In The States

BRIEF: School Choice in the States – October 2020

LEGISLATION Washington, D.C. Congress received and the city’s council enacted Washington, D.C.’s 2021 budget request act, which includes a $40 million request for the federal program that operates the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. LITIGATION Maine On October 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruled against parents in Maine who wish to […]

U.S. States Ranked by Educational Choice Share, 2020

Where are America’s students getting their education? Which types of schools and educational settings are they choosing? END OF Q3 UPDATE: Participation data updates were made for programs in Alabama, Arizona and Florida. The percentages for Arizona changed in the table based on those updates, as did the national level percentages. I also updated the […]

EdChoice Public Opinion Tracker: Top Takeaways September 2020

This week we’ve posted reports and our findings based on our most recent survey results that are now posted on EdChoice’s Public Opinion Tracker. Each quarter Morning Consult conducts two polls on our behalf. The first posed questions to a national sample of K–12 teachers (N = 1,000, in the field September 3–13). A second […]

BRIEF: School Choice in the States – September 2020

LEGISLATION D.C. H.R. 8337, the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2021, and Other Extensions Act, passed Congress. A broad appropriations bill, it extends the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program an additional year from its previous five-year appropriation. Federal Lawmakers introduced S.B. 4775, the Delivering Relief to America’s Families, Schools, and Small Businesses Act. Included in its text is a provision […]

BRIEF: School Choice in the States – August 2020

LEGISLATION Virginia Virginia lawmakers have filed three bills to expand educational choice during the pandemic or similar health crises: • SB 5020 would require any district school operating on a “reduced schedule” to deposit any “unused funds” (i.e., savings from being closed down) into specially established education savings accounts for each student. The ESAs could […]

Cool Schools: Season Three Roundup

It’s that time again. We’re recapping each episode in the latest season of our Cool Schools podcast. In this series, EdChoice Director of National Research Mike McShane spotlights some—you guessed it—cool schools across the country. He gets in the weeds, asking school leaders all the burning questions we education geeks care about. For those of […]

BRIEF: School Choice in the States – July 2020

Federal Senators introduced the School Choice Now Act, a bill that would provide a one-time emergency appropriation for state scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs) to maintain scholarship amounts likely to be affected by a decrease in donations from the pandemic. The bill provides a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donations to SGOs, capped at $5 billion per […]

What the Espinoza Ruling Means for Blaine Amendments and School Choice

EdChoice is celebrating a landmark VICTORY for families and children! Discriminatory Blaine Amendments found in state constitutions can no longer be used to prohibit families participating in school choice programs from accessing religiously affiliated private schools for their children, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Dept of Revenue. Chief Justice […]

BRIEF: School Choice in the States – June 2020

LEGISLATION   Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 7067, a bill that significantly expands the state’s Family Empowerment Scholarship program. The bill expands income-eligibility from 185 percent of the federal poverty line ($47,638 for a family of four in 2019–20) to 300 percent of the federal poverty line ($77,250 for a family of four in 2019–20). Students from […]

EdChoice Public Opinion Tracker: Top Takeaways May 2020

A lot of major public developments are unfolding right now. We are truly living in historic times.  Schooling questions and issues may not be top of mind for many of you, but if they are, we have new monthly tracking polling results and downloadable files on our Public Opinion Tracker. In this blog post, I […]