2025 EdChoice Share: Exploring Where America’s Students Are Educated 

By the end of 2024, more than one million students in America were participating in a private school choice program. Participation growth has climbed rapidly, having more than doubled since the beginning of 2020.  

While the majority of states have some form of private school choice, some are going above and beyond to make educational freedom a reality for as many families as possible. For the first time, two states have more than 10% of their K–12 student population participating in a private school choice program. Florida leads the way with nearly 13% of students enrolled in a private school choice program. Arizona follows close behind, with 10% of their students participating in a private school choice program. Other states have also made notable progress. Ohio increased its share of students participating in a private school choice program from 4.8% to 8.1%, Iowa from 2.2% to 6.9%, and Oklahoma from 0.4% to 4.5%. 

It is worth noting that these increases have not occurred overnight. Instead, they are a result of years of tireless work from lawmakers, advocates, school leaders, parent organizers, and many more. Because of their efforts, families across America have a say in their child’s education. 

In order to help understand how these changes are manifesting across the different states, we introduce the EdChoice Share. The EdChoice Share tracks states’ proportion of K–12 students enrolled in an education savings account (ESA), voucher, refundable tax credit, tax-credit ESA, or tax-credit scholarship program. The EdChoice Share assigns a ranking to states. States with the highest proportion of K–12 students enrolled in one of the above program types will be towards the top of the EdChoice Share. States without programs are ranked from those with the highest shares of students outside of a traditional public school to those with the least. 

These unprecedented levels of private educational choice participation, especially in Florida and Arizona, have ripple effects. In 2001–2002, the earliest year for which we have data, 86% of Florida students attended a traditional public school. In 2024, the share of FL students attending a traditional public school plummeted to 51%. Arizona has experienced a similar, though less dramatic, shift. The share of Arizona students attending traditional public school fell from 89% in 2001–2002 to 68% in 2024–2025. This is especially noteworthy, given that public school enrollment in both states has increased over the course of the last two decades (per the National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES).  

On a national level, based on most recent data: 

• 2.2% of students are utilizing an educational choice program 
• 6.8% attend private school by other means 
• 74.8% attend a traditional public school 
• 4.9% attend a magnet school 
• 6.6% attend a charter school, and  
• 4.7% are homeschooled 

On a state level (click state name to jump to its chart – best done on computer) 

Why does this matter?  

Each month EdChoice, via the EdChoice Monthly Public Opinion Tracker, surveys school parents and asks the following question: “If given the option, what type of school would you select in order to obtain the best education for your child?” Below is a visualization of parents’ responses. The data vary by year, but typically hovers closely to the data in the graphic shown below.

What this data does not reflect, however, is the national enrollment data. For reference, the national enrollment data can be found a bit further down. The massive gap between parents’ schooling preferences and current enrollment trends is the elephant in the room. In states like Florida and Arizona, that elephant is slowly but surely being shown the door. 

Notes: To calculate the EdChoice Share, we divide the total number of students participating in a state’s educational choice program by the total number of K–12 students in that state, regardless of sector. Unfortunately, not all data are reported for the most recent school year, so we use carry-forward and projection-based data for programs or schooling sectors that don’t have up to date data.  

The EdChoice Share also provides state breakdowns of traditional public school share (inter-district data is split out from residential district when available), charter school share, magnet school share, tuition paying private school share (in other words, students attending private school but not participating in a private choice program), and homeschool share.  

The public school data reflect the 2023–2024 school year. The same is true for charter school enrollment data. Private school enrollment data reflect the 2021–2022 school year. Homeschool estimates are variable, with some states having up to date data while others are lagging behind by a year or two.  

Our data is sourced from the following: 

• Public school enrollment: NCES 
• Private school enrollment: Private School Survey via NCES  
• Charter school enrollment: National Alliance for Public Charter Schools 
• Magnet school enrollment: NCES 
• Homeschool estimates: The Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy’s Homeschool Hub 
• Educational Choice Share: EdChoice 

Caveats: Our data are only as good as what is made available, and in many cases, the data are incomplete and imperfect. And even if we were able to perfectly segment all the K–12 students in America, it still would not be a complete picture of all of the ways K–12 students are educated in America. For instance, we are missing counts of hybrid homeschoolers and microschoolers. Some states and some schools differ in their classification of microschool students.  

We also are unable to capture counts of families who choose to move into a specific school district so their student could attend a specific public school versus those for whom that option is not affordable. In order to have a positive enrollment count of other private school students in Arizona, we had to assume that 47.5% of tax-credit scholarships went to students who received multiple scholarships via the state’s tax-credit scholarship programs. and used NCES’s standard error to create an upper bound of their private school enrollment estimate in order not to have any years of negative enrollment for the Other Private School segment. Additionally, even though we have current school year homeschooling data for some states, we were forced to use carryforward data for others. 

All of the data are downloadable.