The March of School Choice

By Andy Smarick

Thursday, August 20, 2026

 

For the last 35 years, America has been, in fits and starts, remolding K–12 schooling into the system we should have had from the start. The federal government’s new school-choice program, the Education Freedom Tax Credit (EFTC), is the latest step on this long journey. It could also prove to be the largest, but that will depend on — of all things — Democratic governors.

 

Under the law, each state’s chief executive has the authority to decide whether to participate. GOP governors, unsurprisingly, got on board swiftly. But most of them lead states that already have one or more school-choice programs; for those places, the EFTC will be more additive than revolutionary. To be a game changer, the program must make inroads into blue states. So far, the Democratic governors who have made a decision about the program (with the exception of Colorado’s Jared Polis and probably New York’s Kathy Hochul) have said, “No, thanks.” (In Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina, GOP-controlled legislatures passed laws to override their Democratic governors’ rebuff.)

 

Today’s Democratic governors are simply following the left’s well-worn playbook, saying that school choice is an attack on public education that steals public dollars. But it’s not clear that this still works. The federal program will use new private dollars (not existing public funds), meaning the old political attacks don’t stick as well. Perhaps even more important, Americans — thanks to their growing familiarity with and support for choice programs — no longer believe the nation’s legacy school system is the best, much less the only, way to organize public education.

 

Over the next few months, the uncommitted Democratic governors of about a dozen reliably blue states (including California, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) will have to choose: opt in or opt out? Those decisions will reveal a great deal about the left’s long-standing anti-reform playbook and whether school choice will continue to remake K–12 education.

 

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How did it come to pass that in 2026 the leaders of some of our biggest states still oppose policies that enable parents to select where their kids go to school? And how did a federal tax-credit program buried in a budget-reconciliation bill threaten to become the greatest boon to school choice since the movement began? Some history is in order.

 

In the early- to mid-19th century, American communities launched what would become known as the “common schools” movement, the prototype of today’s system of public elementary and secondary education. Understanding that a democratic nation needed an educated citizenry, towns and cities, with the support of public funds, started tuition-free schools. In most places, this began as one locally controlled school with one teacher in one big classroom and students of varying ages. Over the decades, this arrangement matured in numerous ways, but one feature went unchanged: American public schools were government-run schools.

 

Of course they were, you might be thinking. Public schools are, by definition, government-run schools! In America, yes, they were. But that was not the case in most other Western nations. Elsewhere, the public education system includes schools run by an array of nongovernmental bodies, often including faith-based groups. Parental choice is a standard feature. But America — for a mishmash of reasons related to localism, Tocquevillian-ism, assimilationism, and progressivism — opted for a hyperlocal system of government monopoly. Across America, the government became the exclusive provider of public education. This is why, nearly two centuries later, many people (including lots of blue-state governors) believe that “government-run schools” and “public education” are synonymous.

 

But as America diversified, the monopoly’s foundation began to crack. Families had different preferences, and many families didn’t share the sensibilities of those in charge of public schools. A series of mid-20th-century court cases mandated the removal of religion from all public schools, further revealing Americans’ disparate views on what makes for a good education. In the second half of the 20th century, more areas of conflict arose — related to discipline, rigor, the role of teachers’ unions, and on and on. The nation came to the realization that the American character demanded a different type of public school system.

 

The era of diversification and choice began in earnest in the 1990s. States adopted charter-school laws that permitted independent nonprofits to operate choice-based public schools. Some states allowed families to choose from among public schools inside their district or in neighboring districts. Some districts created “contract schools” (programs operated by private groups) or “schools within schools” (differentiated offerings inside one facility). Then came the private-school choice initiatives, state programs that enabled families to use public funds to pay for nonpublic schools with vouchers, scholarships, and education savings accounts. Combined, these initiatives enabled millions of students to access schools other than the government-run schools to which they were assigned based on where they live.

 

There were, however, two major obstacles to further expanding choice and differentiation that, interestingly, ultimately led to the federal program now at issue. First, any time existing government funds supported a choice program, defenders of the traditional system would argue that money was being stolen from public schools. The public was sympathetic to that argument. Second, because of federal and state jurisprudence, private-school choice programs that included faith-based schools often ran into constitutional roadblocks. Lawyers would argue, and sometimes judges would agree, that the First Amendment’s establishment clause was violated when public dollars supported religious institutions.

 

Clever state governments killed both of those birds with one stone: the tuition tax-credit model. State governments would give a tax credit to individuals and corporations that donated money to an approved private-school scholarship fund. These dollars would then be distributed to students who could use them at the schools of their choice. No one could say that money was being stolen from public schools, as these were entirely new dollars, and the constitutional concerns disappeared because these were privately donated dollars that never touched the government’s coffers.

 

Those programs served as the model for the new EFTC federal initiative. Historically, Uncle Sam has done little related to school choice. Apart from some seed funding for charter schools and the small voucher program in Washington, D.C., the federal government mostly left choice up to the states. This made sense: It was gospel on the right that Washington should stay out of K–12 education. Moreover, constitutional and statutory rules made it hard to see how Congress could lawfully allocate funds for faith-based schools.

 

But three things changed that calculus over the last decade. First, a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions clarified the right of religious institutions to participate in government programs open to secular institutions. Perhaps Uncle Sam could find a legal way to help families access non-government-run, including faith-based, schools. Second, school choice had been on a serious winning streak at the state level, especially in red states. Conservatives in Washington figured that with GOP control of the White House and Congress, it was time for some federal school choice. Third, blue states still mostly refused to embrace private-school choice programs, meaning the kids in those states, including the low-income kids in big urban areas such as New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago, had too few options. Many choice advocates believed that the only way for blue-state families to get school choice — a moral issue in many eyes — was for Washington to get involved.

 

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This is how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 ended up with the federal tuition tax-credit program that launches on January 1, 2027. Individuals can get a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donations (up to $1,700 annually) to approved scholarship funds. But a key provision in the law added a wrinkle: Each state’s governor must agree to participate.

 

Joining was a no-brainer for red states: They will get more school choice without needing to raise state taxes or forgo tax revenue. But the program put blue-state leaders in a bind. Their standard anti-choice line — “I can’t support the diversion of public funds from public schools to private schools” — won’t work. These scholarships will be funded by new charitable donations. Moreover, as students use these scholarships, public schools will be left with the same amount of money but with fewer kids to educate, meaning per-pupil funding for public schools will actually increase.

 

It might seem like a no-brainer for Democratic governors to sign up, too. Their resistance to date speaks to the political strength of the progressive interest groups (such as teachers’ unions) opposed to this program. They’re telling these governors that participation is tacit support for school choice and an easy path for students to leave public education. The not-so-subtle message is: “If you opt in to this program, you’re opting out of our support come reelection time.”

 

Herein lies the left’s problem with K–12 education. Over the past couple of decades, it became clearer and clearer that school choice is a political winner. Conceptually, it reflects American pluralism and liberty. Practically, it enables parents to place their kids in schools that match the family’s sensibilities and meet their children’s needs. But Democrats (and their political allies) have boxed themselves into an anti-school-choice position. That’s causing them to lose legislative votes and the public’s trust on education issues. You would think that a progressive political entrepreneur would find a way out of that box, developing a way for the left to support — and talk about supporting — school choice.

 

That hasn’t happened at scale, at least not yet. But maybe some number of the Democratic governors now holding out will opt in and scramble school-choice politics. If not, the right will continue winning on this issue at the ballot box and passing policy reforms that bring America closer to the dynamic, pluralistic, choice-driven K–12 system we should have had all along.