Georgia’s ESA Isn’t Underused, It’s Over-Restricted

What happens when eligibility replaces choice?

Imagine Georgia builds a brand-new highway, then opens only one on-ramp, puts a guard booth at the entrance, and hands drivers a checklist of eligibility hoops before they can merge. If traffic looks light, that doesn’t tell you people don’t want the highway. It tells you the on-ramp is too narrow and too hard to access.

That’s the story of the Georgia Promise Scholarship. Low “participation” is not the same thing as low demand. Sometimes it’s the predictable result of policy design.

In 2024, the Georgia legislature passed the Georgia Promise Scholarship program, an ESA program for certain students zoned to or attending a “low-performing” public school, defined as a school performing in the bottom quartile of schools in the state. Moreover, family income must not exceed 400% of the FPL when the child enters the program (this income requirement alone leaves out roughly one-third of Georgia families). Overall, only 15% of K-12 students in Georgia are eligible for the program. Advocates and lawmakers tried before to pass a more expansive program that served many Georgia students, but the political barriers proved too steep.

In its first year in 2024, more than 20,000 students applied, but only about 7,700 ultimately qualified and claimed ESAs. That gap matters because lawmakers budgeted $141 million, enough for more than 20,000 awards at $6,500 each.

This budget year, Governor Kemp is proposing a cut to the program since the number of claims is much lower than the amount of money set aside. This might be a reasonable decision if the low participation numbers reflected low interest in the program. But they don’t.

The fundamental problem with the GA Promise Scholarship is not that there is limited demand from families for school choice. Rather, the problem is that many families are cut out from participating from the beginning. Families can’t use an option they’re not allowed to access, and they can’t access it if they’re filtered out before they reach the starting line.

Two rules do most of the restricting. First, eligibility is tied to the state’s “low-performing” school list, meaning access depends on whether a child is assigned to (or attends) a school that lands in the bottom tier. That creates a geographic, bureaucratic gate: families a few streets away can face totally different eligibility, and a school’s label can change from year to year. It also forces parents into a narrow box, where if they’re seeking a different school for safety, services, culture, or academic fit but their assigned school isn’t on the list, the program is simply off-limits.

Second, the 400% of the federal poverty level (FPL) income cap filters out thousands of middle-class families and creates an eligibility “cliff.” A family can be strongly interested, apply in good faith, and still be ruled out because their income is just above the cutoff, or kicked out of the program if annual income grows just enough to exceed the cutoff. Even for families under the cap, the need to document income adds administrative friction that can reduce follow-through, especially for households with irregular earnings or complicated tax situations.

In practice, these two constraints don’t just target the program; they shrink the pool of eligible families and help explain why interest on the front end doesn’t reliably translate into participation on the back end.

All of this points to the same conclusion: when access is tightly rationed by school assignment and by income, participation numbers will understate real interest.

EdChoice’s 2025 Schooling in America survey data and other polling consistently show that a universal school choice program – a program which each family residing in that state are eligible to participate – is often more popular than a means-tested (limited) program. Georgia should not be afraid of universality.

Georgia can also look to its neighbors. Across the South, where states have adopted broader eligibility, families have responded immediately.

• Tennessee’s education department reported more than 56,000 applications for its Education Freedom Scholarship program.
• Louisiana reported more than 39,000 applicants for LA GATOR.
• Alabama reported 36,873 student applicants for its CHOOSE Act program.
• Texas opened applications for its new education freedom account in February 2026 and saw rapid early demand, with applications quickly reaching over 100,000 students in just a couple weeks.

These programs aren’t identical, and none is perfect. The point is simpler: when eligibility is broad and the on-ramp is clear, families show up.

In EdChoice’s publication, If You Build It This Way, They Will Come, the authors write, “Ill-designed policies that do not reflect parental preference will not only limit access but could resultantly lead to greater inequity.” In the case of Georgia, eligibility is limited to students in failing schools.

The intention of prioritizing students assigned to struggling schools is understandable. But families choose schools for many reasons including academic fit, individualized attention, to escape bullying, safety, specialized services, religious instruction, or a healthier learning environment. A policy that treats “need” as a single metric will exclude families whose needs are real but don’t match the state’s definition.

Here’s the good news: Georgia already did the hard part when it created the account and the infrastructure. Now lawmakers should widen the on-ramp. Start with the simplest fix: expand eligibility beyond the bottom-25% school list so that access aligns with how families actually experience “need.” If lawmakers want statewide eligibility, pair it with sensible prioritization rules when funding is limited, so lower-income families and students with disabilities aren’t crowded out.

Some may think it’s “fair” that only the students in current failing public schools have access to this scholarship, and that’s a noble intention. But Milton Friedman said it best:

“I’m not in favor of fairness. I’m in favor of freedom. Freedom is not fairness. Fairness means somebody has to decide what’s fair.”

Allowing every parent in Georgia to choose the best educational option for their child isn’t just good policy. It’s widening the on-ramp and trusting families to navigate it themselves. A scholarship that exists mostly on paper isn’t a win. A scholarship families can actually access is. Georgia can choose which one it wants.

This was originally published to our Substack.