuttered traditional public schools, and they discovered they liked both the process and the results.

Based on Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey data, Johns Hopkins University's Homeschool Hub, which focuses on DIY education, estimates that in the 2022-2023 school year, 5.82 percent of American K-12 students were homeschooled (numbers vary for this inconsistently tracked option).

Since then, Johns Hopkins researchers have seen continued growth in homeschooling. Not all states count homeschoolers, but of 21 states reporting data for the 2023-2024 school year as of this past September, "there are three states with continued growth, meaning that there was no post-pandemic decline…. Sixteen states show a rebounding trend, meaning that there was a post-pandemic decline, in some cases several years of a decline, and then, in 2023-2024, the number of homeschoolers increased again." Only two states saw declines in the ranks of homeschoolers, and in one of those (New Hampshire), the drop may result from a change in how homeschooled students who use ESAs are classified.

Parents Are Happy When Allowed To Choose

What's interesting is that the growing adoption of different types of education reflects a shift towards what parents of school-age children say they would pick if they could. In December 2024, Morning Consult/EdChoice pollsters asked, "If given the option, what type of school would you select in order to obtain the best education for your child?" Among school parents, 8 percent picked charter schools, 13 percent chose homeschooling, 12 percent favored religious private schools, 20 percent chose secular private schools, 35 percent selected public schools in their district, and 6 percent preferred out-of-district public schools (the remainder didn't know or had no opinion).

So, removing legal barriers to options and making it easier for people to afford them rather than pay for tuition on top of taxes allows families to move closer to the education approaches they want for their children. The growing adoption of these options makes it clear that people mean what they say.

Unsurprisingly, when people get what they prefer, they're reasonably happy with the outcome. The same poll (which is conducted monthly) asked parents, "to what extent are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your child's/children's experiences with the following types of schooling?" Eighty-one percent of school parents reported being very or somewhat satisfied with charter schools, 94 percent reported satisfaction with homeschooling, 90 percent were satisfied with religious private schools, 88 percent said they were satisfied with secular private schools, 80 percent were satisfied with in-district public schools, and 85 percent satisfied with out-of-district public schools.

That said, majorities of parents were "very satisfied" only with homeschooling and both religious and secular private schools. By and large, parents of school-age children are pretty happy with their kids' education, and that's especially true when it's one they've obviously chosen themselves.

Wide Support for Choice

School choice has long been popular among Americans, and that hasn't changed as options proliferate and families have increased opportunity to jettison schooling that doesn't work for their kids and replace it with something that does. For some, that may be traditional public schools, and for others it's a wide range of private schools with different philosophies or one of the many DIY learning approaches bundled under the term "homeschooling." When asked, the public makes it clear it wants freedom to choose.

The American Federation for Children maintains records of years of polling on the question: "School choice gives parents the right to use the tax dollars designated for their child's education to send their child to the public or private school which best serves their needs. Generally speaking, would you say you support or oppose the concept of school choice?" The idea consistently draws support from roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of respondents.

After the chaos of fumbled school closures and lost learning time during the COVID-19 pandemic and simultaneous schoolroom culture-war battles over what is taught and how to teach it, it would be surprising to see anything else. Why not opt out of a headache if you can choose something better?

Americans want school choice and they're happy when they get it. There's a lesson in there.