2025 Legislative Session in Review

Ed Tarnowski: Welcome back to the State of Choice podcast. I’m your host, Ed Tarnowski, also known as Ed with EdChoice, and with June comes our end of session review. It has been such an exciting session.

As most states start to wrap up now, most have already, we’re going to talk a little bit about what happened this year. We’re going to go to the details of the different types of programs that were passed and why we think this year solidifies universal as the standard for the choice movement now. So to kick us off, I’m going to start with Katherine.

One of her states had the first one this year. Let’s talk a little bit about that.

Katherine Schulze: Definitely, Ed, thanks. Well, it’s fabulous to have good news this summer. What Tennessee saw was in the fall of last year, we heard mumblings of a special session potentially to be called to talk about expanding Tennessee’s current program or creating a new one.

And sure enough, Governor Lee announced the morning after the election back in November that he was going to be supportive of a universal school choice program. And they ended up calling a special session right in January to kick it off. What Tennessee passed is a universal program, but we want to be specific about what does that mean.

So the program that it does have is universal eligibility. Any student in Tennessee, regardless of background, can apply for a scholarship to be in that program, which is very exciting. Now, there are limitations to this, however.

We only saw 20,000 scholarships be created by this program, 10,000 for students regardless of their income background, and then 10,000 for students who are special needs or low income. And while we are incredibly supportive of any options, at EdChoice, we believe all students, all dollars, all funding. And what that means is we want any child, regardless of background, to be able to access any form of school choice they might want to as long as they can.

Whatever their mom and dad wants to do is what we’re supportive of. So we’re excited for Tennessee taking a massive leap in getting universal eligibility. So any student can apply and potentially be eligible for the program.

However, there are limitations. Funding, which is surrounded by how many scholarships or ESAs there actually are, and then, of course, just a rubric that, of course, ranks students, whether they’re low income versus students who have any sort of background. So it’s a huge step forward because it is universally eligible, but we also want to dig into eligibility for uses and for funding.

The Tennessee program does give students approximately $10,000 to spend on tuition, books, fees, but we would love to see that number match whatever Tennessee spends for each child to have their traditional public school allotment. And so that’s a fight we’re going to see coming forward, is that we believe students should get the same amount from each state that they would traditionally have gotten from the state. Even if they decide to go to private school, they should have equal funding.

And then we’ll get into usage, which is we want parents to be able to spend that money however they want. We trust parents over bureaucracies. It’s important that we fight for legislation that confirms that.

So what we’re going to be doing is talking about all these weird hoops and whistles that all these different school choice programs demand of parents. And moving forward, we’re going to say, why don’t you just let the parents decide? They’re the ultimate check and balance on a kid’s future.

Ed Tarnowski: That’s absolutely right. And another big win in Texas this year, Katherine, a billion dollar appropriation. Let’s jump right in.

Katherine Schulze: Yes. Largest first day program in the nation. No longer are we seeing small minuscule pilot programs being pushed forward.

Texas is taking a leap that is Texas size, which is saying a billion dollars to a new ESA program, which we expect to begin taking applications in January of 2026. This program is so exciting because it has been a 30 year fight in Texas. We ran into so many lobbyists who actually were interns back in the day when Milton Friedman himself came to testify in committee to try to get some form of school choice passed.

And so it was so nice to shake hands with people that remembered being there just to catch a glimpse of obviously our noble laureate, Milton, and then just to come full circle and see Governor Abbott in May go ahead and sign a new program. It’s so exciting because we could see approximately 90,000 students now have choice, depending on how the funding shakes up. So what’s interesting with Texas’s new program, homeschool students would get $2,000 into an ESA to use however they want.

Traditional private school students would get up to about $11,000 into their ESA. And then what’s very cool and very exciting is students with special needs could get up to $30,000 into their ESA, depending on how their, it’s something called an IEP is written, which they would get from their public school. So we’re seeing just a smattering of exciting new resources in Texas for families.

You know, in Texas, we look at our polling. We know that 80% of Texas school children are going to traditional public schools, but we also know that 40% of those parents would like their kids going somewhere else. So we’ll continue to fight.

So Texas, similar to Tennessee, universally eligible for students. So any student, regardless of background, can apply. However, there will be a rubric set up in the event more students apply than dollars are available for ESAs.

And so what’s exciting about Texas is while we passed the bill in May, our comptroller has already been feverishly working to get this program off the ground. We actually held an implementation summit last week in three different cities. Each one was sold out, 250 families at each event where the comptroller’s team came and gave a small presentation to kind of give parents an idea of what they’re looking at for this next year.

