Which States Have Private School Choice?

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Programs that direct public money toward private schools of a family’s choosing or family accounts that can cover any education expenses outside the public school system are proliferating.

Parents say they have sought out these programs as a way to deliver an education customized to their children’s unique needs. Politicians championing them say they represent a lifeline for students trapped in underperforming schools. Critics argue the programs deprive public schools of much-needed resources and point out that many children now benefiting from private school choice funds were already attending private schools beforehand. Several private school choice programs are facing lawsuits alleging that they violate state constitutions.

Students taking advantage of private school choice represent a small fraction of the nation’s total K-12 population, but the numbers signing up for new state programs have sometimes exceeded projections.

This tracker provides a concise yet comprehensive snapshot of the private school choice landscape on a rolling basis. In our Policies to Watch section, we highlight states where new private school choice programs or other notable private school choice policy changes are under consideration. Our glossary defines common terms in discussions about school choice.

Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia have at least one private school choice program, according to an Education Week analysis. Of those, 15 states have at least one private school choice program that's universally accessible to K-12 students in the state.

20 States have tax-credit scholarships

16 States have education savings accounts

10 States and the District of Columbia have vouchers

2 States have tax-credit education savings accounts

5 States have direct tax credits

States with at least one universal private school choice program

States with one or more private school choice program

Education Savings Account (ESA)

Education savings accounts provide public per-pupil funds—often a percentage of per-student state funding—to families with children who don’t attend public schools that they can use to pay for private school tuition or other education expenses, such as tutoring and homeschooling supplies. Some states restrict ESAs or specific ESA programs within the state to students with disabilities, students attending schools with poor performance, and/or students from low-income families. Recently, more states have begun adopting universal ESAs, which all families can access regardless of income, disability status, or any other qualifying factor. ESA funds are generally given directly to families, often in the form of debit cards with restrictions on how the money can be spent. While ESAs and vouchers are often used interchangeably, what sets ESAs apart from vouchers are that they can be used for a wide array of education expenses, not just private school tuition. (See EdWeek's 2023 explainer on ESAs.)

Voucher

School vouchers describe public funds that families can use at private schools of their choice, including those that are religious, to subsidize the cost of student tuition. Many vouchers are restricted to students with disabilities, students attending poor-performing schools, and students from low-income families, but some states have vouchers that are available to any student. (See EdWeek's 2017 explainer on vouchers.)

Tax-Credit Scholarship

Tax-credit scholarship programs provide scholarships to families that they can use at private schools of their choice, including those that are religious. The scholarships most commonly come from state-authorized nonprofit organizations, which issue the scholarships out of donations that they receive from businesses or individual taxpayers who receive tax credits for those donations. Eligibility can be limited based on family income, disability status, or other factors, or it can be universal. (See EdWeek's 2024 explainer on tax-credit scholarships.)

Tax-Credit Education Savings Account

Tax-Credit ESAs are a less common form of ESA through which families receive a designated, per-pupil amount from a state-authorized nonprofit organization that administers the account. Families can use the funds to cover any educational expense, including private school tuition, tutoring, or homeschooling costs. Businesses and individual taxpayers receive tax credits for donations to those nonprofit organizations. (See EdWeek's 2024 explainer on tax-credit education savings accounts.)

Direct Tax Credit

Some states offer tax credits directly to parents to defray the cost of private school tuition or home-school expenses. Such credits are still among the rarer forms of private school choice, but they have become gradually more common as Oklahoma and Idaho most recently have adopted new tax-credit programs. States' existing tax-credit programs have varying levels of generosity. Some states offer tax deductions instead of direct credits to defray private-school tuition costs. EdWeek doesn't track these deduction programs, as they tend to cover a smaller portion of private-school costs than other forms of private-school choice. (See EdWeek's 2024 explainer on states' use of tax credits to fund private school choice.)

Universal school choice

Private school choice programs that are open to all families regardless of disability status, income, location, or public school performance. Universal policies have become more popular in recent years.

School choice

State and, to a lesser extent, federal policies and programs that allow families to send students to schools that they wouldn’t be assigned to attend in the traditional public school system. This can include charter schools; magnet schools; traditional public schools outside of a family’s assigned school zone, district, or town; homeschooling; and private schools, including those that are religiously affiliated.

Private school choice

Policies and programs that direct state and other public funds to private schools, including religious options, where families can choose to enroll their children.

Public school choice

Policies and programs that allow families to attend public schools other than the school to which a child would normally be assigned. These schools include charter schools, magnet schools, as well as traditional public schools where families proactively decide to enroll their children. This EdWeek tracker is focused on private school choice and does not include data on public school choice programs.

