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by The Center Square
There are many different clubs in the world, and some are tougher to get into than others.
From secret societies in the Ivy League to becoming a Kentucky Colonel, invitation-only private members clubs in London to Wisconsin supper clubs who let anyone have a seat at the table for an evening, it can take money, connections, or both to get let in. As a young man living in Alabama, I joined many “private clubs” that looked like regular bars but needed membership in order to circumvent local liquor laws.There is a club in the world of school choice that is getting less and less exclusive, and that is great news for kids.It’s the 100,000 Club, the states that have at least 100,000 students participating in their private school choice programs.Florida was the first member. The Sunshine State had more than 100,000 students enrolled in an earlier scholarship tax credit program as early as the 2017-18 school year.
Reforms in 2023 consolidated programs and expanded eligibility and now its two choice programs, the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options and Family Empowerment Scholarship Program for Students with Unique Abilities enrolled 280,000 and 140,000 students respectively last school year.Ohio crossed the 100,000-student mark in its Educational Choice Scholarship Program in the 2024-25 school year. Ohio’s total student enrollment in private school choice programs crossed 100,000 a few years before, because the state has had multiple voucher programs (starting in Cleveland in 1995 and eventually expanding to students with Autism and then to students attending poorly-performing schools).
Ohio also expanded to universal eligibility in 2023, dramatically increasing enrollment in the program.This spring, Arizona reported just under 103,000 students enrolled in its Empowerment Scholarship Program. Arizona has had multiple choice programs since the early 2000s, but under Governor Doug Ducey eligibility in the ESA program was made universal in 2022. There was a potential initiative petition circulating by program opponents that would have seriously curtailed the program, but state courts found that improper signature gathering took place at an incredibly broad scale, making the effort ineligible to end up on the ballot.North Carolina’s Opportunity Scholarship Program saw 106,000 students participate last year, up from 80,000 the year before. It went universal in 2023 but was held back by statutory appropriations before the legislature decided to provide funding for all the students languishing on a waitlist for the program for the 2025-26 school year.This year, Texas is set to join the club.
The Texas Comptroller is reporting 101,600 students participating in the Lone Star State’s Texas Education Freedom Accounts program as students head back to school.There are other states that, when combining multiple different choice programs, see at least 100,000 students participating.Pennsylvania has two scholarship programs that give tax credits to individuals and corporations who donate to organizations that provide students K-12 scholarships. Between the two programs, the Keystone State awarded 101,751 back in the 2023-24 school year, and it’s only limited by state funding. That year, more than 170,000 students applied to participate in the program.The real wild card moving forward is the federal government. As part of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill, the Treasury Department is now administering a program that will give a dollar-for-dollar $1,700 tax credit for donations to scholarship granting organizations.
According to one analysis, some 52 million students could be eligible for this program and could in short order drive private school choice program enrollment over 100,000 in several states.So why does it matter if a state has 100,000 students participating in a choice program? Isn’t that threshold arbitrary?Sure, but caring that a large number of students are enrolled in private school choice programs is not.For choice to live up to its promise, it needs a supply-side response. We need great schools participating, great schools growing in enrollment, and new great schools forming. The more students participate, the more pressure there is on the supply side to grow great options. When programs are small, schools are fighting over a tiny sliver of market share.
As that slice of the pie grows, so does the incentive to serve it.Large programs are also more politically stable. The supply side response relies on schools trusting that the program will stick around so they can invest in facilities, staff, and the other costs of schooling. The larger the program, the larger the political constituency, the harder it is to shut it down. It also creates a powerful group of people who will support the program when opponents inevitably try to tamper with it.In a world with a lot of bad news, school choice’s continued growth is a bright spot. Here’s hoping that we see more states join the 100,000 student club in the coming years.
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