This week marks the 16th year that families and educators across the country celebrate National School Choice Week, and it is an especially important one. After passage of the school choice program in Texas last year, a majority of American school children are eligible for school choice, by one count. Thirty states now run some form of school choice program, and 12 have passed universal school choice laws since 2024, including New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Idaho.
But while we have much to celebrate this week, more work remains to be done.
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First, it’s important to understand how the educational establishment is resisting these programs. School choice has faced lawsuits in Ohio, Tennessee, Wyoming, and Utah. Passing a universal school choice law can be just the first step in what is likely to be a drawn-out process.
Second, choice programs are decisively swinging voters toward Republicans on educational issues. Polling from Democratic groups like DFER and Blue Rose Research shows that the public trusts Republicans more to handle education. Democrats’ historical advantage on this issue makes this shift even more significant.
Republicans “give you a school system that doesn’t work,” Matthew Yglesias recently suggested, but “they also won’t spend too much of your money on it, which is at least coherent.” On the contrary: recent red-state school choice bills represent a deep commitment to public schools.
“The progress happening now combines an expansion of choice with extra, smart investments in public schools and proven reforms,” Derrell Bradford, president of the education advocacy group 50CAN, told me. “It is a revolution in school funding with an emphasis on the basics, and it has led to more and better school options for families.”
Consider some examples.
The 2023 Arkansas LEARNS Act boosted the minimum teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000, launched the State Teacher Education Program to repay teachers’ federal student loans, and created the Merit Teacher Incentive Fund to offer up to $10,000 in annual bonuses for eligible teachers. It also removed the cap on charter schools and created the Arkansas Children’s Educational Freedom Account Program, which covers private school tuition and tutoring expenses.
In Arizona, Governor Doug Ducey expanded school choice, increased teacher salaries, and supported Proposition 123, which invested an additional $3.5 billion in education.
The Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act, passed in 2022, created an “additional annual recurring state investment of $1 billion.” In 2025, the state legislature passed the Tennessee Education Freedom Scholarship Act, which created a universal school choice program.
Georgia increased its education budget by $1.4 billion in 2025 and $404 million in 2026. In 2024, it created the Promise Scholarships program to “give scholarships of $6,500 to students in the bottom performing 25% of schools.”
Press coverage fixated on the $1 billion that Senate Bill 2—the Texas Education Freedom Act—set aside for the Education Savings Account program. But the media paid less attention to other parts of the bill, which included almost $8 billion in new public education funding and a hold-harmless provision for public school districts with significant enrollment declines.
Nationally, Republicans are also expanding school choice through the One Big Beautiful Bill, which creates the Federal Scholarship Tax Credit. Seventeen states have opted in to the program, including blue Colorado. If California and New York don’t follow suit, these states—two of the three largest payers of federal taxes—will see that money go to low-income kids in other states. New York Governor Kathy Hochul and California Governor Gavin Newsom will have to explain to their constituents why they won’t be able to benefit from the $25.9 billion that the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates this program will be worth over the next ten years.
As we celebrate another National School Choice Week, let’s hope that more Democrats will join Republicans in trusting families with deciding what’s best for their children’s education and making smart investments in public schools.
Photo: Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images