Tennessee passed voucher-style Education Savings Account (ESA) legislation in 2019. We analyze the roll call vote in the Tennessee House to better understand the role of constituent, legislator, and special interest influences on support for school choice. This is accomplished using a binary probit model with legislator vote as the dependent…

Private school choice programs' success depends partly on the supply of private schools. Many parents prioritize a religious education for their children. Therefore, it is important to consider how religious private schools may respond to various program regulations. We conducted an experimental study surveying a national sample of 354 leaders of…

Does state implementation of Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), which are voucher-like taxpayer-funded subsidies for children to attend private schools, increase tuition prices? We analyze a novel longitudinal dataset for all private schools in Iowa and Nebraska, neighboring states that adopted ESAs in the same legislative session, with Iowa's…

The traditional K-12 schooling model is a "bundled" product that provides parents with an all-in-one package of services: instruction, transportation, lunch, extracurriculars, and athletics, all delivered by one provider in one location: the school. Historically, parental choice has been limited to selecting from among different…

In 2013, the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) passed its first private school voucher legislation with the introduction of the Opportunity Scholarship Program. The program was designed to provide private school tuition assistance to income-eligible families who chose to withdraw their child from public school and it represents a significant…

This article provides insights into stakeholders' challenges while bringing educational accountability to private tutoring providers through a self-regulation model. There is no participant involved in this narrative inquiry study. Policymakers may be ambivalent about bringing accountability as their families may benefit from private tutoring.…

Arthur Seldon (1916-2005) was a significant British neo-liberal economist in the second half of the twentieth century. From 1957 to 1988, as the "engine room" of the Institute of Economic Affairs, Seldon had been advocating the reform of "free" state education. He vigorously argued for education vouchers, by which each parent…

In June 2023, the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board approved the establishment of a charter school by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. This amounts to state funding of a religious school. Robert Kim discusses how this decision goes against Oklahoma's constitutional and legislative history, why allowing religious charters is not the…

Over the past four years, Florida has seen tremendous growth in the amount of public funds being spent on private education. This report finds that in 2022-23, an estimated $1.3 billion in funding will be redirected from public school districts to private education, representing 10% of state K-12 education funds allocated through the Florida…

Due to the recent wave of momentum behind universal vouchers and education savings accounts, charter schools have become an afterthought for some conservative school choice advocates. There is a progressive and a conservative vision for charter schooling. The progressive approach to charter school authorization fails to achieve its stated goals…

In the 2022-23 school year, Arizona began implementation of a "universal voucher" program through which all school-age students are eligible for a voucher, and families can use public funding to underwrite private or homeschool education for their children. Universal vouchers in Arizona are an expansion of the existing Empowerment…

This study explored the experience of Catholic school principals in Ohio whose schools have participated in the EdChoice Scholarship program. The researcher employed the lens of principal time usage to examine the experiences of Ohio Catholic school principals with EdChoice, with a focus on the direct experiences of principals participating in the…

Education savings accounts (ESAs) are education funding mechanisms that allow families to receive a deposit of public funds to a government-authorized savings account for accessing approved educational services. Using student-level longitudinal data, this paper examines how families participating in the Florida Gardiner Scholarship Program use…

Pennsylvania has two programs that give tax money to private schools: the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) and the Opportunity Scholarship Tax Credit (OSTC) programs. Each year, EITC and OSTC provide $230 million to private scholarship organizations, or "SOs," which award tuition vouchers to families whose children attend…

The expansion of student opportunity through the flexible spending of Education Scholarship Accounts (ESAs) builds in direct accountability to the parents who choose and hold the power of the purse. Families can select different schools and service providers if they are dissatisfied with how their student is faring. But ESAs can also be designed…