Very exciting stuff. You know, rarely do we see such an engaged program administrator coming out within the first month of launching this program, already doing a multi-state tour, talking about solutions on how we’re going to make this program work for Texas families. So Texas is going to be universally eligible like Tennessee.

However, we are not universal on usage or funding, and that’s something we’ll be pushing on the future. We again want parents to be able to spend that money however they see fit. And we also want parents to get the exact same amount of money they would get if their child was attending a traditional public school, which is more than the $11,000 it’ll be allotted.

So exciting times here.

Ed Tarnowski: Really exciting times in Texas. And I got to say, Katherine, I was really jealous of your attendance at the governor’s signing ceremony over at the mansion. It looked like a lot of fun.

Katherine Schulze: It was so much fun. And again, it was just a full circle moment to have our CEO, Robert Enloe there, who has testified in committee countless times, begging for a hearing, begging for a bill to be filed to give parents choice. And finally, we’re here 30 years later.

Senator Brandon Creighton, who offered the bill, even went and flew a flag for Robert over the Capitol during the bill signing. So he was able to get that as an honor of his work.

Ed Tarnowski: Well deserved. Well deserved. Well, thank you, Katherine.

We’re going to go over to jump over to Aaron now, who also had several states get to universal eligibility in his region this year. Aaron, why don’t you just jump right in?

Aaron Gillham: Yeah, absolutely, Ed. Great to hear updates from other regions. And certainly mine in the Mountain West and Midwest was kind of a flurry of activity as well.

Sometimes you don’t know where these legislative ideas are going to go, these policy ideas are going to go. But then session gets underway and it’s quick. And we were excited to see some positive movement in places like Wyoming and Idaho and even North Dakota, where they didn’t get a program passed as we had hoped, which we’ll talk about a little bit.

But certainly some good discussions there, some good planting of seeds. And as I kind of remind myself and we talk about with our coalition partners, some of these states are still very new when it comes to this idea of education freedom. And some of these lawmakers are trying to do the due diligence of their constituents and handle public funds responsibly and ask the right questions.

Not everybody’s at the same stage or at the same step in this process. So some states, it’s exciting to see them expand programs. Some states are still working to get their very first program underway.

And so really, Wyoming was a good example of one that was an expansion. And that’s where I spent a lot of my first quarter on the ground in their state capitol, which is just a really special place. It’s a small, intimate, kind of almost a family there among both the chambers and the lobby and all the advocates and just everybody on the ground there that’s trying to do good work.

And what they were really trying to achieve in Wyoming was an expansion to their program that they had passed last year, which was Bill 166. This year’s House Bill is 199. And so they were looking to take what had been an attempt at universal eligibility last year.

Unfortunately, the governor was not on board with that and line item vetoed much of the spending such that it was going to start as just a program for low-income individuals, low-income families. But the legislature kind of wanted to emphasize the importance of getting every Wyomingite a possible option to pivot to a school or an educational environment that better fits the needs and values of that family and not to leave anyone behind because of some arbitrary kind of barrier there, some arbitrary income level. So they came back and talked through it and put together some language.

That’s where House Bill 199 comes in. And it was hard fought, definitely some final compromises towards the end of session to really get it across the line, trying to balance the concerns of the Senate, the concerns of the House, the concerns of the executive branch and make something that could work for everyone. And ultimately it was passed and it brought the program in Wyoming back to universal eligibility so all families can apply.

And it kept in the sort of universal uses that we like to see in these programs, which was retained from the original bill last year. So there’s a lot of different uses available with this, which is exciting to see. We hope that more programs will expand kind of how they think about the use of funds because education is not just, as we know, brick and mortar school building, but it certainly is a lot more than that nowadays.

So into the details a little bit here on the program for those that may be kind of getting up to speed, it was a $30 million appropriation and it was a good first step for them to kind of wade into this. As we know, Wyoming is kind of a low population state. This will provide $7,000 per student.

And then it did include a pre-K element, which is a little bit unique among a lot of these programs, but that was something that the governor had wanted to see. So for lower income threshold there on pre-K, you can apply and receive funding as well. So having that flexibility, if that’s something that you wanted to look at as a family.

So great to see good work being done there. Of course, the big news most recently is that there has been a suit filed in state and the program is being challenged. So just as the superintendent has gotten underway with rules and regulations and starting to roll out the program, the court judge has put the program on pause, sort of.

He is allowing for the continuation of the process and applications and sort of the due diligence that Megan, the superintendent, needs to do, but no disbursement of funds. That’s been frozen. So it’ll be interesting to see kind of what comes of that in the follow-up.

