22 Million Children Now Have Access to New Education Options

How ESAs give students control of time and education funding to close opportunity gaps

Welcome to The Tassel, FREOPP’s education newsletter. This is where our scholars analyze the state of equal opportunity in American education, as well as share research and commentary from others that we think are worth your time. We are grateful for Preston Cooper’s past contributions and for establishing this Substack. To manage your subscription preferences, visit your Substack settings.

The state of equal opportunity in American education in 2024

When I joined FREOPP five years ago, my first report reviewed the state of equal opportunity in American education. I concluded that the United States had reduced past resource inequalities in public schools that had limited opportunities for low-income children. But large achievement gaps persisted. Children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds were still struggling compared to their more affluent peers. The biggest opportunity gaps that I identified were that children from wealthier families were more likely to attend a school of their parents choice and access outside of school learning and enrichment.  

Rereading my 2019 report now feels like opening a time capsule. So much in American education has changed after the pandemic. But these key opportunity gaps have been clearly exposed.  

Unnecessary public school closures widened the academic achievement gap 

You probably already know the bad news. Prolonged and unnecessary public school closures caused a generation of children to suffer serious learning losses. National test scores released last year showed historic declines in American students’ reading and math test scores. Children from lower income families suffered larger setbacks than their peers.

As I warned Congress during an August 2020 committee hearing, closing public schools for long periods risked expanding the academic achievement gap for a generation of American children. Our worst fears are now being realized. Harvard and Stanford researchers recently analyzed state-level testing data between 2022 and 2023 and found that “achievement gaps between rich and poor districts are even wider now than they were before the pandemic.” 

22 million children now have access to new education options 

But there is reason for hope. State policymakers across the country have responded to the academic damage caused during the pandemic by giving parents new power to choose their children’s schools and learning environments. In recent years, ten states (AZ, AR, FL, IN, IA, NC, OH, OK, UT, and WV) established universal school choice programs. So far this year, Alabama and Louisiana established universal education savings account (ESA) programs. 

According to EdChoice, 22 million children now have access to private school choice programs, and more than 1 million children are now taking advantage of such options. This includes nearly half a million children using ESAs that allow parents to pay for tuition or customize their child’s education. I proposed this vision of giving parents direct control of their child’s education funding through ESAs way back in 2005. It’s exciting to now see how parents, students, and educators are benefitting from ESA programs. For a glimpse of the future of American education, read the new report from Ron Matus with Step Up for Students: A Taste of A La Carte Learning. It describes how people are using ESAs in South Florida. Highlights include Saltwater Studies (a marine biologist teaching students in state parks) and Eye of a Scientist (a neuroscience PhD providing customized experiential science lessons).

Closing opportunity gaps with education savings accounts 

Thanks to these new education options, the major opportunity gaps I identified in 2019 are being narrowed. Nearly half of the nation’s K-12 students, regardless of their socioeconomic background, now have the chance to attend a school of their parents' choice or use their share of public funding to purchase a high-quality education. The proliferation of ESAs also has the potential to narrow the outside-of-school learning and enrichment gap, which remains a major source of inequality. 

While the movement to establish parental choice in education has made historic progress, a lot of hard work remains to ensure that disadvantaged children benefit from these new options. This includes effectively administering and implementing these new options, establishing customer-friendly services and technologies to help parents access accounts and make payments, and educating parents about these benefits.

Where I’ve been speaking 

The historic expansion of education choice options for American families is the result of years of hard work by parents, philanthropists, political leaders, and the research and advocacy communities. 

The Children’s Scholarship Fund’s annual summit 

I was very honored to speak at the Children’s Scholarship Fund’s annual summit in March. As I wrote last year, the national movement to expand parental choice in education really started in 1998 when CSF offered tuition scholarships to the nation’s most disadvantaged children. More than one million students applied even though parents had to commit $1,000 of their own money to pay a partial tuition payment. That means that the nation’s most disadvantaged families pledged $1 billion to help their children escape underperforming public schools. Over the past 25 years, CSF has awarded more than $1 billion in privately-funded scholarships (benefitting more than 200,000 students) and accelerated the national movement to change public policy to establish parental choice in education. 

Parents for School Options leadership conference 

I also had the privilege of delivering the keynote address at the Parents for School Options leadership conference last month. It was inspiring to meet with parents and advocates working on the frontlines across the nation to empower parents. My remarks focused on how education choice reforms are giving parents direct control of two of the most critical resources in their lives: time and money. 

Let me unpack this a bit. Theorists have reasoned that half of a person's “felt life experience” is over by age 18, based on the way that people experience the passage of time as a percentage of the time that they’ve already lived. It’s why time seems to move more slowly during childhood but flies by during adulthood. The 2,300 days that the typical student will spend in school through high school will account for a large share of her “felt life experience.” And with public schools now spending $15,600 annually per-pupil on average, a typical student will have about $200,000 spent on her schooling through high school. Giving families control of that precious time and money through ESAs would give all children a chance to get a high-quality education and have a fulfilling childhood filled with enriching and positive experiences.

What I’m researching 

I have been researching the relationship between education outcomes and human capital development, and exploring new ways that education stakeholders can estimate the return-on-investment from education interventions. Focusing more on the potential ROI of education investments and expenditures has the potential to promote human capital development and expand equal opportunity. We’ve also been developing our own policy recommendations for Congress and the White House in 2025 to reform federal programs to expand education opportunities for disadvantaged children, increase child care access and affordability, and to help foster children become independent when they age out of the child welfare system. We will be publishing this research in the coming months.

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