Who Really Benefits From Universal School Choice?

Universal school choice programs have been gaining steam across Republican states. These programs give participating families state funding to educate their kids outside of public schools, and are promoted as a way to help families choose a school that suits their preferences — whether for academic, religious/ideological, cultural or other reasons.

Often these programs take the form of vouchers, which help pay tuition at private schools, or education savings accounts (ESAs), which provide money for qualified expenses like private school tuition, homeschooling or education supplies. These programs were once targeted to disadvantaged students, but increasingly states are opening them up to everyone.

This trend has created a wave of concern that these programs would mainly benefit the wealthy and privileged families who already send their children to private schools.

Democrat Katie Hobbs, who became Arizona’s governor four months after the state’s ESA program went universal, has been among the loudest critics of a universal school choice policy. She quickly sounded an alarm over the program’s expense and allegedly wasteful spending. Hobbs said families have misused ESA dollars for luxury purchases like ski resort passes and Rolexes, and that the universal program is forcing the state to subsidize school costs for wealthy families who don’t need help.

However, some education policy experts point to evidence from other states — like North Carolina — where the majority of students in a universal school choice program still come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

States’ universal ESA and voucher programs vary in their specifics. But as more states consider implementing these programs, observers are trying to get to the bottom of whether the programs really offer more choice, or just financially reward people for choices they’ve already made.

Many Participants Come From Private School

ESA programs in Arkansas and Iowa will become universal for the 2025-2026 school year. They started out serving only highly disadvantaged students, then in their second year began serving moderately disadvantaged students.

“In that third year, almost every student currently in private school should participate in the program, right?” says Patrick Wolf, distinguished professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas. “Otherwise, you're leaving money on the table. So that third year, basically the state's going to be subsidizing a lot of existing private school students.”

Finding out just how many of the private school student participants represent new costs requires taking a deeper look.

When Florida turned its voucher programs universal in 2023, participation jumped by 72,000. Much of that influx wasn’t from public school students taking advantage of a new opportunity, however. Reportedly, 69 percent of new participants were already attending private school. And in Arkansas, a reported 95 percent of 2023 voucher participants were either newly enrolling in kindergarten or had attended a private school in the previous year.

But just looking at where kids were the year before participating in an ESA program doesn’t give the whole picture, Wolf says. That’s because some universal ESA participants would have only been in private school the prior year because they’d already used the original, targeted ESA program to leave public school long ago. (And pro-school choice nonprofit EdChoice points out some students could’ve been moving into an ESA program from a different state-funded support program). The more accurate picture comes from considering how many current participants in an ESA program have ever been in public school.

Such studies tend to find that two-thirds of participants had never attended a public school, while one-third have, Wolf says.

School voucher advocates and opponents continue to debate how significantly such programs affect the finances of public schools. But when it comes to looking at state finances, EdChoice says that some can afford to subsidize a portion of students who would’ve attended private school with or without the program.

That’s because many states don’t award ESA participants the full dollar amount that the state would’ve spent educating them in public school. As such, those states can still break even so long as they have a large enough portion of participants leaving public school to offset the costs — a portion that will vary by state. In school year 2023-2024, for example, New Hampshire’s then-income limited program would have needed just over a quarter of participants to have switched out of public school to break even, because the state paid roughly four times more to educate a pupil in public school. Arizona, meanwhile, funds ESA participants at 90 percent of the amount the state would have spent to educate them in public school. In Iowa, legislators sent a bill to the governor in April that would provide $7,988 per student, regardless of whether they attend public school or use an ESA.

Is the Money Going to Students Who Need the Help?

A Brookings study and ProPublica investigation both found that families from wealthier parts of Arizona participate in the universal ESA program at a higher rate than those from lower income areas.

A disproportionately high share of ESA participants were from ZIP code tabulation areas (a geographic measurement used by the U.S. Census) with the highest median incomes, highest educational attainment and lowest rates of poverty, Brookings found.

Meanwhile, the ZIP code tabulation area in which nearly a quarter of residents received food stamps or public cash assistance had the lowest portion of children under 18 participating in ESA programs. Looking across ZIP code tabulation areas, the portion of children participating in ESAs rose as the rates of residents relying on poverty aid dropped.

Some states’ programs cap their spending and prioritize low-income students if demand outstrips funding. Others expand program eligibility significantly but stop short of going fully universal, for example by excluding families above a certain income threshold. That changes the outcomes of the programs, experts say.

“When programs have certain income considerations baked in, you see very different patterns, like you see that it's actually disproportionately going to relatively poor areas instead of relatively wealthy areas,” says Jon Valant, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings.

Texas is initially making $1 billion available for its school choice education savings account program, which becomes available to all students next year. If demand exceeds funding, priority will go to students who are already participating in the targeted version of the ESA or who had in the past, and children with siblings already participating. Among those groups, priority will go to students with disabilities or from low- or moderate-income families.

Meanwhile, Arizona’s program, which became universal in 2023, does not cap enrollment, although the state is considering spending caps on some purchasing categories.

“Where it really is something resembling a universal voucher system — like what we've seen in Arizona — you see a very consistent trend that the funds flow disproportionately to wealthy areas,” Valant says.

Valant says it’s not entirely clear why this disparity exists. But one reason could be that voucher programs often don’t cover the full cost of tuition at a private school. As such, families that cannot afford to cover the gap may be unable to participate. In Q3 2025, Arizona ESA recipients received an average award of $7,000 to $8,000. Meanwhile, private tuition for elementary school averaged about $10,000 and for secondary school, about $14,000. One of Phoenix’s top-tier private schools charged $30,000 to $35,000.

And families would need to cover additional costs to attend private school, like school uniforms and transportation, as well as afford breakfast, lunch and snacks that public schools offer for free to low-income families, ProPublica notes. Still, some private schools provide subsidies to help cover part of the funding gap for low-income students, Wolf says.

In at least one state, this funding gap — between what low-income families can afford and what private schools charge — appeared to grow under universal ESA/voucher programs. A study examining how private school tuition changed in Iowa when it expanded its ESA to all new kindergarteners found that kindergarten tuition rose 21 percent to 25 percent.

Lower ESA/voucher participation among low-income families might also indicate that not enough of them are learning about the program, Valant says. There are other potential considerations, too. One report notes that students still have to meet private schools’ admissions criteria to attend, which could be a barrier to some students making use of ESAs or vouchers.

But other programs are still seeing participation skew toward lower income families. North Carolina’s program went universal in school year 2024-2025. Reportedly, 58 percent of participants that year would have qualified for the income-restricted voucher.

“The previous applicants with lower income are remaining in the program and are creating a situation where the program currently is still disproportionately serving students from lower income families,” Wolf says. In his view, “We're not seeing these programs flip to overwhelmingly serving elite kids. … We don't know for sure what's going to happen in the future, but we're not seeing it yet. “

Wolf says that families with the means can often move into neighborhoods with high-quality public schools, and so may be more satisfied with their public offerings.

Still, with many universal ESA programs only a few years in, much remains to be seen about what participation trends will look like long-term.