Of course, we’re keeping an eye on that and our legal team is going to be very much involved in that process as well. But it was good work by the legislature in their very, very short 40-day session. And we were excited to see them return to this issue right away after last year’s kind of series of line item vetoes, stymied the plan a bit and, you know, didn’t really match the wishes of the legislature.

So good to see them come back and tackle this again.

Ed Tarnowski: Wyoming did have a rocky path to universal eligibility, but they did get there and it’s really exciting. Yes. And Aaron, something else I want to talk about is, you know, Idaho, they did something a little different.

The SAs are largely still king right now, but Idaho is taking a different route with a true refundable tax credit for their private school choice program. Can we talk a little bit about what makes Idaho’s new program unique?

Aaron Gillham: Yes. So Idaho took a different path. They had kind of consulted with us and other groups and really just tried to take in as much information as possible and learn what other states had done.

And in the end, they decided to go the refundable tax credit route. So what they’ve done is passed a statewide refundable tax credit program, allowing parents to recoup qualifying K-12 private school or homeschool expenses, tuition, textbooks, assessments, tutors, transportation, curriculum, and more. So there’s a lot that’s covered there as well, kind of matching that goal for universal use in a program.

Took some good notes there and included that in their bill. But as you mentioned, it’s not an education savings account. This is a little bit different.

Families that want to utilize this program can fill out a form at tax time and get reimbursed for the expenses that they have acquired, kind of putting together their child’s education. Again, whatever that looks like. If it is a more traditional brick and mortar private school, that’s great.

If it’s kind of a hodgepodge of different academic components, that’s also fine as included in the bill with a lot of allowable expenses. The legislature did appropriate $50 million for this program, which is exciting to see. So a little bit more there than what Wyoming put up.

They also have two different tiers for students. So most students will just be eligible for $5,000, but special needs students will and can receive up to $7,500. So a little bit of a difference there.

Also, because it’s a tax credit, fundable tax credit, what they have accounted for is that lower income families, primarily those under 300%, the federal poverty level will be granted not only priority access, but they can receive advanced payments. So rather than having to wait for tax time to be reimbursed for expenses already incurred, they can actually ask for those funds upfront before those expenses have to be taken on by that family. So it’s a really thoughtful, really unique program.

And in fact, other states that are still yet to take up school choice or kind of get it across the finish line are now looking to this program and saying, huh, maybe there’s something here that would be more appealing than the kind of hot topic that we all know so well, education savings account. So I think in some ways, this is what the Oklahoma program was intended to be. I believe as our team leader would say, a very similar in idea.

But this one hopefully will really prove itself. And it really doesn’t have a lot of so-called accountability either. It allows for a pretty light hand, if you will, when it comes to executing this process.

So we’re excited to see it kind of take off and see what the state’s able to do with this. But so far, it seems like it’s in good hands. And the legislature has been very intentional to make sure their intent is well-defined within the parameters of the bill.

So I have high hopes for this program.

Ed Tarnowski: It’s really exciting. As we always say, laboratories are democracy. So I know I’ll be watching Idaho closely to see how this kind of new idea turns out as we see more data over the next two years.

Do we have any other updates from you, Aaron?

Aaron Gillham: Well, yes. Not all is rosy in the school choice world. As we know, things come up that certainly are results we don’t want, but we live to fight another day.

And that was the case in North Dakota. This was another state like Idaho that did not have any private school choice programs in place. And so they were kind of starting from scratch with these ideas.

And in addition, they actually only convene their legislature every other year. Two years ago, a program was vetoed by then Governor Burgum. They’ve got a new governor now who signaled support for school choice type programs.

And when the legislature got underway, it was an overenthusiastic approach in that there was lots of different bills kind of competing for attention. In the end, it really came down to two bills, a Senate bill and a House bill that made it sort of to the final few weeks of session. And in the end, the Senate bill was shot down by the House of Representatives.

The House bill, which did pass the legislature, was then shot down by the governor. So unfortunately, they were left with neither. But what I think was some of the concerns by some members of the legislature, at least, was that the structure of the Senate bill had a little bit of a different take on it.

And in fact, those putting the bill forward didn’t really identify it as a private school choice bill. They identified it as just a broad school choice bill or a broad spending bill on education because it did include quite a bit of funding for public school students. So students that chose to stay in public schools would receive additional funds under the Senate’s idea, Senate’s version of their school choice approach.

So that didn’t necessarily sit well with some legislators who were certainly trying to learn from other states or look at other states and see what had been done and seeing how this kind of stood out as an anomaly. And so they were kind of hesitant to have such an increase in cost and funding for what they saw was kind of an entity that already had received a recent increase in funds and just in general has a much higher per-pupil funding than any of the national school choice programs that have been proposed or put forward. So there was just a little bit of kind of some tough debate there towards the end.

