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 chart to reflect results from our 2020 national poll. This will be the last update to this post – stay tuned for the 2021 EdChoice Share, coming in January.
This fourth annual post coins the term Educational Choice Share (or EdChoice Share) to represent the proportion of all K–12 students who are enrolled in an education savings account, school voucher or tax-credit scholarship program.
To get this number, I divided the total number of a state’s educational choice program participants by the total number of K–12 students in the state. Not all program data is reported for the most recent school year, so I am carrying forward the last available participation data for programs that don’t have 2020–21 data.
Second, this post not only ranks the states by highest and lowest EdChoice Share, but also it provides a state-by-state breakdown of public district school share, charter school share, home school share and “out of pocket” private school share—which we describe as “by other means” or “Other Private School Share.”
Why do we care about this?
Data from our 2020 national poll shows American parents—for myriad reasons—are not able to access the types of schools they would prefer for their children.
The charter school enrollment data is for 2016–17 [now 2017–18] and the public district school enrollment data (total public minus charter) [now for 2018–19], private school enrollment data* and homeschooler estimates are for 2017–18.
*New Mexico private school enrollment data did not meet the USDOE’s reporting standards in 2017–18 so I used the 2015–16 private school enrollment data instead for that state.
If our K–12 education system is innovating and finding ways to better serve students and their families, then—as years pass—we would expect the numbers below to begin looking more and more like the chart above.
On a national level:
• 1.0 percent of students are utilizing an educational choice program
• 7.6 percent attend private school by other means
• 83.4 percent attend a public district school
• 5.5 percent attend a charter school, and
• 2.6 percent are homeschooled.
On a state level:
| State | Number of Programs | EdChoice Share | Other Private School Share | Public District School Share | Charter School Share | Home School Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arizona | 5 | 6.7% | <1% | 77.9% | 15.5% | 2.6% |
| Florida | 5 | 4.9% | 7.1% | 76.4% | 8.9% | 2.7% |
| Wisconsin | 5 | 4.3% | 8.8% | 80.6% | 4.2% | 2.1% |
| Indiana | 3 | 3.9% | 6.7% | 83.0% | 3.9% | 2.5% |
| Vermont | 1 | 3.7% | 4.9% | 89.1% | - | 2.3% |
| Ohio | 5 | 2.9% | 8.0% | 81.6% | 5.8% | 1.6% |
| Maine | 1 | 2.7% | 5.7% | 87.9% | 1.1% | 2.6% |
| Pennsylvania | 2 | 2.6% | 9.6% | 78.5% | 6.8% | 2.6% |
| Iowa | 2 | 1.9% | 6.0% | 89.6% | <0.1% | 2.5% |
| District of Columbia | 1 | 1.7% | 11.1% | 48.0% | 37.3% | 2.1% |
| Louisiana | 4 | 1.1% | 14.0% | 73.9% | 9.4% | 1.6% |
| Georgia | 2 | 1.1% | 5.9% | 86.1% | 3.7% | 3.3% |
| North Carolina | 3 | 0.8% | 5.3% | 80.7% | 5.6% | 7.6% |
| South Dakota | 1 | 0.5% | 6.1% | 90.3% | - | 3.0% |
| Alabama | 2 | 0.5% | 6.9% | 90.0% | <0.1% | 2.6% |
| Oklahoma | 2 | 0.5% | 3.1% | 90.0% | 3.9% | 2.5% |
| South Carolina | 2 | 0.3% | 5.5% | 87.5% | 4.1% | 2.6% |
| Illinois | 2 | 0.3% | 9.2% | 85.0% | 2.9% | 2.5% |
| Virginia | 1 | 0.3% | 7.0% | 90.0% | <0.1% | 2.6% |
| Rhode Island | 1 | 0.3% | 9.8% | 82.0% | 5.4% | 2.5% |
| Maryland | 1 | 0.3% | 12.4% | 82.6% | 2.3% | 2.5% |
| Nevada | 1 | 0.3% | 3.7% | 84.9% | 8.6% | 2.5% |
| New Hampshire | 2 | 0.2% | 12.0% | 83.6% | 1.7% | 2.5% |
| Utah | 1 | 0.2% | 2.5% | 84.2% | 10.6% | 2.5% |
| Mississippi | 3 | 0.1% | 7.7% | 89.3% | 0.2% | 2.7% |
| Kansas | 1 | <0.1% | 7.0% | 89.8% | 0.6% | 2.5% |
| Arkansas | 1 | <0.1% | 4.5% | 86.0% | 5.8% | 3.6% |
| Montana | 1 | <0.1% | 5.2% | 91.5% | - | 3.3% |
| Tennessee | 2 | <0.1% | 7.6% | 86.4% | 3.4% | 2.6% |
| Minnesota | 2 | Not Available | 11.1% | 81.5% | 5.6% | 1.9% |
| Delaware | 0 | - | 13.8% | 75.0% | 9.4% | 1.8% |
| Hawaii | 0 | - | 16.6% | 75.8% | 5.0% | 2.6% |
| New York | 0 | - | 13.1% | 80.0% | 4.4% | 2.5% |
| California | 0 | - | 8.0% | 80.7% | 9.0% | 2.4% |
| Michigan | 0 | - | 7.6% | 81.1% | 8.7% | 2.6% |
| Colorado | 0 | - | 4.4% | 82.3% | 12.6% | 0.7% |
| New Jersey | 0 | - | 11.1% | 83.5% | 3.1% | 2.4% |
| Missouri | 0 | - | 11.0% | 84.2% | 2.2% | 2.6% |
| Massachusetts | 0 | - | 10.0% | 85.1% | 4.2% | 0.7% |
| Oregon | 0 | - | 6.5% | 85.2% | 5.0% | 3.4% |
| Nebraska | 0 | - | 12.1% | 85.5% | - | 2.4% |
| Idaho | 0 | - | 5.0% | 86.1% | 6.3% | 2.6% |
| Connecticut | 0 | - | 9.5% | 86.3% | 1.7% | 2.5% |
| New Mexico | 0 | - | 5.5% | 87.0% | 7.4% | <0.1% |
| Texas | 0 | - | 4.8% | 87.2% | 5.6% | 2.4% |
| Kentucky | 0 | - | 9.7% | 87.8% | - | 2.5% |
| Alaska | 0 | - | 2.5% | 89.9% | 5.1% | 2.5% |
| Washington | 0 | - | 6.7% | 91.4% | 0.2% | 1.7% |
| North Dakota | 0 | - | 6.2% | 91.4% | - | 2.4% |
| West Virginia | 0 | - | 4.4% | 93.1% | - | 2.5% |
| Wyoming | 0 | - | 1.6% | 95.1% | 0.6% | 2.7% |
Notes: I did not include U.S. territories. I did not include data on individual tax credit or deduction programs, unless it was a refundable credit, which is why Minnesota’s EdChoice Share is Not Available. I assumed 20 percent of tax-credit scholarships went to multi-scholarship students in Arizona.
