The States Ranked by Spending on School Choice Programs, 2019 Edition

Have you ever wanted to know how much your state spends on school choice programs compared to what it spends on K–12 education as a whole?

Well, you’re in luck! For the third year in a row, I’ve run the numbers and ranked the states’ spending share on private school choice programs. Don’t see your state? Then, your state doesn’t have any private school choice programs yet.

For added context, the chart below provides a snapshot of national spending on all education savings account (ESA), school voucher and tax-credit scholarship programs in America.

For a refresher on how we make these calculations, see the inaugural spending share post from 2017. Notably, we took a slight departure from last year’s calculations by using the state public expenditure data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2016 Public Elementary-Secondary Education Finance Data rather than data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Public Education Finances report.

Other than that, I’ve once again included the ranking from last year in parentheses to denote any year-over-year differences.

If you’ve read this now-annual post in the past, you know that school choice spending is just a tiny drop in each state’s giant bucket of funds they spend on K–12 education.

Only the top seven states in the list and D.C. actually have ESA, voucher and/or tax-credit scholarship spending that is larger than 1 percent of combined program and public K–12 spending in that respective state (or district, in D.C.’s case).

Without further ado, catch the full set of rankings below.

1. Florida (1)
ESA, Voucher, Tax-Credit Scholarships (2) | 3.69% of Florida’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $969.6 million

2. Arizona (4)
ESA, Tax-Credit Scholarships (4) | 2.83% of Arizona’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $211.8 million

3. Wisconsin (3)
Vouchers (4) | 2.66% of Wisconsin’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $271.9 million

4. Vermont (2)
Voucher | 2.60% of Vermont’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $44.1 million

5. Maine (5)
Voucher | 2.03% of Maine’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $51.7 million

6. Indiana (6)
Voucher, Tax-Credit Scholarship | 1.72% of Indiana’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $174.5 million

7. Ohio (7)
Vouchers (5) | 1.55% of Ohio’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $324.1 million

8. District of Columbia (8)
Voucher | 1.55% of D.C.’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $15.8 million

9. Louisiana (9)
Vouchers (2), Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.64% of Louisiana’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $47.1 million

10. Georgia (10)
Voucher, Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.43% of Georgia’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $74.8 million

11. North Carolina (14)
ESA, Vouchers (2) | 0.35% of North Carolina’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $46.0 million

12. Pennsylvania (12)
Tax-Credit Scholarships (2) | 0.35% of Pennsylvania’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $92.3 million

13. Nevada (15)
ESA (not yet funded), Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.32% of Nevada’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $12.6 million

14. Iowa (13)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.31% of Iowa’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $17.7 million

15. Alabama (11)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.29% of Alabama’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $20.2 million

16. Oklahoma (16)
Voucher, Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.15% of Oklahoma’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $8.0 million

17. Utah (17)
Voucher | 0.14% of Utah’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $5.7 million

18. South Carolina (18)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.13% of South Carolina’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $9.7 million

19. Mississippi (21)
ESA, Vouchers (2) | 0.08% of Mississippi’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $3.6 million

20. Virginia (19)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.07% of Virginia’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $10.8 million

21. Rhode Island (20)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.06% of Rhode Island’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $1.4 million

22. Maryland (22)
Voucher | 0.05% of Maryland’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $6.1 million

23. Arkansas (23)
Voucher | 0.04% of Arkansas’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $1.8 million

24. New Hampshire (24)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.03% of New Hampshire’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $0.9 million

25. South Dakota (25)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.02% of South Dakota’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $0.3 million

26. Kansas (26)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | 0.01% of Kansas’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $0.7 million

27. Tennessee (27)
ESA | Less than 0.01% of Tennessee’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | $0.6 million

28. Montana (28)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | Less than 0.01% of Montana’s combined program and public K–12 current expenditures | Less than $0.1 million

29. Illinois (29)
Tax-Credit Scholarship | Data not yet available | N.A.