Magnet schools

Public schools with a specific focus, such as STEM, performing arts, or career and technical education, that are free to attend and open to all students in a district. Some magnet schools are also open to students outside of a designated district or state and require students to apply to attend.

Charter schools

Schools that receive public funding but typically operate independently of local school districts, with private nonprofits most commonly running them and less often for-profit entities. Districts or state authorizing bodies create contracts, or “charters,” with organizations that want to open charter schools, often for a designated period of time. Charters are tuition-free and are often open to all students in a district or an even broader metro area. However, they tend to have caps on enrollment and decide enrollment based on a lottery system. Because charter schools are a form of public school choice, they are not included in EdWeek’s private school choice tracker. (See EdWeek’s 2018 explainer on charter schools.)

Inter- and intra-district choice

Policies and programs that allow students to attend public schools other than those to which they would normally be assigned. Those schools can be located in the student’s home district but outside of their traditional school zone (intra-district choice) or outside of their home district (inter-district choice). These policies are sometimes referred to as open enrollment.

Policies to watch

An ongoing look at significant private school choice policy development:

The federal government
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
New Hampshire
North Dakota
Ohio
South Carolina
South Dakota
Texas
Vermont
Wyoming

The federal government

President-elect Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 29 calling for the U.S. Education Department to develop guidance to states for expanding private school choice.

On the same day, Senate Republicans proposed legislation that would set aside $10 billion annually for a new tax-credit scholarship program open to students in every state whose families earn less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level.

Even before Trump took office, a similar proposal earned majority approval from the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees taxation. If Republicans choose to move the bill forward as part of the annual budget reconciliation process, they would need a simple majority of lawmakers in both chambers to agree to it.

Republicans currently hold 53 of 100 Senate seats and a slim majority in the 435-member House. Even so, a new private school choice program is not guaranteed to pass. Some lawmakers who represent rural districts with few alternatives to public schools may balk on behalf of their constituents.

Georgia

Lt. Gov Burt Jones, a Republican, is proposing to expand eligibility for the state’s ESA program to children in foster care. Democrats, meanwhile, are pushing to scale back investment in the program after more students became eligible than some lawmakers intended.

Students are currently eligible through the program to receive $6,500 in public ESA funds for next school year if they attend a public school that ranks among the bottom 25 percent in the state according to academic performance metrics.

Between November 2024 and February 2025, the state education department published and then withdrew several versions of the list of eligible public schools after district leaders questioned the inclusion of certain schools. Meanwhile, a new implementation body formed by the state published rules that expanded eligibility for the program to more than 20 percent of the state’s students.

Some state lawmakers, including several who voted last year to approve the ESA program, have said they don’t support expanding eligibility to that extent. Critics of private school choice worry that expanding eligibility could create political pressure to increase the program’s annual spending cap, currently set at $144 million.

Idaho

On Feb. 27, Gov. Brad Little signed into law a program that will offer up to $50 million in tax credits each year to parents of private and home-school students. Each student would be eligible for $5,000, and students with disabilities would get an additional $2,500.

Little’s office received more than 3,700 voicemails from residents weighing in on the bill in the days before he signed it into law. Roughly 85 percent of them opposed the bill, according to the governor’s office.

Little previously opposed private school choice, but he announced earlier this year he would support an investment of $50 million per year assuming that the program is fair, transparent, and accountable. On Feb. 25, Little told reporters “there’s not enough accountability in the tax credit bill”—but he signed it two days later anyway.

Meanwhile, on Feb. 14 the senate voted down a proposal that would have increased funding and expanded eligibility for the state’s existing Empowering Parents program, which gives $1,000 per child to parents who apply for funds to spend on various public or private education expenses that supplement the classroom experience.

Indiana

The state house on Feb. 20 approved an annual operating budget that increases investment in the state’s existing school voucher program so that all students are eligible. Currently, students are eligible for the voucher program if they come from families earning no more than 400 percent of the federal poverty level, which means the overwhelming majority of the state’s students are already eligible. Roughly 70,000 students participated this year, costing the state $439 million.

The House budget mirrors the one proposed last month by newly elected Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican. In addition to the voucher expansion, it includes tripling the annual allocation for the state’s limited education savings account offering, from $10 million to $30 million. The program accepts applications from K-12 students with disabilities who previously attended public schools. Roughly 1,000 students use the program for the current school year.