And like I said, in the end, neither got passed. So this is a place where I think Idaho’s approach may receive some attention. I think there’s going to be some folks in North Dakota that might look to that and see some of the upsides.

And so that’ll be an interesting discussion as we kind of go into the interim. I know some of the committees are already convening or getting ready to convene over the summer. Again, they won’t have their legislative session.

They won’t have a legislative session in 2026. They’ll get back together in 2027. But hopefully that’ll give us a long runway to really continue the education process, continue to answer the questions that legislators have, and hopefully get us set up for success as they will, again, be one of the few states, certainly the few Republican trifectas, maybe the last Republican trifecta that doesn’t have a real private school choice program.

So it’ll be a good time to kind of dig in and address the concerns up there and kind of see what they’re thinking and putting together a program that makes the most sense for them and their constituents.

Ed Tarnowski: Thank you, Aaron. Now pivoting up to New England. We had a huge win out of New Hampshire, and it’s not just a win for the region, but nationally as well.

New Hampshire is becoming the 19th state to achieve universal eligibility and the fifth to achieve true universal choice. Remember, as Katherine talked about earlier, we define true universal choice as we want all students, all options, and all dollars covered, meaning every student is eligible. Every student has a wide array of qualifying educational expenses, and every student is guaranteed funding.

As we talked about a little bit in some of the other states this year, there are some restrictions on funding and on uses. Utah is an example I use often, and they have an $80 million appropriation for their program, so only about 10,000 kids can participate. Is that truly universal?

Or Indiana this year. Indiana had a really, really exciting win. Indiana’s choice scholarship program, they did lift the income cap, so it now has achieved universal eligibility, and they tied their program to the funding formula, so they also have universal funding, but it’s still a voucher, so you have limits on what families can use funding on.

What New Hampshire has done is guarantee all three of these, and that’s how they’ve become the fifth true universal choice. The last thing they needed to do is lift that income cap, because they already had, at its perk of formation, achieved universal uses and universal funding. Their program is tied to the education trust fund up there.

It is formula funded, so no matter how many kids apply, the funding is there, so it’s truly a money follow the child system, and they have a wide use of funds, so many things that families can look to to meet their unique needs, to meet the unique needs of their kids. It’s not always just private school tuition. That could be tutoring or transportation or curriculum or different ideas, and we want to see that entrepreneurship coming up through this.

What New Hampshire is doing is achieving a true marketplace of education. It’s a different way of thinking about public education. It’s moving away from the idea of just going to one district or just your assigned district school and toward the idea of public education can be looked at differently.

You can take the funding that’s guaranteed for you and take it to what works best for you, and that’s creating a healthy competition between schools. It’s creating new flexibility. It’s putting accountability and power in the hands of parents, not bureaucrats and not government.

So really exciting news out of New Hampshire. I think it’s going to be, it is 2025’s model, and it should be the example for states across the nation going forward. And now jumping out down to the Southeast.

While a lot of Nathan’s universal eligibility ones happened last year, there still is some action happening in the Southeast. There’s some good news, some more negative news, but nevertheless, Nathan.

Nathan Sanders: Yeah, exactly right, Ed. That’s a good segue into sort of, you know, in the Southeast and any of the states that I work in, none of them achieved this year, at least all three pillars, what we would call universal school choice in terms of eligibility and uses and funding, right? But there are some things to celebrate.

So for example, last year, during the 2024 regular session, the Alabama legislature passed universal school choice program, and this included a pretty wide array of uses for families. It could definitely be better. I think there’s definitely work there in the future, but pretty wide array of uses and universal eligibility at year three.

They’re going into year one this school year, but something they achieved this legislative session was to fund it. And although it’s not what we would call universal funding, because there’s no automatic escalator or there’s no funding formula incorporated in that, they still funded to the number of applications. So the minimum they had to fund it per statute was $100 million.

And because of the high demand of applications this year, they increased that by 80 million, totaling about $180 million for this year. Again, it was not what we would call universal funding because there’s no sort of next step involved in that. But I think that indicates that the Alabama legislature has made this a priority and that’s what they’ve done.

So that’s something to be celebrated there in Alabama. Something on the opposite side of that in my home state of Louisiana, they did not fund it enough to where the amount of applications that were approved were satisfied. So they had almost 40,000 applications, about 34,000 and some change of those were approved and the legislature ultimately only moved over the funding that was used for the old voucher program to the new Gator program.

