Two numbers are helpful for thinking about the future of education.
$946 billion. That’s the amount of funding for public education in 2023, according to the latest figures from the Census Bureau.
$5.4 billion. That’s about how much funding parents directed through education savings accounts and ESA-like tax credits*.
In other words, right now, parents direct a little over one-half of one percent of all public education funding.
What will that percentage look like 10 years from now?
Will it grow incrementally, to about 1%? Will it jump by an order of magnitude, to 10%? Or will it surge closer to 100%?
If parents directed 10% of funding, education would see a massive sea change. Parents would control $100 billion of purchasing power. Textbook publishers and education technology companies that currently sell their products to schools and districts would feel pressure to start thinking about families as their customers. Microschool networks, tutoring centers and online learning marketplaces that already have direct-to-family business models would flourish. Thousands more teachers would become entrepreneurs.
After the first education savings account legislation passed in Arizona in 2011, it took more than a decade for the movement to give parents their first $1 billion in purchasing power.
A future where parents direct one in ten public education dollars may seem far-fetched. On the other hand, according to Ed Choice, in Florida, that future has already arrived. This school year, Florida parents direct about 10% of public education funding.
*(This total is based on figures from the Edunomics lab. It includes education savings accounts, tax credit-funded ESAs, and individual tax credits that essentially function like ESAs. It does not include conventional private school vouchers, tax credit scholarships, or supplemental ESAs, known as microgrants).
In Brief
Texas, the state where everything is bigger, including the new ESA law, offers a microcosm of the vibe shift in education policy.
As the largest “day one” school choice program in the U.S., it marks a watershed victory for supporters—not just in the Lone Star State, but across the country. Yet even as Texas opens new doors for families, it may soon shut an important window into school quality. Lawmakers are locked in deliberations over House Bill 4, a proposal to eliminate the STAAR exam as currently administered. The bill has cleared both chambers in different forms, setting up a high-stakes negotiation that could reshape the state’s approach to accountability.
A new Reason Foundation study shows public-school open enrollment is gaining momentum across the country, and low-income families benefit from having the ability to attend public schools outside their assigned zone.
Getting a college degree still produces positive economic returns for most graduates.
Could higher teacher turnover help schools improve?
Academics challenge the value of reading in the age of AI. This belongs in the bad take hall of fame.
Parent Corner
Research on primal beliefs finds parents tend to prefer narratives that paint a picture of the world as dangerous, dull and mechanistic. Robert Pondiscio asks, astutely: “What if, instead, we encouraged children to see the world as basically safe, full of wonder, and alive with possibility?”
Let Grow has a helpful guide to child independence this summer.