Kansas

The senate on Feb. 19 voted 24-16 to approve a bill that would expand eligibility and increase funding for the state’s existing tax-credit scholarship program. Currently, participants in the program must be from families earning less than 100 percent of the federal poverty level. The state can give out $10 million worth of scholarships each year.

The bill would increase the annual spending limit to $15 million, and creates a mechanism for annual investment to rise to $25 million if more than 75 percent of the credits are claimed in a given year.

The bill also expands eligibility to include all students from families earning less than 250 percent of the federal poverty level; all current public school students from kindergarten to 8th grade; and all school-eligible children below the age of 7. Also newly eligible under the bill would be children in foster care; children of active-duty military members or whose parents were killed in the line of duty; and children of emergency management providers, firefighters, and police officers.

Meanwhile, a senate committee is considering a bill that proposes offering up to $125 million a year in tax credits directly to private school parents—$4,000 per student attending an unaccredited private school, and $8,000 per student attending an accredited private school.

The chair of the senate education committee, Renee Erickson, said in late January that she believes private school choice legislation will succeed this year. In order to do so, it will need to garner enough support from lawmakers to overcome a veto from Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat. Republicans currently hold supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature.

Mississippi

House lawmakers on Feb. 14 killed a bill that would have created a new education savings account program with two alternatives for students attending schools or districts rated “D” or “F” by the state: transfer to a nearby public school or district with a higher rating, or use the state’s per-pupil education funding allocation to help cover the cost of private school tuition if the student can’t access a higher-rated public school.

Some Republican lawmakers wanted the program to have universal eligibility, while others worried about the cost of the proposal and suggested scaling it back. Lawmakers also cited President Trump’s executive order on school choice as a reason to wait and see how the choice landscape shifts in the coming months.

The House did approve a bill that will invest $2 million a year to clear the waitlist for the state’s existing ESA program, which has offered roughly $7,000 apiece to a few hundred students with disabilities since 2015. And the House also approved increasing the annual investment in the state’s tax-credit scholarship program from $9 million to $16 million.

Missouri

Lawmakers have proposed several bills to expand private school choice during the 2025 legislative session. One would expand eligibility for the state’s existing tax-credit ESA program—which prioritizes scholarships for students with disabilities and low-income students—to include students who already attend private school. (Currently, the program is only available to public school students hoping to enroll in a private school.)

Another proposal, with bills filed in both the House and Senate, would offer a separate tax credit directly to families for private educational expenses.

Montana

House lawmakers on Feb. 19 rejected a bill that would have created a new tax-credit program with two components: individuals and corporations would have received tax credits for donating to organizations that grant private school scholarships; and parents would have been able to apply for a tax credit of up to $7,000 to cover the cost of private school tuition and other related expenses.

The state would have spent up to $4 million for each of those two offerings in the first year. Some lawmakers were wary of the steep cost, and of the potential ripple effects on public schools.

Meanwhile, proposals to expand eligibility for the state’s existing education savings account program to all of the state’s students, and to kick off the process of amending the state’s constitution to remove restrictions on public funds for “sectarian” schools, haven’t yet advanced.

Nebraska

Less than three months after the state’s voters decisively chose to repeal a law that allowed parents of private school students to claim tax credits, lawmakers are proposing to revive that exact program. One lawmaker is pushing to designate the program as an appropriation, which would make it immune from being challenged on the ballot.

They’ve also proposed a bill that would bring back the state’s tax-credit scholarship program, which gave tax credits to individuals and corporations that donated to organizations which grant scholarships to private school students.

Another legislative proposal calls for creating a private school choice program solely accessible to students in foster care.

New Hampshire

A House education funding committee on March 4 advanced a legislative proposal to remove the income eligibility cap on the state’s education savings account program, which currently restricts eligibility to students from families earning less than 350 percent of the federal poverty level.

The bill would expand eligibility for the ESA program to students from families earning less than 400 percent of the federal poverty line starting in the 2025-26 school year, and to all of the state’s students in the 2026-27 school year.

Newly inaugurated Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, said in mid-January that she expects the program will expand this year, even if it doesn’t become fully universal. Roughly 5,300 students currently participate in the program at an annual cost of $23 million.

North Dakota

Senate lawmakers voted 25-22 on Feb. 21 to approve a bill that would create a new education savings account program unlike any other in the country.

Every K-12 student in the state who attends public school or homeschool would receive an annual award of $500 a year for educational expenses. Private school students from families earning less than 500 percent of the federal poverty level would receive a $2,000 award. And private school students from families earning less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level would receive a $3,500 award.