Luckily, all those voucher kids who still wanted to continue using that state scholarship, they were transferred over. They’re not going to lose their scholarship, right? Thank God.

But that only leaves with that funding only about a few hundred eligible new families to use who were not previously on the old voucher program. And so that means there are probably 25-ish, probably more than that, thousands of families that applied and got approved for Gator who won’t be able to access the scholarship. So super unfortunate.

There are a lot of politics at play, of course, but ultimately it came down to the Senate that the governor in the House proposed enough funding for more families and the Senate kind of rejected that. And without much voice of opposition to that, unfortunately, it kind of just sailed through. So that was super unfortunate.

Hopefully, moving forward in Louisiana, we can put up a fight and get more families to access the scholarship. Some other notable things that happened in the Southeast this year in South Carolina, of course, as everyone knows, last year, the court in South Carolina virtually overturned the program to where you wouldn’t be able to use the scholarship for full-time tuition. That’s what the majority of students in the South Carolina program used it for.

So this year, the legislature came in and passed a bill that they assume will fix the courts issues. And also they expanded the program out, which is awesome. They added more to the scholarship.

They removed some requirements like a prior public, which allows more students going into this year to access the scholarship. So lots of things we celebrate in South Carolina. Now we’re just kind of awaiting and seeing what the judicial system does with the program.

But God willing, it’ll last and those students will be able to access their scholarship. The only thing else I want to mention, the only other thing, Ed, is in the state of Missouri, of course, they don’t have a universal program. They don’t have universal eligibility or funding or usage.

But in a step towards that, the governor and the legislature made it a priority this year to add $50 million appropriation to their tax credit scholarships. And now it’s sort of this hybrid public-private funded program, but that ultimately triples the amounts of students who are able to participate in this program, which is a huge win for Missouri. So moving forward, we will be able to use that in the fight to expand it out to true universal, as you mentioned, Ed.

So, of course, not any, like I said before, big, big universal wins in terms of the three pillars this year in the Southeast, but lots of things to be celebrated, lots of things to reflect upon going into next year to fight. And so I’m looking forward to that.

Ed Tarnowski: Yeah, it was a big year all around the country. And I know that you had some big wins this year, and some is just kind of preparing for the next year or the next two years. In a lot of places, it’s still the long game.

But I think what we can conclude this year is that universal is now the standard for the education freedom movement. And before we end, I do want to talk a little bit about that. Do you guys agree?

Is universal eligibility now the standard for the choice movement?

Katherine Schulze: I do agree. I think, you know, it took 30 years for EdChoice to get these programs running, and it’s going to hopefully only take us maybe another five to set the new standard and push the true best idea for families forward, which is allowing parents, regardless of their background, to educate their kids with their tax dollars, how they see fit.

Nathan Sanders: Yeah, I think I would concur with that. I think to Katherine’s point earlier, we hear less and less of what is this program? How does this program operate?

Now we hear more of, okay, I understand how this works. What are these other states doing to where we could be better? I think for advocates like us, leveraging that underlying competitive attitude towards state legislatures, we could say, well, if you want to go big, if you truly want to help all students in your state, this is how you should do it.

You should look at universal funding. You should look at universal usage and universal eligibility, and then you can have a really successful program. So, yeah, I would concur with that as well.

Aaron Gillham: Yeah, that’s definitely where the momentum is, and we see it in our polling. Katherine alluded to that earlier. Parents, families, they want choice.

They want to be able to make that decision if a schooling environment and educational environment is not working for their child to not feel trapped and to just be able to pivot. And that’s what it is. And of course, you know, many of us believe in free markets and the spirit of competition.

We think that that will improve existing institutions as well as allow new ones to grow and thrive and try out new models. So it’s in our data across the board. It’s in our polling and it’s exciting to see that.

So I think that as new programs get on board and legislators kind of get better acquainted with what other kind of local regional states are kind of doing, I think they’ll become more comfortable with fully funding these programs and really giving them the legs to run. So it’s exciting time to be a part of the movement.

Ed Tarnowski: Definitely exciting time, Aaron. And I will say, as I mentioned with New Hampshire, I think the momentum is with and not with limited targeted programs anymore, but with rethinking the public education system as a whole. Oh, again, not necessarily just toward one district school that you’re assigned to, but toward allowing families to choose what education is best for them, where the money follows the child.

And that’s why it’s a really exciting time. I think Milton and Rose Friedman would be proud. And that’ll be it for us today.

Thank you again for joining another episode of State of Choice. For more information on Ed Choice and our research, feel free to visit edchoice.org. I’m your host, Ed Tarnowski, also known as Ed with EdChoice, and I’ll see you next time.