This is part one of a two-part series on school choice expansions and investible opportunities around the country. Read part two here.
Since the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, the school choice movement has scored numerous victories across multiple states. The post-pandemic era has become “a school choice moment” as parents have clamored for—and flocked to—alternatives to the traditional public school system.
Public school enrollments nationwide dipped by 1.2 million students between 2019 and 2022. Meanwhile, enrollments in home, private and charter schools either remained steady or saw marked increases. In 2019, around 3% of K-12 children were homeschooled, but that figure doubled to 6% by 2023. Private school enrollments have remained steady throughout the pandemic, while charter school enrollments blossomed by 9%.
State lawmakers have taken notice. In 2023 alone, 20 states passed laws or amended existing ones to create or expand school choice options. And as of early 2024, 11 states have either near-universal or total universal school choice options—meaning choice is available to all students regardless of household income.
But with this historic progress comes new risks. An emerging challenge for the school choice movement boils down to a single word: implementation. Without a proper method of enacting school choice programs, the movement could stall.
There is a pressing need to ensure each school choice program is implemented legally and with the broadest reach possible. Problems can include lack of school facilities, lack of knowledge among parents about available programs and inadequate school financial resources, to name a few. When implementation falls short, that gives opponents of school choice extra ammunition. In these cases, they claim choice programs have no demand and should be abandoned.
“Education savings accounts are an emerging market. Each state has its own flavor of how they’ve implemented school choice. That’s a great thing, but it has also made implementation more of a challenge,” notes Kate Baker Demers, executive director of the Children’s Scholarship Fund of New Hampshire, a nonprofit responsible for implementing the Granite State’s education savings account.
In these exciting and challenging times for school choice, donors have a unique role to play. Future success for the movement depends on wise investments in organizations that can provide proper education and implement and administer the new policies.
“If you’re a donor and you care about really leveraging your investments moving forward, I don’t think there’s a better avenue for your money than investing in school choice on the implementation side,” says Garrett Ballengee, president and CEO of the Cardinal Institute in West Virginia.
Thankfully, there is a roadmap for what works, and philanthropists are playing a key role in the success story. In this space, there are two broad categories of investments donors may consider: parent engagement investments and infrastructure organization investments. Below, more investment opportunities and best practices for each are discussed.
Parent-engagement groups
One of the best examples of a parent-engagement organization is Love Your School. Based in Arizona but now operating in West Virginia and Alabama, the nonprofit provides direct parent support to meet all of a child’s educational needs, known as the “parent concierge service.”
“It’s the very nitty-gritty, personalized issues and questions from parents that we deal with,” says Jenny Clark, founder and CEO of Love Your School. “And so we take the parents wherever they’re at and whatever their situation is, and we stick with them until they feel like their situation is resolved.”
A winner of the 2022 Yass Prize, Love Your School aims to place 50,000 children into the schools they choose by the year 2025.
Reaching and engaging with parents through social media is also a big part of what Love Your School does. The organization looks to create an “ecosystem of supporting parents,” Clark says, and this includes getting parents into the group’s email workflows to start educating them on school choice options. Love Your School also creates content parents can use, including webinars and podcasts.
Clark says marketing is particularly important because the lack of awareness of available programs is more pronounced in low-income and marginalized communities.
“With that marketing, you’re gathering names, you’re gathering information, and then you are repeatedly reaching back out to those families to make sure that they understand what’s coming and how it can be used,” she says.
Love Your School’s work isn’t limited to the demand side of the equation through reaching and educating parents. The organization also works to increase the supply side.
“For example, we’re working to get more private schools and charter schools interested in West Virginia. In Arizona, we work extensively to get hybrid and micro schools started, and we hope to start doing the same thing in Alabama once families get used to this new option with their scholarship,” Clark says.
Another example takes us to West Virginia. In 2021, the Mountain State became the first state with a universally available education savings account called the Hope Scholarship. The scholarship will be fully universal by 2026.
“West Virginia went from fire in a cave to nuclear fusion in about five years in terms of its school choice policy,” says Ballengee of the Cardinal Institute. That nonprofit played a key role in bringing universal school choice to the state, which transitioned quickly from introducing basic school choice programs to the Hope Scholarship.