Meanwhile, on Feb. 26, the House voted 51-39 to approve a separate ESA proposal. Under that bill, the state would offer ESAs worth roughly $8,800 to private school students, as well as a smaller allocation to each private school student’s corresponding public school district.

Ohio

The senate is considering a proposal to make students eligible for the state’s voucher offering even if they are already receiving state funds from the state’s separate voucher programs, which offer larger per-student awards for special education.

Students with disabilities currently can receive state support for private school tuition of $9,000 to $32,000 a year from the Jon Peterson Special Needs Scholarship Program. Students with autism are eligible for a comparable award amount from the Autism Scholarship Program.

Right now, students participating in those programs can’t also apply for a voucher worth $6,000 to $8,000 from the state’s universal EdChoice program. If the new bill passes, the state will invest as much as $38 million to make those students eligible, whether they’re receiving a separate voucher or not.

South Carolina

The state supreme court ruled last September that the state constitution’s “Blaine Amendment” prohibits the state from using public dollars to cover the cost of private school tuition. That ruling essentially nullified the state’s existing education savings account program.

Republican state senators on Feb. 4 approved a bill that creates a similar program offering roughly $8,500 in ESA funds to 10,000 students per year. That money will come from the state’s lottery revenue, rather than from its general fund. The vast majority of the state’s students would be eligible.

House lawmakers, meanwhile, on Feb. 26 approved a proposal to revive the shuttered ESA program—including its award amount of $6,000 per student—with funding once again coming from the state’s general fund. The House proposal is to designate an individual appointed by the state superintendent of education to distribute the state funds to recipients, rather than the state delivering them directly to recipients.

The two houses now either must compromise or decide which proposal will advance. Whichever version of the law passes, another lawsuit to challenge the program’s new funding approach is likely.

South Dakota

The state senate, in a 20-24 vote, rejected a bill that would have allowed parents to apply for property tax credits from the state to help cover the cost of private school and homeschool. Lawmakers balked after a fiscal note predicted school districts could lose as much as $126 million in annual revenue if it passed.

In early February, lawmakers nixed two other GOP proposals for private school choice, including a $4 million annual state investment in education savings accounts.

The state has had a tax-credit scholarship program since 2016. Students are eligible to participate if they’re in foster care, or from families earning less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

Texas

On Feb. 5, senators voted 19-12 to approve investing $1 billion in state funds to establish an education savings account program that would accept applications from all students. Each participating private school student would receive a base amount of $10,000; students with disabilities would each get $11,500; and home-school students would get a $2,000 ESA.

The House has historically been less keen on private school choice than the senate. But 75 out of 150 lawmakers had co-sponsored the proposal as of Feb. 26—just enough for a tie vote, which could be broken by the bill’s author, House Speaker Dustin Burrows, if he chooses to approve the final version.

Vermont

Gov. Phil Scott on Feb. 6 laid out a proposal for a new statewide school choice system that would be markedly different from any other state’s. His office followed up with clarifying details on Feb. 25.

Each regional school division would be required to designate at least one high school—including public magnet schools as well as area private schools—as a “choice school.” Schools would only be eligible for that designation if half of their current students attend using public funds, which means many existing private schools in the state would be ineligible.

All of the state’s students in 9th through 12th grade would be eligible to apply for the “school choice lottery” in their district.

For students approved to attend a choice school through their district’s lottery, the state would direct those students’ per-pupil allocation to the choice school—whether it’s public or private.

Choice schools would be exempt from some state mandates related to academics and operations.

This system would mark a major departure from the state’s existing setup, in which students who live in areas without a local public school option for their grade level can use publicly funded vouchers to attend school elsewhere, including at private or religious schools.

On Feb. 11, State Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth said he didn’t support Scott’s proposal and wanted to focus on other issues—though that was before it became clear that most private schools in the state wouldn’t be able to participate in the choice lottery.

Wyoming

Republican Gov. Mark Gordon on March 4 signed into law an expansion of the state’s existing education savings account program that makes all K-12 students in the state eligible to participate.

Starting in the 2026-27 school year, the ESA award amount per student will rise from $6,000 to $7,000, and the state will accept applications from all K-12 students. Currently eligible students—from families earning less than 150 percent of the federal poverty level--will begin using funds from the existing version of the program in the 2025-26 school year.

Gordon last year vetoed a bill that would have had a higher income cap, arguing that a broader state investment in private education could run afoul of the constitution. Some lawmakers and experts believe a legal challenge to this new policy is an even bigger possibility.