The Hope Scholarship provides students with 100% of their state funding per pupil, approximately $5,000 annually, and now serves over 10,000 students. Despite various marketing efforts, including billboards, radio ads and social media campaigns, Ballengee says word of mouth has been the primary driver of awareness. It’s vital to view parents and families as customers, and focus on comprehensive marketing and customer experience to raise awareness about school choice options in the state.
“It really is thinking about it comprehensively, in terms of marketing customer experience, because these things are meant to view parents and families as customers. It’s awareness,” Ballengee says.
Infrastructure organizations
Informing parents of their school choice options is an essential first step, but it’s not the destination. Another crucial ingredient in successful education choice programs is infrastructure organizations that either directly implement the programs or assist state government agencies in doing so.
In this arena, New Hampshire has an instructive story to tell. The before-mentioned Children’s Scholarship Fund of New Hampshire is responsible for implementing the Education Freedom Account, or EFA program. The EFA program allows families with incomes up to 350% of the poverty level to direct a portion of the funds spent by the state for their child’s education to private school tuition, online learning programs and other educational expenses as they choose.
Each grant is worth an average of $5,200. As of the 2024-2025 school year, more than 1,600 education providers are available to New Hampshire students through EFA. More than 5,500 students currently benefit from the program.
As for lessons learned from the New Hampshire experience, Demers says ensuring coordination between state agencies, nonprofits and schools is paramount. General education for parents is also a challenge from a policy perspective, since they must learn to use digital wallet technology while navigating what they can and can’t do with funds.
“There is a crucial place for philanthropy to invest in infrastructure,” says Demers. “Every entity implementing a school choice program—whether it’s a state agency or a nonprofit—needs capacity building and infrastructure in place in order to run and be able to scale.”
Investment opportunities for donors
There are many investment opportunities for advancing school choice through philanthropy. Whether advocating for school choice in your state or simply supporting a recently adopted program locally, you can benefit various aspects of this changing landscape. Here are three options to consider.
1. Invest in public awareness
Raising public awareness of school choice is crucial. For states that still don’t have programs, parents need to know what possibilities could lie ahead for their children. And for states that have adopted school choice programs, the public needs to be aware of not only their existence, but how they can take advantage of opportunities.
For instance, consider investing directly in marketing organizations like Love Your School. Doing so helps start a more visible, public conversation about the options available through the education freedom movement.
“I think that’s the biggest return on investment, because think about the power, think about the public school system,” says Clark. “They have that. They have all these teachers, they have all of these parents whose kids are in the system who say, ‘Oh, I love this school down the street. They have a great football team; they have a great STEM program.’ We need to be doing the same thing in the education freedom movement, and we have a long way to go.”
2. Invest in simplifying the process
Simplifying the school choice implementation process is crucial, Demers says. The two most important keys to success are designing programs centered around parents and simplifying the process of applying for and securing scholarships.
“Designing the program with the parent at the center is the first and most important principle that will lead to success,” she says. “That’s the most important activity that you can undertake. Second is working to simplify the processes, making it easy for the families to participate through appropriate pathways.”
Emphasizing parents puts mom and dad in a place of greater authority, helping them feel more in control of their children’s educational futures while familiarizing them with the options. Additionally, simplifying the scholarship process should raise participation across the board. Simply adopting the concept of school choice isn’t enough; garnering buy-in and participating is essential.
Based on her experience in New Hampshire, Demers also says local control is crucial. Local control means programs may be tailored to specific community needs. This should maximize each local program’s efficacy.
“[Local control] reflects the needs of the local community rather than being a top-down broad brush type,” she says.
3. Make early investments in states without school choice
Finally, consider investing early in locations where school choice isn’t yet available. Your support could pave the way for life-changing educational advancements for families in states where school choice seems out of reach.
Before universal school choice arrives, have as much lead time as possible when operating in a state to establish relationships with parents. This is an effective activity donors can engage in if they live in a state where universal school choice is not yet available, but might be in the future.
“You have to build the broadest base and community of people that support it,” says Clark, “because that’s instrumental in protecting these programs. They have to get off, they have to grow quickly and they have to have a very strong community using the program in order to protect them. They’re very vulnerable to changes in legislation, unions and opposition groups coming after families in the programs.”
Ultimately, protecting school choice victories—whether established or forthcoming—means being proactive in advocacy, financial support and implementation. It’s not enough to pass legislation and move on to the next area of concern. We must ensure that the families school choice programs are meant to benefit can easily access and fully reap the rewards.
